228. Lessons Learned Flying Pig Weekend

My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Sports Nutritionist, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve dedicated my life to helping runners just like you properly fuel your body and your mind. So you can get leaner, get stronger, run faster, and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.

Hey there, and welcome to episode 228 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners today, Lessons Learned Flying Pig Weekend. So this past weekend was the biggest running event of the year here in Cincinnati, the Flying Pig Marathon weekend.

And I did a lot of racing this weekend. And we’ll just say that things did not all go as planned. But despite dealing with some very challenging situations, the whole weekend was actually a huge success both for the city for moving thousands and thousands of runners and for me personally.

So today here on the podcast, I’m going to share my experiences in dealing with these challenges. And then the lessons that I learned along the way, all during the Flying Pig weekend.

But first, if you’ve been thinking about improving your health, your fitness, your running, losing weight, and you want a ton of guidance and support to help get you there, consider coaching. The fact is coaching works where other methods fail, because it’s not about one particular diet or one particular exercise routine.

It’s about understanding what works for you as an individual, and then learning how to do it on your own. One thing I tell all my coaching clients is that I want you to not meet with me at some point, you have to be able to do this stuff on your own.

My job is to make sure you get there. What good is making these lifestyle changes if they aren’t sustainable for you? This stuff has to be easy, and effortless for you. And it will be if you stick with it. And my job is to make sure you stick with it.

So if you want to hit the easy button on your weight loss and your running goals, let’s work together to get you there. Just go to my website runningleancoaching.com, click on work with me. And I’ll show you exactly how to become the most badass version of yourself yet. Cool.

Okay, so this past weekend was Flying Pig marathon weekend here in Cincinnati. The most exciting and most fun weekend of the year if you’re a runner. I don’t know about what other people think of this weekend, they might think it’s annoying, because there’s so many people here, but I personally think it’s like better than Christmas. So, so fun.

And listen, if you’re ever interested in coming to Cincinnati to do this race, you should. The Flying Pig was recently voted the number one marathon in the United States. According to USA Today’s 10 Best Reader’s Choice Awards. Very, very huge award to be awarded the number one marathon in the US according to readers, not according to some judges or something like that. These are actual people. So come and do the Flying Pig it’s super, super fun.

You don’t have to do the full marathon. There’s a whole weekend of events. I’m gonna talk about all the stuff that I did this weekend. But Cincinnati is just a great, great city for this kind of thing.

Cincinnati has had a very long history of a very active running community. We used to have this running store here, Bob Roncker’s Running Spot. And he started it back in the 80s and how to run in a group associated with that running store. And the running group became very big.

It was over 1500 people in the running group at one point. And we had to meet at different locations. And we had different pace groups. So we kind of broke it up into four different groups. And I’ve been a part of that group since like 2004, I think. And it’s just been an amazing community here in Cincinnati and Bob Roncker really helped to build that running community here in Cincinnati.

They sold the store, Bob sold the store, and the running group sort of splintered off into several other groups. And now Cincinnati has maybe five pretty big running groups that are in different parts of the community here in different parts of town. And they’re all pretty big.

You know, some of them might have four or 500 people some might have more, some might have a few hundred, but a great, great place for running and the Flying Pig marathon has been going on for a long time and just a super fun event.

They do a really, really good job and it’s a lot of fun. And everything started out Friday with the expo and the expo here is a great Expo super fun. They do it at the convention center. tons of vendors, great deals on gear and shoes.

It was really fun to see all my running friends, you know, people that are all excited about running over the weekend, everybody’s picking up their packets and their T-shirts and complaining about the T-shirts, because that’s what we do. Because we’re runners. Nobody’s ever happy. I kid, I kid. But seriously, it’s good to get these T-shirts, right? But it was so exciting.

It kicks off the whole weekend. And I spent a few hours at the expo just soaking it all up and talking with friends and just had such a fun time. And by the way, I did meet a few of the podcast listeners over the weekend.

And if you are somebody that came up to me and said hi, I just want to say thank you for being a listener. And thanks for coming up and saying hi to me, because it makes me feel good that there’s actual people out there that are listening to this stuff.

I’m sitting here in my office, talking into a microphone looking at some notes. And I’m just like, Is anybody out there listening? And it’s really cool when I see an actual person go, Hey, Patrick, I listen to your podcast and I’m like, Oh my gosh, that’s so great.

One person in particular, I’ll just call them Bailey, who I met in the corrals for the 10k. And we spent a little bit of time just hanging out waiting for the start of the race. And you know, he’s from Memphis, he came up here to do the Flying Pig. They’ve been up here before, him and his wife.

