Surf City Marathon

Yesterday I ran the Surf City Marathon. This was my second marathon and my main goal was just to have another marathon experience in preparation for IMAZ. 

Dave and I flew down to the Orange County Airport Saturday morning. The peninsula sticking out on the coast is Palos Verdes where Dave grew up and his parents still live.

 We landed, got our rental car and headed to Huntington Beach to pick up our race packets. It was a beautiful sunny day and about 70!

Surf City puts on a great race. All of the check in areas and the expo venders were under a huge tent and   there was a lot of room in the aisles to be able to check everything out without getting cramped like some races.

They gave us a reusable grocery store type bag and a cool long sleeve shirt. The bag gave us lots of room to pick up samples from all the venders :)

You can't beat this view for a run!

After the expo we headed up to Dave's parents for a visit. It was nice to see them and their dog Charlie. Then we met our friends Flo and Carl for dinner. Flo and I went to high school and college together and were roommates all through college. We don't get to see each other very often so it was really nice to get together.

We made it an early night and were in bed by 9:00 since we had a 4:30 alarm set. Sunday morning we had our usual pre-race breakfast, an english muffin, peanut butter and a cup of coffee then headed out to the start at 5:15. The race organizers encouraged car pooling and they knew what they were talking about. Traffic was backed up quite a bit but Dave got us into the 'short' lines pretty easily while I had my eyes closed. 

We had a pretty long walk to the start line but it helped warm us up. Dave was running the 1/2 marathon so his start time was 8:00 and mine was 6:30. 

I was feeling good about this race. I felt like I trained better and had less overuse type soreness then when I ran my first marathon. My plan was to go out at about 10:30min/mile pace at the beginning and run a 9 min run/1 min walk until I felt like I needed a longer walk break. I wasn't sure how long I could maintain the 10:30 pace but I was hoping I could stick to my plan for the first 12 miles and then see what I needed to do. 

I was close. I ran the first 3 miles with a 10:37 pace, at 6 miles I had a 10:36 pace and at 12.2 miles I had a 11:11 pace. I had to make one porta potty stop at about 12 miles and that slowed me down. After that I just slowed down overall. My legs were feeling ok but my ankles were getting really sore. I had some soreness during training but I'm not sure what that's all about. At mile 20.9 I had a 12:23 pace and I finished the race with a 12:34 pace in 5:29:15. I had about a 13 min PR! My super secret goal was to break 5 hours but I think I'm the type of person who takes a long time to build up strength, especially in the second half of a race. I'm happy with my time. For me, the marathon is just an incredibly hard race and I probably need years to master it!

Dave ran the 1/2 in a great time. He hasn't been able to train as much as he wanted due to work, etc. and he was happy with his race

My favorite time, when it's over!

After the race we 'raced' back to the hotel to shower before our late check out time was over. We got there 5 min after the check out time but a maid let us in and we bolted ourselves in so we could clean up :) Southwest had texted us that our flight home was 2 hours delayed so we headed back to the airport for lunch and to relax since we had plenty of time.

Post race recovery drink with some Super Bowl watching.

Lots of this post race too.

The sun was setting as we flew home and another fun race weekend was over.

This is the cool medal we got.

As of right now, this is the last stand alone marathon I'm going to race. Marathons take so much time to train for and focusing on running is hard on my body. I say as of right now because I already have some races on my list for future events. 

It's an addiction, don't judge.