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.
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