And they love Cincinnati and really had a great time. So Bailey, you’re one of those people who came up and said hi to me. And so I really appreciate that. And it was great to meet you. But the expo was super fun.

After the expo, I went down to run the one mile. So the one mile they do just kind of a fun run. I mean, some people do take it seriously. Because I was doing a whole series of events. So my weekend event was the three-way challenge, which is the one mile on Friday night. And then I did the 10k and the 5k on Saturday. And then Sunday was a half marathon.

So I was doing all the events. I was trying to save myself for Sunday, because I wanted to have a really good half marathon on Sunday. And I took it easy on Friday night. So I did the one mile and didn’t race it, I kind of ran comfortably hard because it’s hard not to it’s like I’m just running a mile. And everybody around you is running kind of fast.

So I held like a steady 8:30 pace or something like that for a mile. Felt good and finished, you know, fine, whatever hung out afterwards with some friends and so many people downtown. And they have a big celebration after each race and a big area with booths and food and drinks and all kinds of stuff.

And also the Reds were playing Friday night and Saturday, I think the Cincinnati FC Game, our soccer team, was playing. So there was a ton going on this weekend, it was just so much fun. So after the one mile I hung out with some friends ended up going home and then you know, took a shower and what not.

And I tried to kind of wind down but I was sort of wound up you know because you just run and then it’s you know, nine o’clock at night or whatever. And you’re just wired, you know, still so I stayed up for a little bit.

And the goal, my goal, my intention for Friday night was to get a really good night’s sleep. So I always make this point of getting a really good night’s sleep two days before the race because the night before the race, typically, you don’t get a very good night’s sleep. Right?

So I’ve done this a few times. And I know that so I’m like, okay, Friday, and I’m just gonna go to bed early, get a good night’s sleep. I did not get to bed really early. It was about 10:30. And I finally you know, went to bed and I’m like, It’s fine. I mean, I gotta get up at like, 4:30 tomorrow, but it’s fine. I like to get eight hours of sleep. I did not get eight hours of sleep. I’m gonna tell you that.

So I go to sleep. And I am awakened from a deep, deep sleep by the fire alarms going off in my building here. And basically the fire alarm saying there’s been a fire detected in your area, you need to evacuate the building immediately. And I was like, Oh my god.

So I jump out of bed throw on my shoes. I’m delirious and I’m going down the stairs and when everybody’s falling down the stairs in the building, there’s probably 200 or so units in this building. So a lot of people were all falling out onto the street. I’m completely delirious because I just fallen asleep and I gotta get up in a few hours here you know?

And this is like at 11:30, I’ve only been asleep for like an hour. I was out hard and so we had to stand outside and wait for the fire department to come to clear the building to make sure there wasn’t an actual fire or something, you know, horrible going on. There was no fire. I don’t know why the fire alarms went off. False alarm I guess.

So I finally went back upstairs now I’m wide awake. It’s midnight, and I ended up you know, not getting to sleep till about 12:30 or so knowing that I had to get up in like four hours. So Friday night’s sleep plan, thwarted, completely thwarted, like I’m just telling you that I felt so terrible Saturday morning when I got up.

So I get up, and I’m going to run the 10k and the 5k, I wanted to get a good parking spot, and there’s a parking garage right near the start and finish. And you gotta get there early to make sure you get a good spot, whatever. So I get down there early, got a great spot.

And I’m waiting around to start this 10k. And I am just delirious, I can’t think straight. I was supposed to meet some friends down there, can’t find them. And I’m just like, whatever, I am just going to do my best here today.

And that 10k was rough, kind of a warm weekend, you know, so Sunday was pretty warm. But it was kind of warm in the morning. And so I just decided, you know, this is just to get it done situation, I gotta run a 5k later, I gotta run a half tomorrow. So let’s just enjoy this 10k and not run too hard, which I didn’t, and struggled a little bit about halfway till about halfway through. And then I was fine. And I just was like, that’s fine.

I didn’t run fast. It was like an hour, a little over an hour, 1:04 something like that. So I just finished the 10k got done with that, you know, went to my car, changed my clothes. And I had to change clothes because I was smart, you know, I thought about that. I got dry clothes on because I was soaking wet, dry socks, it was amazing.

So I get ready standing in the crowds for the 5k getting ready to run that thing that the 10k started at 7am. The 5k was supposed to start at 9:00. So 8:30 or so I’m like in the corral, standing around waiting for the 5k to start. Within a few minutes before the start time people just start walking away. And we’re looking around like what’s going on?

