The Year Of The Half Marathon

I signed up for the Pasadena Half Marathon which will be run on March 22. I also signed up for the Fontana Run Days Half Marathon which will be run on June 6. Fontana is my favorite half marathon. It is all downhill. I ran it in 2007 and had a time of 2:01:38, which is my PR by almost 22 minutes. This is a very fast course. They bill themselves as "The World's Fastest Half Marathon" and it is probably true. We'll see if I can beat 2 hours. Previously I signed up for the La Jolla Half Marathon on April 26.

I also entered the lottery for the New York City Marathon. I declared this the year of the half marathon, but if I get into New York, I guess I'll be doing two half marathons back-to-back. I entered the lottery last year and did not get in. If you enter three years in a row and do not get in, they will automatically take you on the fourth year. So, I figure I will probably run New York in 2011.

John Thum

A Whole Lotta Nothin'

I had big plans for the weekend, but somewhere around 2:00 in the afternoon on Friday I started not to feel so well. By the time I got home from work, I was just plain sick and I started coughing up a lot of goo. My plan for Saturday was to run with the L.A. Leggers, then bike down to the Rose Bowl with Paul of Giving It A Tri and watch the end of  Stage 7 of the Tour of California.

 

By Friday night I knew I wasn't going to get up at 5:00 am to run, but I was still hoping that I would recover enough to go riding. But come Saturday morning it was obvious that I wasn't going anywhere. I called Paul and cancelled. Most of the rest of the day was spent reading Transfer of Power by Vince Flynn (a very manly book,) and then watching the Tour of California on TV. It was fun to watch it on TV because I have ridden much of the course and so I knew where the riders were most of the time.

Saturday was our 11th wedding anniversary, but instead of the plans to go out, The Great Magnetic Wife and I just stayed in and ate pizza.

On Sunday, I thought I was feeling a little better and so I planned to go to church. I even took a shower and got dressed. Then I went into another coughing fit and decided it would be best to stay home. I read more of my manly book and watched the final stage of the Tour of California.

Big plans, but ended up being a whole lotta nothin'.

John Thum

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ht: Instapundit

John Thum

Surf City Half Marathon 2:32:09

Last week I mentioned to a friend that one of the reasons I was going to do the Surf City Half Marathon was because they had the coolest finisher's medal of any marathon. He somewhat rightly responded, "so, you're doing it for the trinkets!" I guess it's true, I was doing it for the trinkets. And if I was going to earn my trinket it meant getting up very early. We had gone to La Jolla (see previous post) and had a long drive to Huntington Beach for the Half Marathon. Fortunately the half started at 7:45 and was going off in waves. My wave was not going to start until 7:55. Never-the-less, the alarm was set for 4:45 and we got going early.

We did arrive in plenty of time, I got out of the car when traffic got very heavy and walked to the starting line. I was just in time to see the full marathon start. As they cleared, I ran into Iron Monica from the L.A. Tri Club and we had a nice chat. I met her mother and a friend of hers who was doing her very first half marathon. Very exciting. She wanted to know if I was going to get any "ink" for finishing the Ironman. In other words, was I going to get an M Dot tattoo. I explained that a few years ago I spent a lot of money to get rid of a tattoo that I considered a youthful indiscretion and I was not inclined to get another. 

I made my was over to the L.A. Leggers tent and hung out with Steve "Polar Bear" Herbert, another L.A. Tri Clubber who was also doing his first half marathon. Many pictures were taken and we all broke into our pace groups and headed for the start. 

Shortly after we started, just as I passed the starting line, I heard The Great Magnetic Wife yelling for me. She was running along side and I got to wave hello. I ran with the 12 minute a mile pace group. We started out slowly, much slower that 12 minute miles. There really wasn't a huge crowd at the beginning of the race as there usually is. I think the wave starts helped a lot. However, the race got more crowded as time went by, which is very unusual. After about three miles we picked up the pace a bit and seemed to be running pretty evenly with the 11:30 pace group from the Leggers. Since I ran with them last year, I knew most of the runners. We kept fairly even with them until about the last three or four miles and even then they were in sight.

At one point I was passed by a woman who had "I am running for my husband, Lawrence" printed on the back of her shirt. It was Beth Fong, whose husband fell and hit his head last fall and has been slowly recovering ever since. I have written about it on this blog. I often pray for Lawrence and have been following his progress with on-line updates. I ran away from my group to say hello and give her encouragement. When I am having a tough time during any kind of athletic activity, I often think how very blessed I am to be healthy enough to be out running or biking or whatever. Be thankful everyday when you have your health.

The Surf City course is fairly flat, but there are a few hills. There is a section that goes of PCH and through some neighborhoods. Finally we got back on PCH for a couple more miles and then a turn around that takes you straight back to the finish. From the turn around it is about five miles to the finish. We started to pick up the pace even a little more at this point and our group scattered a bit as not everyone could keep up. About three miles from the finish the pace was picked up a little more and I could no longer keep up. One other woman from the group and I paced each other. We were still going well above a 12 minute a mile pace, doing about 11:10. 

