Hatfield & McCoy Reunion Festival Marathon:

“No Feudin’, Just Runnin’ ”

Well, it appears I am getting serious about running a marathon in all 50 states.  Shortly after finishing the Delaware Marathon with the Burlington Marathon coming up, I realized that there was a four-week period between Burlington and the marathon in Lubec, Maine.  I felt I was recovering well enough in two weeks to be able to fit another one into the schedule.  Looking around, I found the Hatfield-McCoy Marathon, which, according to the website, could be used for either Kentucky or West Virginia.  I already had done the Freedom Run Marathon for West Virginia, so I would use this one for Kentucky. (Sidenote:  Having now run a marathon, which counted for West Virginia and another which could have been used for it, it’s interesting to note that between the two marathons, only about five miles are actually in West Virginia.)

In looking at the website, it became obvious that the area of Williamson, WV- South Williamson, KY did not have much in the way of accommodations.  The links to the recommended places showed they were all full – up to 20 miles away.  But that gave me the idea that since I could pick up my number the morning of the race that I would stay even farther away.  That would allow me to drive less the day before and less the day after to get back home.

It wasn’t until after I safely finished the Burlington Marathon that I committed to both the marathon and to a room.  I found a place 54 miles this side of Williamson, outside of Danville, WV, named the Coal River Inn for only $50 a night. It might be a dump, but at that point I thought I was going on my own, so I didn’t care.

However, in the week before the event, Carolyn decided that she didn’t think I should travel all that way by myself and decided to take a day off from work to come along.  At that point she was OK with the crummy motel.

I had been monitoring the weather for the race.  Generally the forecast never changed much – humid with temperature rising from a low of 59 to possibly 80.  However, I had not been monitoring the weather for driving from Delaware to West Virginia.  It turns out that Friday was the day the mid-Atlantic area got pounded with rain from Tropical Storm Andrea.  We drove all the way through Maryland in rain.  Once we hit West Virginia, the rain became intermittent and finally cleared about 30 miles from our motel destination.  Leaving at nine, we rolled in at 4:30 pm.

The Coal River Inn is on a little side road off of Rte 119, which is the Robert Byrd Freeway.  Sure enough the Coal River was right in back of the motel.  It was running muddy from recent rain.  I had seen on a satellite map that an open coal pit wasn’t far away on the other side of the river.  It turns out that “coal” was one of the dominant themes of the weekend as mining is the main source of work in the region.

After checking in, our first disappointment was discovering that I could not log-in with my Ipad to their WiFI.  We also asked about places to eat.  They mentioned a nice restaurant in a house about twenty miles away.  We weren’t interested in that much more driving.

So we made our way into Danville, just a mile or two down the road.  I had noticed the usual fast food places online, but maybe we could find something else.  Danville is a typical small West Virginia town, built on the fairly flat areas near a river with a railroad running through it.  More “flatness” was carved out by blasting the sides of steep hills away.  Cruising the main street, we right away spotted a Mexican style restaurant with several of the employees appearing to be of that ethnicity – in West Virginia no less!  We were lucky to find this place and ordered actual dinners.  We also split a pitcher of Dos Equis.

The food and the beer did the trick.  We had to retire early and besides there was the second disappointment of a very limited selection on cable TV. But before I went to sleep, I laid out my running gear for the morning.  It was then that I discovered what item I had forgotten this time.  No, it wasn’t my watch or my shoes (previous things I had forgotten).  This time it was the correct belt for my gel flasks. I had brought my water bottle belt instead.  But Carolyn suggested I use the bottle she brought.  The contents of three of the flasks fit in the bottle.  I could put the fourth one in a pocket of my shorts and tie the waist string tight so the shorts wouldn’t sag from the weight.  Problem solved – in fact I may use a larger bottle in the future because I found getting the gel out of the water bottle easier than having to move the flasks around on my belt during a race.

I wanted to be up by 4 A.M. to eat some bananas and granola bars for breakfast, following my habit of getting the food into my stomach three hours before the race. 

I made mistake of letting Carolyn drive, something she does the majority of the time when we are together.  But on this morning she had not had any of the coffee in the room because there was only sweetener and creamer for one cup, which I had.  So she was driving on curvy mountainous roads with a good deal of fog at the summits.  She was not comfortable with having to keep switching the high beams on and off and became quite irritated.  I would have probably been a bit more sanguine about dealing with the fog.

Eventually, after riding past coal mining operations and driving along past rolling trains full of coal, we got to Williamson, WV.  It is difficult to tell Kentucky from West Virginia there because we actually drove across the Tug River into Kentucky and then crossed a bridge back into the center of town in West Virginia.  That is the apparent normal way things work there.  Most of the shopping and eateries were in Kentucky, but the main street was in West Virginia.  We found the parking lot and the shuttle bus pulled right up.

