Surf City Half Marathon 2012

So I just ran the Surf City Half Marathon Sunday morning.  I was super excited about the fact that I was in California, the sun was shining, and it was above 50 degrees.  Not to mention the fact that we were going to be running next to the ocean nearly the entire 13.1 miles.  All of this sounds wonderful and fantastic but I made a couple of serious errors in my race.  First off I raced in shoes that I’ve trained and worked in  since August and second off, probably my more critical mistake, I set the pace.  Setting the pace SHOULDN’T be a problem but considering the fact that I suck at running at a constant pace for more than a couple of miles, this was a very, very bad idea.   Actually, I think my entire poor decision began with the fact that when I did my training runs on my own I only ran 6.75 miles at my max.  If I want to pace myself for an entire race I need to get my body used to me creating the pace for the entire distance instead of only half of it.  I ran with my fiancé, Andrew, and he is virtually a human metronome.  When I ask him to run at a 10min pace he does it without thinking about it and can hold it for miles.  If I ask for 10:30, 9:30, 9:00 pace he can do it.  Our mistake at that point was I asked for a ten minute pace and then told him that I felt great and he let me set the pace at 9:00 for miles 2,3,4,5 and 6.  That was a terrible decision.  Not only was I nearly spent because I went too fast for half of the race but my legs also hated me because the shoes I was wearing were far too old to be running a half marathon in and expecting a decent race time.  My legs were tired and sore, my feet had (have) blisters like crazy, and to top it all off I was dehydrated.

 Yep.  Fantastic.  I still managed to finish in 2:12 which isn’t terrible but considering the fact that we were at the half way point in less than an hour that doesn’t make me feel so great.  It was kind of funny because around mile 7 Red (Andrew) was making fun of me and getting kind of annoyed because I was insisting on stopping at every single water stop for the remainder of the race.  Normally I’ll go every other water stop, but I apparently had not hydrated enough the day before and had stopped sweating.  He didn’t believe me because he was still pouring sweat, but my arms, face, neck, entire body was bone dry.  I had him rub my forehead to see it was so dry and that was all of the proof he needed to agree I needed to stop at every water stop.  We found his mom on the side of the course around mile 11 and she thankfully had a full bottle of water that we downed while walking next to her.  I realized that I only had 2 miles left to run but at that point I didn’t care, I hurt, I was tired, and I was incredibly thirsty.  Once I finished the bottle of water and walked a little bit I felt 100% better.  Red was laughing because he asked if I was feeling better since I was running at an 8:45 pace, like I said, pacing is not my forte.  We finished the half running strong and I’m positive that we could have ran faster but considering my beginning mistakes we ended up where we did.  I have been running distance races for nearly 4 years now and I made almost every beginner mistake you can make on that race.  All I needed to add to the race was to try something during the race that I’ve never tried before and thank goodness I didn’t add that to my list. 

For my next race, which technically is in April but I’m mostly concerned with May, I plan on changing a few things.  Time out, the reason I’m not really counting April is 1) it is a Tough Mudder where time doesn’t really matter and 2) I just started a new job and I’m not really positive that I can make it to the race due to my new schedule.  Time in.  My new attack plan is to start training longer distances on my own, find more ways to keep water in me such as carrying a water bottle EVERY WHERE, drinking more of those instant drinks that come in a pouch to flavor the water, and just trying to keep track of how much I drink.  I will also do a better job of keeping track of the miles on my shoes before I run another race in shoes that are far past their prime.  The problem with the shoe part is that these shoes had to stay clean since I wore them to work in a hospital and to train in so they didn’t show their wear and tear as bad.  Not to mention the fact that they are grey so they don’t show dirt very well.  I kept putting off shoes because they are expensive, but I should have learned from that years ago when I ended up with 3 partially torn tendons after a marathon.  I have a few other goals that I want to achieve this year as well.  I want to get better at my nutrition in general and also be more consistent in my lifting that I want to add to my regimen.  Well I’m about to land so I have to put my computer away.  Here’s to the start of another week of training and enjoying life!