The Baltimore Running Festival includes several races: a marathon, half-marathon, team relay marathon, and a 5-kilometer (3.1 mile) race. Interestingly, all of these races are on the same course at the same time at some point in the event. Even more interestingly, the race directory pulls this off in a somewhat seamless fashion, allowing all of these folks to “run together” near the end of the course.
I ran the UnderArmour Marathon (formerly called The Baltimore Marathon) on October 11, 2008 while coaching a team of marathon participants in the Team In Training program. This was a smaller race and we would not normally have sent a coach along, so I was given the opportunity to run it if I wanted. Not a bad deal — I paid my way there and the program secured me a free entry to the race — and it also allowed me to accompany a couple of the folks I was coaching for their event. I had another dozen runners that were running the Nike Women’s Marathon in San Francisco the following weekend. I ran in honor of Brent, an infant who is the son of a friend’s friend and is battling ALL.
Pre-Race
After arriving in Baltimore, we checked into our hotel and walked over to the Ravens Stadium to pick up our packets and check out the Expo. Our hotel wasn’t too far away and the walk was nice as it was a little cooler than we were used to in Jacksonville during this time of year. We picked up our race packets and our events shirts (keep in mind that the sponsor for this race is Under Armour — the event shirts are absolutely awesome!) and walked through looking at the vendors that were on-site. Typically, I buy a couple of pairs of sunglasses each year at the Disney Marathon from Precision Sports Eye Wear and they had a booth here, so I bought a couple more pairs that I didn’t need.
We headed back to the hotel to drop off our race packets and decided to wander Inner Harbor for a couple of hours before the pasta party (sponsored by Team In Training, which is standard at their events) later that evening.
One of the best things about the Baltimore Running Festival is its location. Baltimore is easy to fly in and out of, and there’s no shortage of things to do in the city, such as hang out in the Inner Harbor or drive down to Washington D.C. for the day.
That evening at the pasta dinner, we found out that the speaker for the evening was none other than Bruce Cleland, who started Team In Training 20 years earlier while raising money for The Leukemia Society, as it was then known. Bruce and 38 other runners trained for the New York City Marathon and raised $322,000 in honor of Cleland’s daughter, Georgia, a leukemia survivor. The Team In Training pasta dinners are typically used to tie the Society’s mission back to the sports event and usually serve as a stark reminder to participants of why they chose to take on this extraordinary challenge in the first place. The keynote speaker is typically accompanied by a survivor who tells his or her story and the event can get rather emotional.
This was a smaller event (only about 300 Team In Training runners, whereas I’m used to events with 2,500 to 5,000 runners) and while I was excited to hear Bruce talk (I’d probably mentioned his name while telling his story to people upward of 500 times in the past couple of years) I admit that I was a little disappointed that it wasn’t a survivor who could link the invoke the emotion that usually helps first-time participants “get” the picture.
And then he introduced his daughter, Georgia…
Being able to listen to the story directly from the woman who, as a young girl, was the inspiration for the whole thing was amazing. Here she was today, healthy and lively. Now 25, she was going to be the official starter of the race and announced that her father would run the race to commemorate having run a marathon almost 20 years to the day earlier (though a different marathon) that started the whole program.
The pasta dinner served as an awards ceremony for the local Maryland chapter, which made the event a little boring for the rest of us, but before too long it was over and we were headed back to our rooms. While it was tempting to go out and have fun, we headed to bed to get rested for the race the following morning.
Race Day
It was nice and cool outside on race day morning, especially being used to Florida weather. The temperature was about 60° and it was nice to know that we didn’t need to worry about layers to shed later in the day, nor about the blistering hot Florida sun. It had been a long time since I’d run a race in which the temperature was tolerable through the entire event.
After getting up and getting dressed, we met down in the lobby to take a few pictures and discuss some last minute training reminders. We discussed when and what to eat and how much, what pace we should be running to meet our goals and not burn out, etc. After a few minutes, we headed across the street to the Start area in front of Camden Yards.
A few minutes into the race, I noticed that I was running next to Bruce Cleland. I stayed reasonably close to him for the first couple of miles, which was kind of cool. The first few miles of the race went north toward Druid Lake and along the Johns Hopkins University campus, then south back into town and to the area of Inner Harbor. This accounted for the first seven miles of the course and was a fairly scenic run with a little bit of small hills. Overall, and coupled with the cool morning air, this was an especially nice time.
After we passed Inner Harbor and headed toward Fort McHenry, I ran into a fellow Team In Training coach, Gloria. We ran together for a bit and I realized that I was actually running a little faster than I had planned and probably than I should be. She was running ahead of the 4:30 pace group and I kept up with her until we got into Fort McHenry where I decided I should probably slow a little if I was to finish the course with no walk breaks.
