OC Half Marathon

30:45 sec run/walk ratio
3:16:26 (estimated time)
15 minutes/mile

Well, that's what I'm talking about! A great race, and a personal best! Extra cool, since I had such a hard time training this time, and was not at all confident of even being able to finish within the time limit. But I kept up a good pace, felt good all the way, and even had enough energy left to rock out at the finish line party.

The weather was perfect—around 55 F at the start, 65 F at the finish, and mostly cloudy all morning. I brought an assortment of clothes with me, and was wondering up until the last minute whether I should wear long sleeves or short, or bring my running jacket. I ended up walking out onto my balcony before leaving and deciding that it wasn't too cold, so I just wore my capri-length leggings and short-sleeved tee shirt, and while it was a bit chilly before the start, it was fine once I started running.

I'd driven down the day before, arriving right at 3 PM, in time to catch a shuttle to the Expo. The return shuttle wasn't until after 5 PM, so I ended up spending way more time at the Expo than I wanted—half an hour would have been plenty, but I did want to wander around a bit and see what was there. One excellent result was that I bought four packages of GU Chews which I brought with me instead of the gels, and I think my stomach was much happier for it. The other result of such a long afternoon at the Expo was that I was tired enough to go to bed at 8 PM and sleep pretty well until 3:30 AM, when I got up to get ready (I'd set the alarm for 4 AM, but woke up a bit early and decided to just get up). So, despite the early wake-up, and despite not having made much of an attempt to start adjusting to getting up earlier, I felt rested and ready to go.

The shuttle bus picked us up in front of the hotel at 5:04 AM, and delivered us to the starting area around 5:20 AM. I was way in the back corral and didn't cross the starting line until 6:30-ish. So it was a bit of a wait, but I was feeling good and enjoying the crowd. My stomach, for a change, was settled, and didn't give me any trouble throughout the race. I had dinner at the hotel restaurant the night before, one of their Carb Load items, a very delicious pesto ravioli with goat cheese and beets. I supplemented that with some cherry tomatoes, a Clif Bar, and a Snickers bar.

So, good rest, good food, good weather, and the final thing that I think really helped was that, at the last minute, I decided to bump my run/walk ratio back to the 30:45 second ratio I'd used for Surf City. I trained the whole time at 30:30, but I wondered if maybe that was too much, since I was slowing down and losing energy over the long training runs. I decided to start at 30:45 and see how it went, thinking that if I was feeling good at the halfway point and hadn't slowed down, I might bump it up to 30:30. By 7 miles, I was feeling good and maintaining a really good pace, but I felt like I had slowed down a little bit—maybe 20 seconds/mile—so I just stayed at 30:45.

I didn't use my app for this race, since it always seems to think I'm finished before I'm actually done, and anyway I don't need it to measure distance for me during an actual race. Instead, I used my new Timex Ironman watch to time my race and splits and count off the intervals. I don't think I ever managed to use it during training more than once, and found out when I started that I'd programmed the intervals wrong—at 30:45 minutes, rather than seconds. So I had to reprogram it while I was running, and my starting intervals were a bit ragged. Heh. But after I got going, it worked very nicely. I think I prefer doing actual races without earbuds or apps, I feel more into the race. I just used my phone for taking pictures, and live-Instagrammed the race, as usual.

I never got really tired throughout the race, and even ran in the last quarter-mile or so. Collected my finisher's medal, bottle of water and chocolate milk and snacks (pretzels and an oatmeal bar of some kind... Kind, actually, I think it was) and went off in search of the Beach Cities Challenge medal, which I eventually found. At least four people afterwards asked me where I'd picked it up—it did take some sleuthing to find it.

Hung out a while listening to Flashback Heart Attack, an 80s cover band. They were pretty good, and I liked the songs they played! They encouraged everyone to sing along, since we all knew the songs. The full marathon course ran right in front of the stage, so we got to watch the runners go by towards the finish line, with the band blasting away at them. The band's encore was "Fight for Your Right to Party"—awesome! After they were done, I headed out to catch a shuttle back to the hotel. Now I'm relaxing in the lobby, using the WiFi down here because it totally sucks in my room.

Great race and a lot of fun! Guess all that speed work and hard training really did its job, even though at times I wondered if I was even going to finish today.