Thursday, January 28, 2010

Marathon Relay Recap

*Repost from FitMilwaukee.com.




What's that you say? How did the marathon relay go? Well if you managed to avoid our bombardment of tweets and Facebook statuses this weekend I'll recap a bit for you. First of all, the race was an absolute blast. Our two teams ran strong the entire 26.2 miles. Fit Milwaukee Team 1 had a finish time of 3:32:34 and Fit Milwaukee Team 2 came in at 4:04:01- 28th and 49th places respectively out of 68 teams. Not too shabby! Combined together we make two lean, mean, marathon running machines. What was so special about this event though, was that it didn't matter whether you ran a 6 minute mile or a 15 minute mile- the spirit of camaraderie at the Pettit Center was absolutely contagious that afternoon. Sure, there were elite runners there who blew our times away but the great thing about the sport of running is that ANYONE can participate. All levels of runners were there and they were all incredible.

For the race, each team member was responsible for completing just over 6.5 miles. Our strategy was to break this down even further into two 3.25 mile legs. This way it wasn't as daunting to those who had never ran that far yet and you also got a good amount of rest in between the two sets. 3.25 miles worked out to 12 laps around the track- which meant 12 times by the awesome Fit Milwaukee cheering section. The support from the people who came out to cheer us on was amazing and gave each runner an undeniable lift. When the last couple of runners crossed the finish line the feeling in the room was electric. I have no doubt that some of those great individual pace times would not have been achieved without the energy from the crowd.

All in all this was a fantastic race and you can be sure that Fit Milwaukee will be there next year as well- hopefully with even more teams. Much thanks to The Pettit Center and race director Chris Ponteri for putting on such a fantastic event. And also thanks to our official race documenters, Jim Raffel, Scott Feldstein, Brennan Stehling and Kay Collins for the photos and videos. Speaking of which, you can check out the lot of them here:

Race photos from Scott Feldstein
Race photos from Kay Collins


JIm Raffel's video mashup of the indoor marathon relay:





Jim also had some kind words about Fit Milwaukee in general that you can view here.

Once again, congratulations to everyone who participated and let's keep the movement going!




This is my "How many laps do I have left? face.

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