Brian Johnson (MM8807, DA707, HF7287)
Half Marathon 15 (I don’t do them often)
State 6
Capital City Half Marathon, Columbus Ohio
First time trying to Pace a Half Marathon.
The Cap City Half Marathon can be a lot of fun. The weather can also be hit or miss. It has had years where it was hot, other years it was cold, and one year it got black flagged due to lightning.
Today was just off and on rain.
I got a chance to be a pacer with the Fleet Feet Pace crew. After the amount of races that I had done over the last few weeks, to say I was nervous would be an understatement.
I helped pace the 13:45 Minute Mile, (3 hour finish). Keep this in mind for a little later.
The race itself was a lot of fun. Its never bad being in a race environment running with 10000 of your closest friends.
Due to the wave starts, it took just about 20 minutes for our corral to get over the start line and get started.
As a pace team (there were 6 of us for our group) we were doing really well.
We were hitting all of our intervals in the allotted time.
We ran in off and on rain all day.
We ran all the way down high street, through the brewery district, and back up to the other side of downtown.
Somewhere around mile 5 the quarter marathon folks split off and the half marathoners were all by themselves.
We ran up Neil avenue, wound a bit through the Ohio State campus, and back toward downtown. It was relatively quiet, fun, and boring all at the same time.
The crowd support was good. I even saw some friends along the way
The interesting part of my day came around mile 11.5.
Our pace group was coming back toward downtown when we saw someone who had gone down on the right. He looked in very obvious pain.
As we got closer, I remember say, “That’s not good. That’s not good at all.” I stepped over to see if would help. I had the other pacers go on. I was fully prepared to be done for the day to help him.
There was one other person who came over to help, but she didn’t have her cell phone with her.
I ended up having to call 911. I got connected to the EMS dispatch, but being on a race course, 1/4 mile from a corner, under an overpass (vine street before Neil) I couldn’t give great directions.
Eventually police and medics all rolled up to help the gentleman who went down. They offered to dispatch an ambulance to evaluate him. He said No. He was just cramping really badly and wanted to walk it off.
Since they had it under control, I restarted my race day.
I had been with him for at least 6-7 minutes. My only goal now was to finish.
I was hoping to catch up with the pace group, but I wasn’t banking on it.
I ran. And Ran. And Ran. I started passing quite a few people again. I ran into a few friends along the way (thanks November Project Scioto Mile ). I eventually got back up onto High Street and made it to the end and crossed the finish line.
With having waited for 7 minutes, I was able to run enough and get caught up enough that I finished at 3:04. I was only 9 seconds per mile off of what the goal time was as a pacer.
I thought I did pretty good.
One of the medics who was on scene with the man that I helped happened to see me at the finish line. She thanked me for helping him.
The after party for this race is stellar. Pizza, Beer, Wine, and Tequila and lots of music.
Not a bad day.
Photo and Post Credit Brian Johnson