A couple hundred yards from the finish I heard The Great Magnetic Wife call to me and she took the picture above. Then my running partner took off  for a sprint finish and I just kept going at my regular pace. It was done and I got my trinket! Total run time 2:32:09. Certainly not a PR, but about what I expected for the day.

I met up with a few of the pace group afterwards for a nice picture.

John Thum

L.A Tri Club Ride To San Diego

I have always wanted to ride my bike to San Diego, but have always been a little afraid to do it by myself. During my Ironman training, it seemed like a good idea, but I could never get someone to go with me on a weekend that I could go. The L.A Tri Club has done an annual ride to San Diego to attend the Endurance Sports Awards for the last three years. Last year I could not go for reasons I don't remember. This year I was free. The only problem was that I also signed up for the Surf City Half Marathon the following day. It seems like a lot to do in one weekend, but hey, I'm an Ironman, I can do a long bike ride and a long run in one weekend.

The Great Magnetic Wife dropped me off at the Irvine Amtrak station at about 7:00 on Saturday morning. Most of the riders were going to ride to one of three locations: Oceanside, Solana Beach or San Diego and take the train back to the Irvine station.  My plan was to ride to my parent's house in La Jolla, approximatly 75 miles. The Great Magnetic Wife would meet me there. We would spend the night, get up very early and get to Huntington Beach in the morning for the Surf City Half Marathon.

We were supposed to be riding by 7:30, but it was almost 7:50 before the first group went off. I heard someone announce that a slow group was leaving and anyone who wanted to join them should. A slow group sounded good to me. I have to admit though, that this group was slower than I would have liked. I was waiting for others to pass us so I could join slightly faster riders. There were well over a hundred riders, so I figured I would find a group that was my speed.

About four miles in a got a flat. Dang! Oh well, I had everything I needed. I pulled off to the side of the road and started changing my flat. Just then the rest of the riders started coming by. Almost everybody would call out, "do you have everything you need?" "Do you need any help?" etc. I assured everyone that I was okay. I am not very fast at changing flats, but I can do it. After the L.A. Tri folks passed me and I was almost finished (about fifteen minutes later) a group of about eight riders from Cinergy came up to me. The all stopped and wanted to make sure I was alright and that I had everything I need to change my tire. It was really quite nice. Most cyclists will call out to a rider on the side of the road, but I have never seen an entire group stop. There is something special about the cycling community. There is a bit of a "We're all in this together" kind of attitude.

I joined the Cinergy group for a while, I figured I could make up a little time by drafting off of them. It does make it easier to make up ground if you are at the back of a peloton. Eventually, they went one way and I went another. After some fairly hilly roads, I found my way to PCH and a nice, flat, protected bike path. I got in the aero position and went as fast as I could. It had been almost an hour since I had my flat and I was worried that I wouldn't be able to catch up. Finally I saw the group that I started out with. They were now at the back of everyone else, but I knew the rest couldn't be that far ahead. I hooked up with one of the riders and we were making pretty good time. In San Clemente we saw one of our group getting a ticket from a police officer. There was a much larger group about fifty yard ahead waiting. Apparently he was ticketed for running a red light. We made sure we made complete stops and did not run lights or stop signs. 

Finally we got to the bike path on what was once Old Highway 101. It goes from the south of San Clemente to Camp Pendleton. I had ridden this going the other way during the Oceanside Half Ironman last March. We had a stop just north of the gate to Camp Pendleton where the L.A. Tri SAG van had food and drink. By this time I was probably in the middle of the pack. I had made up a lot of time since the flat. I refilled my water bottles and after a quick ID check at the gate of Camp Pendleton, I took off. I met a fellow L.A. Tri Clubber who was a little nervous about finding her way. We all had route sheets, but they can be a little hard to follow. I told her that I had ridden in the area during a few triathlons and kind of knew my way and once we were on PCH in Oceanside I knew exactly where to go. So, being riders of about equal ability, she decided to follow me. We rode about the last 25 miles of the ride together.

Once out of Camp Pendleton, the ride in Oceanside can get a little hairy. PCH does not have a bike lane at that point and there is a lot of traffic. I was glad to finally get out of Oceanside and into Carlsbad where there is a bike lane on PCH for the rest of the way. While stopped at a traffic signal in Carlsbad, I heard my cell phone ring. I thought it was probably The Great Magnetic Wife and so I answered it. It was The Great Magnetic Wife. She was in Encinitas, about ten miles down the road. She was seeing L.A. Tri Clubbers ride by and wondered if I was close. I said I would call her when I got to Encinitas. 

The original plan was to ride to La Jolla, but as I was riding the ten miles or so from Carlsbad to Encinitas, I realized that my legs were getting pretty sore. I have not done much bike riding since the Ironman and I was feeling it. I was also aware that I had a half marathon the next day and probably the smart thing to do would be to stop in Encinitas when I met up with The Great Magnetic Wife and not do the last fifteen or so mile to La Jolla. She was waiting, appropriately enough, in front of Nytro, a great triathlon store. I hitched my bike to the bike rack on her car and waved to all of the L.A. Tri Clubbers as they rode by and was quite happy I did the ride and was even happier it was over.

John Thum