2012 Mobile Marathon

19. First Light Marathon – Mobile, Ala. – Jan. 8, 2012

The course in Mobile runs by antebellum mansions and under

Spanish moss trees throughout much of the race.

This race really surprised me. I’ve been to Mobile several times with the basketball team, and I’ve always hated running there. There are few sidewalks, and I never found a route that was particularly interesting. Apparently, that was due to where we stayed, which was off the highway with a bunch of malls and strip malls. The race started downtown, which reminded me of New Orleans with less noise, crime and drunk frat boys puking in the gutter.

The course went winding through quaint neighborhoods for the first few miles. I talked to a man from Pascagoula, Miss., the hometown of Jimmy Buffett, and his friend, a woman who had moved to Mobile and planned to move to Denver. I really enjoy talking to people during races, which is one of the main reasons I don’t wear headphones. These two were great. They were complaining and wondering if they could finish the half marathon (we would part ways at the split a few miles later). They were underestimating themselves because they were doing great, but that’s pretty common in any race. I was jealous when they turned to head toward the finish, because I was tiring quickly. But we went through Spring Hill College, which was more like a country club than a college. It was a beautiful area and got my mind off my fatigue for a while.

The race starts and finishes in historic downtown Mobile.

I’ve met a lot of unbelievable people during races. In this one, a woman and I kept passing each other for the first eight miles. She looked strangely familiar, which is not terribly unusual when you run enough races. Finally, I caught her just before the South Alabama campus and suggested we run together for a while. Her name is Shannon Hays, and she is a high school Spanish teacher from Atlanta. Her goal was to become the youngest woman to run all 50 states in under four hours. Last year, she ran about 28 marathons, all of which were under four hours. She was struggling in this one, and so was I.

Denver played a basketball game against South Alabama the day before (a road win), so I decided to run this race even though I wasn’t even remotely trained for it. Knocking off a state, especially one in the Deep South, without paying for it was too good to pass up. Shannon said she was tired, and she was thinking about taking a few weeks off, which sounded like a great idea. She was going to Phoenix the next week, but would probably skip the marathon and sit around the pool instead. We kept each other thinking about anything other than the race we were running, including some banter about Kansas vs. Kentucky basketball – our respective teams – which turned out to be the two teams in that year’s national championship.

As it turned out, Shannon’s decision to take some time off lasted less than a week. She ran Arizona (sub-four) the next week and then proceeded to run races each of the next two weeks. Apparently, she got her mojo back. I can do nothing more than read her blog in awe. What she’s doing does not seem completely human. Incidentally, the reason she looked familiar was that I saw her during Seattle and Pocatello early in the year. She is one of the organizers of the Lexington half marathon, and suggested holding off on Kentucky until they start the full marathon next year. Sounds like a plan, even if it is in the shadows of UK.

One blogger called the finishers' medals at Mobile the worst

of the worst. I thought they were nice and pretty unique.

I had to make a pit stop just before a hill somewhere around mile 16 or 18, so I wished Shannon luck. The last 8-10 miles were brutal for me. They weren’t particularly challenging, as far as hills or weather, but my undertraining hit me hard and I was forced to walk quite a bit of it. Finally, with about a mile to go, another woman and I decided we were going to carry each other in. As we headed back toward downtown Mobile, I realized I picked the right person to help me. She knew every fan on the side of the road, so everyone of them was cheering for us.

It was far from my best race (4:41), but I enjoyed it. It was a nice course. The people were phenomenal. And the homemade ice cream with chocolate syrup at the finish area was a perfect post race treat.