State #38: Missouri

I-35 Challenge

State #38 : Missouri : Kansas City Marathon, Kansas City, Missouri

 October 19, 2018

Bib # 6920

Official Time: 2:09:10

Pace: 9:52

Overall Place: 1778

Gender Place: 703/2218

Division Place: 99/282

7,901 people participated in the Full, half, 10k, and 5k. 4,000 for the half- marathon

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PRE- RACE

Flight

For this race weekend I actually flew out on my mother’s birthday ( October 18th).  I flew Delta, stand- by and non-stop to Kansas City, Missouri at 6:15a.m. Who flies to Kansas City, Missouri from Boston at 6:15 a.m.? Well, not too many people because I ended up in first class with the row to myself. I had a  nice breakfast and a great flight attendant that was assigned to first class. Thanks mom for your birthday gift.

The two flight attendance that worked the flight were both African-American woman that were based out of New York. Overall it was a great ride. I wish I had ordered a mimosa but I would be drinking later.

First Stop

As soon as I landed and got the rental car, I drove to the Negro Baseball Museum and the Jazz Museum. To my surprise both are connected to each other. $15 admission fee for both museums.  The Negro Leagues Baseball Museum was super cool. The story of the creation of the Negro league is the story of America and race relations. The history trail of the negro league showed me the connection with Boston, CIncinnnati, America, and the global world. I stayed for a couple of hours learning about baseball history. Then I walked over to the American Jazz Museum and learned about Jazz in Kansas City.

I found out that the racing route will run through this section of town. The historic jazz distinct.

Next Stop

I wanted to explore KC. That’s how people referred to the city.. KC. Everything was KC. I went by the Missouri River ( good to see it again), and found the arts district , warehouse district, and city market. The city looked revised and new. I didn’t realize how large the expands.

Bib-Pickup

-Pickup was at Union Station. This was a beautiful and big place. Trains still come through this place. It has been a while since I’ve been to a large health expo/bib pick-up. I might have walked in a circle several times checking out all the vendors because there was so much going on.  I felt extra special because I was apart of the I-35 challenge group. Two states, two halfs, two days, three medals. Side note: I lost my glasses there. :(

Before the Race

On Friday, I did some more exploring of KC. I found the “old Italian” side of the city. It seemed very neighborhood-ish and I didn’t feel comfortable. Actually it was the Italian/ Southeast Asian side of town. Then I drove to the City Market to explore and try to find food.  As I was walking I saw two black women walking ahead of me. One had on a BGR jacket.

Me being me, I ran after them. I said “ are you ladies here to run the half marathon tomorrow”. They said yes and they were exploring around since they just came in that day from out of town( Florida and Georgia). We started talking about running and exploring this city. The ladies kindly asked me to dinner with them since they were looking for an Italian restaurant to carb load.

We had a nice and busy Italian restaurant. I’m glad I didn’t stay in the Italian neighborhood otherwise I would have never met these ladies and heard their stories. We talked and I found out why they ran, how they started, and their journey. Plus they ladies were running Iowa on Sunday and they are doing 50 states and 50 half’s too.

Morning of Race

It was going to be a warm KC run. That morning you could smell the BBQ in the air. It was a good running day. As I’m taking my pre-morning race picture I met a woman who had knee replacement surgery  and she now runs.  Proudly I met a couple of men from Black Men Run. They gave me love because of the BGR headband I had on.

Race Highlights:

1.       This was my first urban race in a long time. We literally ran the streets of KC. There were over 7,000 of us running the streets. Just to see the stream and stream of runners was exciting. I was surrounded by runners on the entire race course.

2.       The entire race course was in the core of the city. It was all urban. I had a more in-depth tour of the city via my feet! Many of the places I visited such as the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Veteran’s memorial, parks we ran by.

3.   One guy had a Trump shirt on and he carried two flags, a trump flag and USA flag. I was running next to an African-American man and we both just looked at each other when this man passed

4.       When we ran into the jazz district/ black district the street needed to be repaved. The other streets of the city we ran in didn’t need to be repaved- just a side note

5.       This race was mad hilly. It was flat then uphill, flat then uphill, flat then uphill and the course was curvy

6.       The crowd and participation was beyond amazing. People were at every mile and they came to cheer and support

7.       The last mile of 11 was uphill and to get to mile 12 was all downhill

8.       I had to be mindful to not go fast and chill because I had to do this again in 20 hours. I made sure to pace myself and breathe.

9.   I had to restrain myself because I wanted to let go and run down hill. Pulling myself back when gravity is pulling me forward is not so easy.

10. When I finished a couple of the men from Black Men Run high-five me while they were waiting for one of their members to finish. It was nice to recap about the course with the men. I told them I was running in IOWA tomorrow so I couldn’t stay long.

11. The evil of bad thing was smelling the BBQ and wanting some but not getting any. People recommended places to go for the best BBQ but I didn’t have a chance to go to these places. Plus the line for our free BBQ was race was way too long. I saw the meat. :( sigh