Midnight is for the Crazies

Last night (or should I say very early this morning!) I had the pleasure of racing the Midnight Madness Run put on by the Stroehmann Back on My Feet 20in24 Event. And let me just say that it was SO much fun! I think it is my favorite race so far that I’ve done.

Caitlin and I showing off our fab accessories

A bit of background on the event: The entire race is based in Philadelphia and the course consists of the 8.4 mile loop extending from Lloyd Hall on Boathouse Row (right behind the Art Museum) all the way up to Falls Bridge and back around again. The main part of the event is the Lone Ranger Ultra Marathon. The point of this ultra is to run as many 8.4 mile loops as you can within a 24 hour period. It’s definitely a different kind of ultra. The other major part of the event is the Relay Challenge, where teams of 5 run between 5 and 20 loops (as a team) as quickly as they can within the 24 hours. Depending on how many loops your team decides to run you are either marked a bronze, silver, gold, or platinum team. For example, those running on a platinum team, meaning 20 loops (4 loops per team member) have to keep up a minimum pace of 8:40 min/mile in order to finish in the 24 hour period. The other two smaller events consist of only one 8.4 mile loop each: the Midnight Madness Run, which starts at 12am, and the Pajama Loop, which starts at 6am.

Princess star wand lightsaber battle

As you can imagine it was all kinds of craziness by the time we showed up at 11pm between all the different events going on! My sister Cailtin came from New York a few hours before to run with me. The last time I ran with her was two summers ago in 2009. She had been running for a few years. I was out of shape and overweight. I barely made it a mile before I told her to go ahead as I grudgingly walked home, knowing I wouldn’t be able to run any further with her. I was nervous about running with her again. In my head I thought maybe I’d be just as much of a failure as last time. Silly I know. Once we arrived at Lloyd Hall we decked ourselves out in glow in the dark accessories including awesome princess star wands (which I managed to hold for the whole run by the way)! Caitlin’s friend also drove down from NYC with her husband to run. Unfortunately Mike ended up sitting out because of his foot, so it was just us girls.

Lining up at the start

The race started at 12am sharp and we sped off into the dark with 400-some other runners. We ran the loop counter-clockwise. Meanwhile the Relay and Lone Ranger runners (who had been running 14 hours at that point) ran in the opposite direction. We were instructed before we left to make sure we kept far to the right to let them by and also to yell words of encouragement. Some of them definitely looked like zombies. After 14+ hours I would too! Others seemed really cheerful and even yelled words of encouragement back our way! I was truly amazed at their perseverance and positive attitudes. Overall I think this was the nicest group of people I’ve ever had the pleasure of running with.

The three of us girls had a great time on the course and we chatted the whole time. This was the first race that I didn’t actually race and it was a nice change. Before we headed off I had had a time goal in my head, but I quickly realized I wasn’t in the mindset to really push it and focused more on just enjoying the experience. By midnight I’ve usually been in bed for 2 or 3 hours so needless to say I was quite sleepy! And though I’ve run on that path countless times it felt very different this time. The river was peaceful. The moon was out and the sky was cloudless. The weather was perfect. No need to worry about 90 degrees and scorching sun. Plus there were hundreds of floating glow in the dark lights on the runners illuminating the night! You really can’t beat that kind of view! Before the race Mike had commented that there were a lot more women than men running the midnight event. I replied that its not completely irrational to think that there are more women because women don’t usually run at night and now they can take advantage of this experience. I’m sure some women do run at night normally, but Mike would never let me go without him. There have also been attacks in months and years past on solo female runners in the area, so even without Mike having to tell me I usually rule night time runs as a no-no.

The race ended great, with Caitlin and I sprinting across the finish line together. I had such a great time running with her. I felt like I was slowing her down, but she stuck with me right to the end. Crossing the finish line with her was a moment I will never forget and I hope we can run more races together in the future. Next year I’m hoping to run the Relay Challenge. It looked like so much fun to camp out with your friends and run a race in the process! Overall I give this race an A. The staff and volunteers were wonderful, they put on a very unique experience, and they even had a great swag bag with tech shirts. Not to mention we helped raise over $300,000.00 for Back on My Feet with our registration fees. I will definitely be back!