Glass City Marathon 2025 race recap

Race recap of the Glass City Marathon 2025!  To be brief, this race was wonderful, I met my personal goal, my finish time hit my goal, the weather was perfect and we finished with smiles on our faces!  If you’d like to get into the nitty gritty and hear my tales of pacing, my niece, super shoes, and Fireball, read on!!   This race was my 19th full marathon. Also my 13th year running an event at the Glass City races and the 6th time running the full marathon here! It was not my fastest race, but a bit of a redemption race for me and a fun time.

A bit of back story for this race… our niece (Andrea, 36 yrs old) started running in November (never a runner before that) and by January she was running farther than most half marathon training plans were written for her long runs.  Kind of joking I suggested that she should just run the full because she was far ahead of a half training plan.  And guess what? Within an hour she had changed from Glass City Half Marathon to the full!  She’s a busy mom and didn’t have the schedule for a structured plan, but she was getting a decent amount of miles in each week and was able to get to almost 18 miles for her long run.  At that point she was struggling with some hip pain which she thought was bursitis.  She got some steroid pills from her Dr to help with that, but still had a few questionable weeks before race day.  

A few days before the marathon we were chatting about race goals and she said she had similar plans to mine, which was finish between 4:15-4:30.  For my race goals, I REALLY wanted to finish a race feeling good.  Due to injury I ran 4:36 in Chicago 2023 (which I wasn’t happy about at the time) and then I ran a PW of 4:46 in Berlin, Sept 2024. Both of those races involved me hitting the wall early and run/walking the last half.  Ugh. So for this training cycle I purposely ran my long runs slower and had a conservative goal, instead of thinking I could possibly run something close to 4:00 again, just because I was feeling good.  With all of this, my niece said she would love to run the race with Alan and I.  She said “I’ll try to keep up with you”.  Knowing that she ran her long runs at a pace closer to 9 min miles, I did find this comment a bit funny, but she was not experienced in the longer distances, so who knows how she would fare out there!

Race day!!  I woke up at 4:30am and we were out the door at 5:20am.  We found a whole open row of parking at 5:45am on campus and had a short walk to the start line.  It was 41 degrees at our house, so last minute I decided to “upgrade” to wearing a short sleeve shirt under my tank top and my warmer shorts.  When we got to the parking lot it really didn’t feel as cold, so I took the short sleeve shirt off.  I’m so glad I did!!

I ran into a few bank coworkers before race and I wished them well.  They were all doing the marathon relay.

Miles 1-9: 9:24, 9:21, 9:17, 9:23, 9:35, 9:29, 9:28, 9:23

Plan – Don’t go faster than 9:30 for the first 9 miles.  I let my husband do the pacing because my watch was set to show “Remaining miles”, “Anticipated finish time”, and “Overall pace”.  So I couldn’t see what our current pace was!  This actually worked in my favor later in the race.  Alan runs faster than me, so when he got talking to Andrea they would run faster.  He did tell us to slow down many times during the first 4 miles.

Miles 10-15: 9:24, 9:25, 9:27, 9:30, 9:26

The half marathoners had turned off at this point and we were on our own.  The 9:30 pace was still feeling good, but we didn’t quite meet the plan of running faster here.  No worries, our overall average pace was still 9:25 and anticipated finish time was around 4:10. In fact, the 4:10 pace group was right in front of us!  We’ve got this!  Here’s an indicator that this race was easy for Andrea – she Facetimed her Mom during the race and also took pictures every mile.

As we ran through a neighborhood there was a Fireball shot station which both Alan AND Andrea stopped at.  Oh no, not me.  Andrea said this was the easiest half marathon she has ever run (well, technically she hasn’t run an official half marathon race yet, but you know!).  Right after the Fireball there was someone handing out weed gummies!  This neighborhood sure knows how to party!  My niece grabbed the pack of gummies and stuck them in her pocket for later 😉

Miles 16-19: 9:23, 9:25, 9:19

I thought I was slowing at this point, but maybe Alan and Andrea were just getting faster?  I was always a few steps behind them and as soon as I tried to run faster and meet up with them, it seemed they just kept staying the same distance away!  My Garmin tells another story, so I’m happy to see these speedier paces at this point of the race!

Miles 20: 9:38

First mile over 9:30.  Feeling a bit fatigued in the legs now, but not too bad.  Still trailing behind Alan and Andrea (who seem to be oblivious that I’m behind them instead of next to them.  hahaha!!!)

Mile 21: 9:43

By the time we got to mile 21 it was very apparent to me that I was just slowing my niece down.  I told her to leave us, that she needed to go catch up to the 4:10 pace group.  And off she went!  My goal at this point was to just keep moving.  I still didn’t see what my mile pace was but I knew I was slowing.  

Miles 22-24: 10:09, 10:14, 10:14

Our overall pace dropped from the 9:25 it had been all race to 9:28 at this point.  No worries, the 4:15 pace group said their pace was 9:45 and I hadn’t seen them yet.  But wait, what’s that I hear behind me?? It was the 4:15 pacers!  I’m pretty sure they were running a bit fast because they did end up passing us, but we were still on target for a 4:13 finish.

Mile 25: 10:25, another Fireball station!

This is a big cheering location and we saw a lot of friends.  We also had a friend passing out small Fireball bottles!  Alan drank his, but I put mine in my pocket.  

Mile 26: 10:43

Alrighty legs, let’s do this!  Still not knowing my pace but Alan did give me calculations on our finish.  We would make our 4:15 goal but it would be close.  We passed by the mile 26 “Rally Row” where I saw coworkers.  The finish line was in sight!

Mile .5 to finish: 10:20

Doing my best to put on a smile despite the pain and finish strong I gave it all I had to cruise in to the finish chute.  Official time:  4:15:17  WOOHOOOOOOOO!!! The temperature was 52 when we finished.

With a big happy smile I chugged my Fireball in celebration.  Yahoo! It was so fun to see our daughter and her boyfriend as we ran through the Glass Bowl stadium. My Garmin had 26.5 miles for this race, so my watch showed an overall pace of 9:38 vs the race results which was 9:45.

Our Medal Monday was spent at our tradition lunch spot, Swig. We celebrated a great race!

What about the super shoes that I mentioned earlier? For this race I wore a pair of Saucony Endorphin Elites. Alan has a pair and loves them. I do too now! My legs felt so good after the race. In fact, that afternoon I met up with a friend and walked for an hour after the race! I still had sore quads on Monday as expected, but the good feeling on Sunday was pretty impressive!

I’m so glad I didn’t drop down to the half at this race, which I had pondered at one point. Race day weather was perfect and I really would have missed on on this fun opportunity to run with both Alan and Andrea!