1) When you are you going run a marathon? When pigs fly! (Well, they're flying in Cincinnati)
2) Pigs!
It's a race that seems to have a good sense of humor when it comes to theme, shirts, people dressing up in various pig paraphernalia and even the corrals got pigified: they were the pig pens. It was piggy heaven!
I really enjoyed it and the fact that the volunteer shirts had secret service (given recent the recent secret service scandal) just made it even funnier in my mind. But the volunteer shirts were nice - they had different ones (yes, all with pigs on it) for the medical teams and the recycling teams.
The expo was huge. The way it was set up for good for the exhibitors and bad for people who wanted to just get their stuff and go. Typically you get your bib, chip and shirt and then are let loose in the exp. At Flying Pig, I got my bib (which contained the timing chip) at one end hall and the shirt at the other end. I had to snake my way through all the vendors. I wouldn't have minded if I could have found a pair of pig ears to wear the next day for the race, but I didn't. Instead it was just crowded. And there's only so much crowds I can take.
Anyway, I finally made it to the other end, got my shirt, got a poster (the one to the left) and, apparently, they gave away some sort of bag, but I never found that station, not that I needed another bag.
The race started early: 6:30 a.m. It turned out to be a good thing since it was a sunny and warm day. (I would go so far as say hot for a race.) It was in the low 60s when we started and I think high 60s, but the time I ended. The organizers knew the weather was going to be warm and had water stations pretty much every mile. Kudos to that and to all the volunteers that worked those stations.
The course started in the downtown area, went over the bridge to Kentucky, and then went over another bridge back into Ohio. In fact in the first 3 miles there 3 bridges/overpasses. This should have been a warning bell. But did I look at the elevation map for this race? Nope. Stupid, Lynn. Anyway, then we ran through downtown. There wasn't a lot of shade cover on this course, in fact, I felt like I was in the sun a lot. It was a hilly course. Actually hill implies down as well as up. This felt pretty much uphill until about mile 9.5. After the race I saw the hashtag #Ihatehills associated with #Flyingpig and thought it was pretty apt. I wouldn't have minded if there was something to see, but there wasn't during the really uphill parts. It was large roads/businesses. We did hit a beautiful park, with plenty of trees, great views of the river (I think it was the Ohio River). We also ran through a couple of historic looking neighborhoods. But for those hills, not really worth it, too me.
The end of the race also took you to downtown, and there was on part where we had to run back on the same road. Not a real fan of that. It always feels like, 'Well, we need to tack on a bit more to make 13.1...' but at least I knew it was almost over. The finish was kind of small, actually, but I could still see the sign from a few hundred feet away and it still feels good to see 'FINISH.' They had water and a variety of food to eat post-race: bananas, oranges, a variety of chips, bagel halfs, donuts (which were glazed an fairly melted sitting in the sun), gogurts (some frozen yogurt thing), hohos. I got my cute pig medal, rested by the water for a bit (the end was next to the river) and then headed back to the hotel. There were buses back to the hotel, but I couldn't find it, so I just walked. It was only about 15 minutes away.
Garmin had me finishing at 2:25:24. The chip had me at 2:25:27. Considering all the uphill, I'll take it.
Pros: Great theme, awesome volunteers, plenty of water, nice swag, good post race food that you didn't have to travel a mile for.
Cons: Lots of uphills, they put some port-a-potties in the pig pen, aka corral area, which made it difficult to get to the start. There were bottle necks trying to get around the people still on line for the port-a-potties after the gun went off, and not the prettiest course.
I did wish I was a flying pig, when it came to getting back home. It may have been sunny, warm and nice in Cincinnati, but the same couldn't be said for Chicago.