Carolyn did not want to go to the start, but rather take a nap in the car.  Later, she told me that trains kept rolling right past the parking lot taking coal in both directions.  This was 6 A.M. on Saturday morning.  The mining just kept on going.

The shuttle took us to a Food Lion parking lot, where the race started.  Both marathoners and half-marathoners would be starting together.  In attempting to pick up my number and find out where I would be dropping my bag, I discovered some to the minor disorganization of this event, which is not run by a professional group.  The races are put on by people, who are either related to or friends of, the Hatfields and the McCoys.  The director is a David Hatfield. The events (full, half and 5K) are all prelude to a street festival, which would occur on the main street of Williamson that morning.  With the races being low-key affairs, the course is not certified. I soon discovered that the uneven mile splits were a good indication of that.

While we wore bibs with chips, there was no mat at the starting line.  The chip was strictly for the end.  I crossed the start 17 seconds after the gun sounded.  We ran out of the parking lot and ran two miles up the four-lane highway.  We were told to stay on the right side of the road throughout the race.  Hearing that distressed me because of my slightly shorter right leg, but it didn’t actually bother me that much during this event.

After two miles, we crossed over the highway and ran onto a less used road.  The rest of the run was mostly on back roads, usually by streams, including the Tug River, but the roads were open to local traffic.  So we really did have to stay to one side.  From mile two to mile seven we went uphill.  At first it was gradual, then it got steeper.  It culminated in a 500-foot climb up Blackberry Mountain.  I had been having a conversation with a fellow runner until we hit the steeper part.  He began to walk.  I started to racewalk up the hill.  I think this was the best strategy for me.  It was much faster than regular walking and probably as fast as I could have gone trying to run.  Aerobically I was at my limit doing this.  I’m glad that we went up the side with an 8% grade because the 600-foot drop on the other side was a 10% grade.  There too I continued to racewalk down the hill, attempting to minimize the pounding of my knees and quads.  I watched several people go streaming by me on the way down.  I was thinking that they would pay for such foolishness. I was pretty happy that the three miles in the climb and descent were right around 11-minute per mile pace.  They turned out to be my slowest miles of the race, as I did not slow a lot toward the end.

After the major hill, the rest of the course was steeply rolling.  So it felt like more hill work than the map indicated (although the disclaimer said there was more elevation change than could be shown).  The weather had started at 59 degrees.  There was fog above us on the peaks.  Very early my shirt was soaked and I rolled up the short sleeves onto my shoulders for a tad more cooling.  But until the sun came out somewhere after I had done 20 miles, I didn’t feel overly warm.  I stayed diligent about taking drinks at every fluid station and they had one at most every mile.

The course is devised to take the runners past some of the historic areas associated with the feud, including a park where re-enactments occur and other buildings.  At several of the fluid stations, guys with long beards and overalls were handing out water.  I have no idea which beards were real and which were fake (if any).  Somewhere in the latter miles we went past a building where a number of people were hanging out and clapping.  About 50 yards later, there was what sounded like a loud gunshot.  It was startling and I don’t know if that was supposed to occur. I may have heard someone asking, “Why did you do that?”

One section of the course had a couple miles on a dirt road.  Several people had warned that it was muddy from rain, but I found it to be fairly hard packed with gravel in the soil and not squishy.  So it was fine.  After that section, we ran about a mile on the cart path of a golf course, which had numerous up and down sections.  That was quite annoying. 

I must mention that I saw a few of the folks later who had sped past me down the mountain.  One was a young man of Asian ancestry.  He was already slowing by mile 10.  In the thirteenth mile, I started to close on a guy who I had seen running down the incline and who appeared as if he could be in my age group.  I had thought that I might see him later, but I was surprised it was that early.  As we ran across the Tug River for a brief loop in Matewan, we hit thirteen miles.  He struggled toward the half-marathon finish.  I realized the run downhill had made it difficult for him to get even that far without severely slowing toward the end of his race and I was doubly glad I had stuck to racewalking. 

In fact my slowest miles of the entire run were those involving Blackberry Mountain.  But that brings me to another minor complaint.  The mile markings were very approximate.  I would find myself clocking a couple of ten-minute miles and then clicking off something in the eight-to-nine-minute range.  Overall, I think the course was a full marathon distance, but each mile might have been slightly longer or shorter.

