Disclaimer: I received an entry to Oakland Running Festival as part of being a BibRave Pro. Learn more about becoming a BibRave Pro (ambassador), and check out BibRave.com to review find and write race reviews!
After a rough day of travel Saturday, I actually slept ok for pre-race hotel sleep. I woke up once around 2AM and was stoked I had another 3 hours to sleep. Sweet! Once up, I quickly got ready with all my gear and checked out of the hotel. The weather wasn’t dumping rain like the day before and the app said it would stay clear but I didn’t trust it. I was wearing arm warmers and my rain jacket over those.
My mom was able to get me as close as she could and I jumped out of the car on a street corner. I chatted with another runner as we made our way to the starting area. We ended up going our separate ways and I messaged the other BibRave Pro’s to see if we could make a meet up work before the race. We did!
Then it was time to line up. Surf City does self seeded corrals which works about as well as you think. I knew I was going to be moving slower so I placed myself in wave 4 which was 2:25- 2:34. I was almost right, haha not really, I ended up running my second slowest half to date.
Miles 1-5 10:52, 11:13, 11:26, 12:28, 11:27
I was moving slow but wasn’t feeling the need for walk breaks which was great because I know how out of shape I am. However things got weird around mile 2. I was cautious on how my foot would feel but I was expecting pain- instead my foot went numb. I could barely feel my left foot for the next 2 miles and around 3.5 my right foot joined it. I started walking just to see if that would change things. Thankfully it did. Just as it started to rain. Ok, mostly mist but it was still wet.
But then I realized I had another problem. Mile 6- 16:00
I suddenly need the restroom, not like my stomach was upset but I really needed the restroom. There was a series of port-a-potties around mile 5.5 and even though they had a line, I jumped in the line. Well, there goes my mile time.
Miles 7-10 11:46, 12:29, 12:28, 12:35
I was feeling ok but knew I was slowing. I wasn’t really paying attention to my watch. I was just focusing on the fact that I was still running and not taking walk breaks. Woo hoo! Well until mile 9. I knew once I took the first real walk break, there would be more to come. We had hit the turn around point and were running into a breeze now. I was still cold and it was misting every now and again but the breeze felt good to me.
Miles 11-13 13:38, 12:22, 12:37
I’ve run 2 marathons and never experienced “the wall”. Welp, I think I found it. Other than cold and wet toes, my body felt ok but I was done. I walked a fair amount of mile 11. From there I was just run/ walking my way in. This is normally the part of the course with the best views and most spectators but I was just keeping my head down and trying to get to the finish line.
Finish- 2:43:06 My second slowest half ever!
Granted, the 5 minute bathroom stop didn’t help matters along. I have no shame in that finishing time, I knew I was going to be slower, my training was almost non-existent and when I did get my act together, I hurt my foot and ended up taking 11 days off in a row. I’ll have no problem adding those results to my Athlinks profile for all to see. It gives me a starting point and now I know what I need to do going forward.
I still love Surf City and all it has to offer, maybe one day I’ll run it again and run it well.
<
The second I knew I had convinced Kate to fly to Las Vegas from Texas and run her very first half marathon, I knew I was running it with her, no matter what. In the week leading up to the race, she was worried about slowing me down but I said to not even worry about the pace, we were aiming for ‘party speed’. 😎
Recent events moved the start line up to New York New York but the course still went south towards the Las Vegas sign before turning around and coming back. These miles were quiet and dark as a moment of silence for Las Vegas. Which made the cheaters we observed just past mile 1 even worse. The course was an out and back and this part of the street had a large center divider. Just past the first water station, 3 people just jumped on over to the other side and joined the runners on the way back into town. WTH????! Kate and I and 3 runners behind us were like did we really just see that?
Then came mile 2. We both admitted we could use a bathroom. Waiting in the corrals had been long and there were no port-a -potties near the corrals. So we stopped. And waited forever. Seriously…this was a 20 minute mile. 7 of that was non moving time according to my Garmin. The bathrooms were set up in an odd way that both sides of the course could access them but it didn’t make sense for lines and was causing serious confusion. And apparently we picked the wrong line because the person before me took forever. To the point where the lady in line behind me wanted to knock on the bathroom door. And can I just say that entering a port a potty in the dark is like entering a scary unknown land? 😛
So we walked. We embraced the party speed and took in the sights of the Strip. All of the casinos and all of their lights. Counting the CVS’s and Walgreens turned into our version of the license plate game. No, seriously, why are there so many within such a short distance from each other? And why were more people cutting the course?!?!😡
I took a ton of pictures. Except the sketchy mile. The Fremont area was awesome and worth the sketch mile to get there though. We got water at every aid station and Gatorade. We stopped at a medical tent and Kate had them apply some Icy Hot to see if it would help. Every now and then I would jog in place just to reset my feet. I had worn my old Adidas and they’re too big, not exactly built for walking, my feet were sliding around. Jogging every now and again helped ease some of the pressure my feet were feeling.
We collected our awesome spinning medal and went straight to the med tent so Kate could get ice on her leg. Then we headed out through the long staging area getting the goodies. Once again, no bags were provided to carry everything but I had come prepared- I had shoved 2 dog bags (clean of course) into my belt so that way we could shove the snacks all in those. Then we headed for our Remix medals and then found a spot to rest before beginning the walk back to the hotel. Where was a taxi when you needed one?
Slacker Runner 