The Fontana Half Marathon. I have been telling anyone who would listen for the last two years that this was a great race that almost guaranteed a personal record. I ran it two years ago and finished in
2:01:38. That is an average pace of 9:18/mile. For me, that is blazing fast. It is my PR by over twenty minutes. I have not been training particularly hard for the last couple of months, so I didn't expect to best my previous time, but I did expect relatively easy Half Marathon. Why does Fontana bill itself as, and live up to its reputation as the world's fastest half marathon? Because it is all down hill. In the 13.1 miles you lose over 3,000 feet in elevation. Most of that is in the first six miles, but the rest of the race is still a very subtle down hill. And yet there are no steep downhill sections. Gravity is your friend and helps you along. All that being said, this turned out to be a tough race.
The Great Magnetic Wife and I headed out Friday at about 1:00 to our hotel in Rancho Cucamonga. I took a half day off of work so that we could beat the traffic out to the Inland Empire. When we checked into the hotel, they were just bringing out the complementary chocolate chip cookies. Things were looking up. The hotel was next to the Ontario Mills Mall and that seemed to be our easiest and closest form of entertainment. I went the Nike Store and got some new running socks, and the we went to the theater and saw "Up" in 3D. Loved it, recommend highly.
We were in bed by nine and got up at 4:30 am to leave by 5:00. Checking in at the race site was easy and after a few pictures I got on a bus that took me up to the start. I sat next to John Montgomery, a guy who looked like a great runner and said he was going to try to average 6:30/mile. As he is sixty two years old I asked him if he usually wins his age group. He does. There is no time in my life that I could even come close to 6:30/mile pace, even downhill. As it turns out he also went to Julian Union High School in 1960 to 1962 when my grandfather, Ray Redding, was the principal. Small world.
We got up to the starting area about 6:45. This was enough time to go to the bathroom one last time and stretch a little before the start. There was a truck that collected any personal items that the runners brought to the start that they did not want to carry with them during the run. I had a long sleeve shirt and some sunscreen. I hung out by the truck because it was quite cold. Having gained over 3,000 feet in elevation from where we started in Fontana, the temperature had dropped and it was chilly. The plan was to wait until the last minute and take off my shirt, put it in my bag and give it to the guys on the truck. Then I heard that the start of the race was being delayed by a half an hour because they didn't have enough buses to get all of the runners to the starting line. It's funny. This was the 54th year of the race and it is a very small, generally well organized event. I'm surprised they made a mistake like that. However, the bottom line for me was that I did not want to spend an extra half an hour without my long sleeve shirt. I decided that I would sacrifice my shirt and keep warm a little longer. It was a shirt that I received for running the Redondo Beach 10k a few years ago. I have about 40 event t-shirts, I could certainly give one up. I waited until about a minute before the start of the race and took off the shirt and laid it down next to a pile of other clothes that had been sacrificed.
The race finally started and it was going well enough for the first mile or so and then I felt a little twitch in my left calf. Not a big deal, I get little muscle twitches all of the time. Then it came again and then CRAMP!!! Ow, that hurts. I stopped for a moment and stretched it out. Runners where passing and asking if I was okay. I seemed to get it out of my system and started walking a little. It felt okay and I started running again. Another mile or so went by and then CRAMP!!!. Oh, dad gum it. I stretched, I walked, I ran again. This time could feel a little pain every time I stepped with my left leg. I was in an okay rhythm, but it hurt when I ran. I didn't think I was injuring myself, so I kept on running. I looked down at my Garmin and it said I was going at a 10:30/mile pace. This was the biggest down hill part of the race. I should have been going at about 9:00/mile pace. This was not going to even come close to the 2:01:38 time I got two years ago.
Just then the wind started kicking up. I was running into a head wind and this seemed to be slowing me down also. Wind is always a major factor in riding a bike, but I don't usually run fast enough or run in windy enough conditions that it makes much difference when I run. I was running with a painful left calf into a headwind, but I was still running downhill. My Garmin said I was at a 11:00/mile pace. I usually run faster than that on an easy run around the neighborhood. That is an awful pace for a race. Oh well.
By this time, after stopping for cramps twice and running extra slowly the majority of the field had passed me by and I was clearly at the back of the pack with the stragglers. That is how it stayed for the rest of the race. After about mile 6 the downhill becomes much more subtle and there are even a few short and mild uphill sections. At this point I realized that I was not even going to get my second best time, which I got last October at the Long Beach Half Marathon. I trudged on. I've always said that I am not a good runner, I am not a fast runner, but I can keep on going. So I kept on going.
I had not quite reached mile 11 when I looked down at my watch and saw that I had exceeded my time from two years ago. I was a couple minutes over two hours into this thing. I had told The Great Magnetic Wife that I had hoped to finish in about two hours. At the rate I was going, I was probably 25 minutes away. I gave her a call and let her know that I was going to be a while.
Oddly enough, at this point I was actually passing a lot of people. Many had given up trying to run and where just walking. I trudged on past about fifteen to twenty people in the last couple of miles and no one passed me.
With about a mile to go I saw the the large green balloons that marked the finish line and tried to pick up the pace. I may have picked it up from a 12 minute mile to an 11:30 minute mile. It didn't hurt that a local business had a DJ station set up and was blasting techno music. I needed to pick up the pace just to get away from the noise.
I finally saw The Great Magnetic Wife just before the finish. She was taking pictures. She then ran to get a finish line picture. She could out run me a this point.
I was very happy to finish, but not so happy with my finishing time of
2:27:57I saw John Montgomery, my race friend for the day. He had won his division with a time of 1:25:00 and achieved his goal of running at a 6:30 a mile pace. Amazing.
Checkout time at the hotel wasn't until noon, so we were able to go back and I took a shower. It was a very nice thing to do after a race.
It is now a couple of days later and my legs are very sore and I am limping around. My legs feel as if I ran a full marathon. I feel as if I have to go back and do this race again to redeem myself from this performance. I'll see you next year.