From here, the course loops back toward Inner Harbor where the half-marathon has started and they merge to the same course. It’s worth noting that somewhere around this point is when I realized that while I really like Gatorade Endurance Formula, every time I drank it at a water stop, I felt very thirsty bythe time I had run another block or so. If you are used to drinking regular Gatorade during a run, be advised that (a) this has quite higher amounts of both sugar and salts, and (b) it will make you thirsty if the race director mixes it too strong. There’s a tradeoff here in that I hate weak Gatorade, so having it mixed strong was great in the sense that I like it to taste like syrup, but then you have to grab a water to drink
after the Gatorade so that you aren’t left thirsty. Just a reminder that some races use drinks other than Gatorade or Powerade and to plan ahead so that you aren’t left struggling to adapt during the race.
Running back through Inner Harbor was nice — there were spectators lining the streets all through the area and they were yelling like crazy. We headed into Fells Point and this was about the time I began to realize that perhaps some of the hills had started to take their toll on me. I was tired and beginning to notice that it was getting warm on the course. While it was only about 73°, there was little shade on most of the course and with a start time of 8:00AM, the sun was starting to get hot by late in the run. It’s also worth mentioning that miles 16 through 20 are uphill on this course (though I thought a lot more of the course was “uphill” than the elevation map suggests) so if you’re going to hit a wall around mile 20 in a marathon it’s likely to be more pronounced on this course. Seriously, who does this to people!?
Parts of the run were through areas of town that would have made me uncomfortable had there not been police officers at each intersection, but given that there were, it was OK. We headed north through town until we got to Clifton Park, which is a beautiful area with large grounds. Unfortunately, you had to run up a fairly long and steep hill to get to it, which made you want to take hostages. Worse, there was a relay exchange point at the top of the hill where new runners in the relay teams would start their leg of the course. This meant you were being passed by completely non-sweaty and refreshed looking runners who would blaze by you in what looked like an effortless run. This didn’t cause me to like them very much. Lucky for them, I was too tired from running up the hill to do them any harm.
From there, we headed to Lake Montebello where we ran around the Lake. There was a live band here and a woman was singing lead vocals — bless her heart, I assume she was tired of singing — it was absolutely horrible. The run around the lake seemed to take forever though it was only a mile long. There was a water stop on the far side of the lake where also had bananas and gels, which was helpful.
One thing that stood out about this race is that I really didn’t feel as though I hit much of a wall. If I did, it certainly wasn’t as pronounced as the one I ran into during the Disney Marathon ten months earlier. It helped that most of the major inclines were now behind us though a lot of the roads were short hills that went up for a block or so, and while they did not look that bad on the elevation map, it was rough psychologically to repeatedly find yourself running up yet another hill.
This is also about the time that my ankles began to hurt. In Florida, it’s damn-near impossible to train for hills on any out-of-state course. We try to do the best we can by running bridges, but that only goes so far. I had driven through Baltimore in the past, though I had only been around Inner Harbor and I assumed it was fairly flat. Once you get out into North or Northeast Baltimore, there are quite a lot of hills and the quality of the roads is horrible. The intersections had what looked like speed bumps in them from where the ground had shifted under the pavement. Much of the course was like this or riddled with potholes. The roads themselves are just hard on the body.
For the most part, the rest of the course was returning to the area of the Stadium where the course ends. The run back through Baltimore was very nice and went through some really pretty neighborhoods. There was a guy at about mile 24 who had gummy bears. I’ve never considered eating gummy bears during a marathon. Trust me, he’s right.
The water stop at mile 23 was out of water and we were told that the next water stop would have some. This was not until mile 25, but they did have both water and Gatorade Endurance at the stop. With only a mile to go, the last leg of the course was pretty easy.
I came through with a time of 5:25:11, nothing impressive. I wasn’t trying to run all that fast, but I did hope to run consistent throughout the course. Unfortunately, I can’t say that I accomplished that.
We spent the next day kind of wandering the Inner Harbor area, mostly due to poor travel planning on the part of the Team In Training person who made our flight arrangements. The “day after” is a rough time, especially for new marathoners. Having to check out of a hotel at 10:00 and not having a flight until that evening was pretty rough. We ended up just going to the airport and sitting around.
Overall, I had a good time in the Baltimore Marathon. Given the conditions of the roads, I’m not sure I would do it again, but I don’t regret doing it. If you’re from Florida and looking for an out-of-state course that offers some elevation but nothing to extreme, this would be a good event for you.