Well, apparently, there’s a big storm coming. And so they told everybody to go take shelter, and that they’re going to delay the start of the race by an hour. And we were like, okay, they didn’t announce that. They just had a couple of people walking around. Well, I don’t know how many people are standing in line for that 5k,10,000 or something like that, it’s a huge, huge amount of people.

So they just went around and like kind of told everybody there’s a big PA system. I don’t know why they didn’t use that to tell everybody. Maybe they had to turn it off because there was lightning around. I don’t know, it was very confusing.

So anyway, we went to the parking garage, I went to my car, hung out with some friends. And I’m thinking I’m looking at the radar. And I’m thinking there’s no way this thing is going to start in an hour because the storm is going to be on top of us in an hour, which it was.

And at 10am The Flying Pig sent a text everybody’s saying that the race is going to be delayed until noon. Okay, so from 9am start time till noon is three hours later. I was like, oh my god, what is happening here?

So I went to my car, I watched some TV, I have a Tesla. So it’s got the Hulu in there, you know, Netflix and stuff like that. So I watched a little Hulu, that was nice. But I gotta tell you, I was so tired. So exhausted. So I just kind of leaned my seat back and I took like a 20 minute nap. That was amazing, by the way.

But still, it’s like, you know, now it’s only 11. Like, we still got another hour wait. And I was just like starting to get all stiff, you know, because you run a 10k. And then you sit around for three hours, you’re gonna get all stiff, right? Oh boy.

And the skies did open up. And it was crazy though the amount of rain that was on top of us and the lightning, which you would hear it and see it at the same time. So you know, it’s really, really close. It’s like right on top of you. Very good for the Flying Pig to delay the start of that race because it would have been very, very dangerous out there.

I’m just, I’m really glad they did that. I didn’t like sitting around, but it makes makes a lot of sense. All right. So that storm was moving very slowly. And so their timing of starting it at noon was a good idea. So we ended up starting the 5k at noon. And I was stiff by that point, you know, and that 5k was rough at the beginning.

The first mile was really challenging because there are so many people and I love people that run 5K’s but there’s a lot of people that walk and a lot of people that have strollers and stuff and they don’t line up quite properly.

So a lot of people were lined up with strollers and walking up at the front, which made it very difficult. My first mile was very, very slow. It’s like a 10:30 and I was like oh my god, this is ridiculous. My second two are like 9:45 and 9:00’s what I was shooting for, you know, just hard to get there with that many people, but I wasn’t too worried about I was like you know what? Who cares? Like I’m so exhausted right now and stiff.

So I just tried to have fun with it and it was fun. It really was. It’s a fun little course you go through this huge transit tunnel like under the city. And so it was fine. But after the 5k, or towards the end of the 5k, I started developing this blister on the side of my big toe. And it was really hurting bad like it was killing me by the end of the race. So I finished that.

Finally, I’m done with that. I get home, take a shower, and had to deal with this blister. So I get these calluses on the side of my big toe. If you’re somebody that’s grossed out by this kind of stuff. Don’t listen to this part. But I’m just going to tell you that if you’re a runner, you probably already get this.

So no big deal, I get these calluses on the side of my big toes. And when they get kind of big, I file them down so they don’t do what they did, which is they’ll rub against your shoe. And then it’ll kind of develop a blister underneath the callus. So you get this big callus and then a blister underneath, it is not a good situation. It’s very, very painful.

I’ve dealt with these during Ultras before, never during like a 10k or a 5k or something like that. And I don’t know why it happened. Pretty weird. But anyway, I was just like, well, I got to deal with this. So get home. I tried to file that thing down, which I did and helped it out a little bit.

But it was super painful, like walking was painful. And I was like, I don’t even know how I’m gonna run tomorrow. I wasn’t, you know, I was tired. I knew I was going to be exhausted and all that. But now I’m concerned about this blister. Oh my gosh, whatever.

The rest of the day on Saturday was kind of busy, I had stuff to do. And I had lost three hours of my day because of this rain delay, you know. And I finally didn’t get to bed till like 11 o’clock on Saturday night, right, I gotta get up at four o’clock to run this thing on Sunday.

And I knew I wasn’t gonna get a good night’s sleep on Saturday night, which I didn’t get a really good night’s sleep. So, I wake up at 4am on Sunday, make some coffee. And then you get my butt down there again, I got that same parking spot, which I felt really good about because I got there nice and early.