During the last few miles the sun came out and it got warmer.  Still it didn’t feel like some of the recent runs I’ve done in the early summer-like days at home.   But many of the runners were feeling it and slowing down or walking.  Maybe it had something to do with my diligent hydration or the fact that I kept consuming fuel.  I had to have passed 50 people over the last 10K and was passed by only one short woman, who found more strength than I had to power over the rolling terrain.  I was very pleased to see that I passed several guys who could have been in my age group. (In fact two of them were in my age group, so passing them allowed me to get third place.)

In the last half mile, I crossed over the bridge into Williamson.  Carolyn was at the corner to snap a picture.  Then it was several hundred yards down the main drag to the finish.  Done in 4:20:56 (4:20:39 by my watch).  I got a medal, a cold, wet small towel with the feuding Patriarchs stenciled on it for my neck, and a Mason jar with a similar logo.  Later I stood in a long line to see if I won an award.  I got third in my age group and received a metal disk, which had adhesive so it could be applied to the top of the jar, which would then become my award. This line is the source of another minor complaint for it was too slow, had all the awardees from the various races in the same line and had a number of other people who were just checking their time and weren’t in the running for an award.

But before standing in that line and having a talk with a guy who had come out from York, PA, I met a guy named Richard Decample, who was my age and whose name I had seen before – for instance, at the Delaware Marathon.  He has run close to 300 marathons, has done all the states four times and is generally a somewhat faster runner than me.  He ran a 3:57 at the Monster Mash Marathon near Dover, DE last October.  But the heat got to him on this day.  I had passed him and he finished in 4:33.

Overall I was 109 out of 440 who finished, 79^th male out of 230, 3^rd out of 16 in my age group.  The average time was over five hours.  Only ten people ran a Boston Qualifying time on the course (it’s not certified anyway).  So overall I feel pretty good about this effort.

My final minor complaint was the advertised after party “pig roast”.  It was no such thing.  A local bar/restaurant was serving up hot dogs or pulled pork sandwiches.  I tried the sandwich, but discarded it.  We went into the bar to get a beer, but it allowed smoking, which we smelled. We left. 

So it was back to the car and a start to the drive back to the motel. I had seen a shopping area early that morning about halfway between the motel and Williamson.  We found a country-themed restaurant and had some burgers and beer.  That hit the spot.

Back at the motel, I got cleaned up and tried to get something on my Ipad again by trying the other WiFi at the second motel building.  That network wouldn’t let me log in either.  Carolyn got a short nap and then we headed out to Danville.  We did cruise the main drag looking for another place to eat, but settled on the Mexican place again.  Well, I had stayed thirsty for more Dos Equis anyway, so it was good!

We turned in by nine.  We wanted to hit the road early.  We were on the way by 4:30 A.M. I drove the first part.  The fog wasn’t as bad as the previous day.  Getting past Charleston, we stopped for some breakfast and a pit stop.  By then it was getting lighter, exactly the time that deer emerge from woods to feed in open areas.  What could be a more perfect feeding area in a wooded mountainous region that a ribbon of highway with grass along the edges and in the median?

The first deer I saw was standing in the left lane on a straight section, but I saw it in plenty of time.  I came to a dead stop on a road with a 70 mph speed limit, but no other car was near.  The deer looked at the lights of the car and decided to walk into the median. Several miles later, we came upon a very small deer in the median.  It began to run in the same direction we were headed, but we were quickly beyond it.  But several miles later came the heart-in-the-throat moment.  I came over a ridge and there was a deer on the right part of the right lane, only a few hundred feet ahead.  I veered toward the left shoulder while applying the brakes.  The deer took a line which had it headed seemingly right where the front of the car was headed.  I could no longer worry about the deer because I had to steer somewhat to the right to avoid going into the ditch.  Apparently the car slowed enough for the deer to decide to go in back of it.  I say “apparently” because neither of us saw this, but we know it didn’t go in front of us or hit the car.  I was pretty sure it was going to do that, but somehow didn’t.  We gulped as adrenaline coursed through our blood and then got moving before another car came up on us.  During the course of our drive back through West Virginia and Maryland, we must have seen a half dozen live deer and ten deer carcasses.  I am in no hurry to drive out that way again.

Recommendation on Hatfield – McCoy:  If you like hilly courses, if you are a 50 stater or you like this sort of history associated with a race, then you’ll like this marathon.  It is not a course on which to run a fast time.  If you decide you want to run it, plan several months ahead in order to secure a room at the handful of motels in the Williamson area.  Otherwise, you’ll have a drive to get to the race that morning. I didn’t take the time to learn why two families, who now apparently get along and have a cottage industry marketing the history of the feud, started murdering each other a century and a half ago.