And so my original goal for the half was somewhere between like a 2:00 a 2:10. That’s kind of what I was shooting for. Maybe though, I did have a back pocket goal. That’s a goal that I don’t tell anyone about. And so my back pocket goal was a sub-two. And I’ve done a lot of sub-two halves. It’s just been a minute.

And I was thinking I might be able to do this. But it all depends on how the weekend went. And it’s pretty safe to say that the weekend did not go according to plan. Things kind of went awry, which is fine. So that 2:10, I was like I don’t know if this is going to be even doable.

So the lack of sleep, the blister or the running I did I made a decision Saturday night. Before going to bed. I was like you know what, tomorrow, I am just going to run the half with my girlfriend Jill.

Jill was an official pacer for the Flying Pig this year. And she’s done this before. She’s like a pro at it. So she was pacing the 2:20 half group. And I was like that’s cool I can do 2:20. When you’re a pacer though you have to hold a sign on the stick that says the pace that you’re going to be running and there are some balloons on there. It’s a little bit heavy, you know. So it’s nice to have a couple of people.

So her and her good friend were there to pace the 2:20 group. And so I was like, you know what, I’m just going to run with you guys today. I’m tired. You know this, my foot is an issue right now I just need to get this thing done. And we’ll just have fun.

2:20 seemed very doable. And Jill and I, we can both run faster than that. So as an official pacer, you have to or you’re supposed to pace a group that’s around 20 minutes slower than your actual pace. So this is perfect for both of us because we can both run about a 2 hour half at this point.

And let me tell you something about Jill. Jill is the Assistant Director of the Air Force marathon so she worked the Flying Pig Expo all day Friday. Then she drove to Indianapolis, which is two hours away.

She drove there Friday night because she was running that Indi mini half marathon in Indianapolis Saturday morning. And that’s the one where you get to run on the Indy 500 track. Super cool event.

So she runs a 2:02 half marathon on Saturday. Finishes that, drives back to Cincinnati another two hours in the car. And then she got up on Sunday morning to pace the pig half group and she had a huge smile on her face the whole time. So she’s kind of a badass.

So 6:30am is the start time for the Flying Pig and at 6:30am it was like 65 degrees and 93% humidity. It was brutal and it was supposed to get up to 88, and I’m telling you at at 93% humidity is is very challenging conditions to be running a marathon or half marathon.

So we start running, 6:30 gun goes off, great. We’re out there, we’re having fun. We’re running. And Jill’s pacing partner was dealing with some cramps or something early on, and we lost her around mile three, like she just kind of started to fall back and she couldn’t keep up. So Jill was really glad that I decided to run with her. So she didn’t have to do this alone, because it’s a lot of pressure to do that by herself.

You know, I helped her carry the little stick and stuff like that a little bit. And you know what, we had so much fun. We were laughing, we were talking to everyone around us, we’re lifting people up.

We are, you know, screaming at people in a good way where there’s lots of first timers out there. And some people were freaking out a little bit because it was hot, and it was humid. And people were, you know, getting a little bit concerned, which you know, you should be.

There was a couple of water stations that ran out of water early on. So people were standing in line waiting for a cup of water, because they were they were filling them as fast as they could, but they just couldn’t keep up with the demands.

There’s so many people that needed water early. But I have to say that, despite all that we were out there encouraging people. And you know, Jill and I have both done this race many times. So we were both just having so much fun. And really, this is the most fun I’ve ever had during a race.

I cannot tell you the last time I had this much fun running a race, especially the Flying Pig. It’s a tough race. It’s not easy. The first eight miles are kind of hilly and but once you get up there, that’s a lot of downhill finish, which is nice. And Jill’s pacing was spot on. She is a pro by the way. We finished it at 19:54, within six seconds. Are you kidding me? It was amazing.

And she was very appreciative that I hung with her for the duration since her partner wasn’t able to keep up. So everything worked out beautifully there. And once we finished, we crossed the finish line. And we’re in the post race celebration area, the sun came out. It was kind of cloudy in the morning, which was good, it helped keep the heat down, but the sun came out. And it got really hot really fast, like around 80 degrees.

So for the people that were running the full marathon, they were only about halfway done. You know, and most of our friends who did the full really struggled with the last half of that race. We waited around for a lot of people at the end.

And people were kind of miserable, but everybody was in good spirits. They were like, you know what? We ran. We did our best the conditions out there. So it was really hard. But we did our best and that’s all you can do in these situations. Right?

Okay, so that was the half marathon day and then post race we met up with some friends we talked about our races we went out and got some pizza and ice cream. Yes, I made a very intentional decision a couple of weeks before the event to eat some pizza and ice cream after this weekend’s running because I was like I do this like twice a year why not celebrate this event and we’ll go to my favorite pizza place here in Cincinnati, Dewey’s love it, so good.

And then we’re gonna get some Jenni’s ice cream. Jenni’s is a local ice cream vendor around here. Amazing, crazy flavors. So race day, I got some pizza. Normally, I eat a lot of pizza, I couldn’t really eat much. And just was like, I had a few pieces and I was done.

And then the same thing with the ice cream. Normally I get a pint of ice cream. I eat the pint of ice cream, the whole thing. And I was like, I had like half of it and I was fine. I didn’t really need any more. You know, my, my food binging has really just, I don’t really do that anymore.

Because I eat some pizza or eat some ice cream and it’s okay, you know, it feels pretty good. And it’s tasty. But I’m like, you know, I’m done. I don’t need a whole lot of that. So that was good. I felt good about that. I felt in integrity with myself by not going completely nuts on pizza and ice cream. Because that used to be my jam.

Okay, so a few lessons learned. Number one, you’ve got to plan ahead, but you’ve got to go with the flow. You plan ahead and then you got to go with the flow. I trained hard to season I was ready for a pretty decent race on Sunday. But I really had to listen to my body and go with the flow.

I could have really pushed it on Saturday and really pushed it on Sunday, but I think I’ve made the right decisions you know, considering blister and by the way, the blister did not hurt me during the half marathon at all. Like it didn’t bother me at all. 100% fine.

It did hurt for a couple days afterwards. But now it’s almost completely healed, which is good. But it didn’t bother me. I was like wow, that’s amazing. But I listened to my body, I was super exhausted, I had the blister, whatever. But I did my best.

The important thing is that I feel good about my decisions, I feel good about the way I raced these different races, considering what was going on the exhaustion, and the lack of sleep, and the delirium and all these other things, right. So I feel good about my decisions, I’m in integrity with myself with my decisions, especially on Sunday.

The next lesson I learned is that, you know, you shouldn’t put timelines on your goals. And this may sound a little counterintuitive, because if people say, Oh, you need a goal, it has to be you have to have a time to complete this goal.

But when you put a timeline on your goal, especially like running goal, and you don’t hit it on that date, it can be incredibly frustrating, disappointing, you know, instead, set a goal, do the work you need to do each day to move toward that goal. And then eventually, you will get there.

I talk to my weight loss coaching clients about this all the time. Like don’t put a timeline on your weight loss goal. Instead, focus on doing the work each day to get there, and you will eventually get there. Is it going to take three months or six months or a year, who cares? It doesn’t matter.

What’s important is like you’re changing in the process, you’re becoming a different person in the process. And eventually you will get there if you stay focused. So I’ve got a goal of doing this sub-two half again, like I said, I’ve done it before, but it’s been a minute, but I’m gonna try again this fall, and I’m not disappointed about my weekend.

I’m happy that I did what I did this weekend. I’m not disappointed. I didn’t hit that goal on this particular day. You know, this was not the weekend to go for that goal. Clearly, right? The Universe sent me lots of signs, telling me this is not the weekend for that.

And the biggest lesson I learned is that, you know, running is fun. And running can be so much fun. We had so much fun running this hometown marathon, half-marathon, 5k, 10k, one mile, whatever. And especially on Sunday, it just felt light and easy. You know, we didn’t take ourselves too seriously.

The next race that you do, I want to encourage you to focus on having fun. Do what you need to do to make it fun. Leave the headphones at home, talk to people, listen to people, get encouraged by the crowd, encourage other people, crack some jokes. Have fun out there, talk to people from out of town.

Ask people where they’re from. Just enjoy it. You know, the training is the hard part. We train from January till May. And we run in all kinds of terrible weather. It’s months of hard work. The race is the celebration, the race is the victory lap. So enjoy it. Have fun with it. But I really have this new love of running. And that half marathon on Sunday really got me there. It was amazing. Super, super fun. That’s my favorite lesson this weekend, is that running can be amazingly fun.

Okay, so that’s my recap of the weekend. Those are lessons I learned. Come to Cincinnati do the Flying Pig next year. It’s going to be amazing. It always is. It’s a super fun weekend. And if you do come out here, look for me and say hi. Okay, that’s all I got for you today. Love you all, keep on Running Lean, and I’ll talk to you soon.