Monday Wrap Up: Because I Went to Sleep at 8:20 Last Night

So I take it you heard the news (thanks to my Twittering team for doing their part to update the community of New York-based runners and my Mom on my progress yesterday): another sub-4:00 marathon. They don't call me 3:59:59 Bitches for nothing (no one actually calls me that, but feel free to start).

Despite my successful completion of yesterday's race, I think it was one of the more brutal marathons I've run. I was struggling early on and gained 17 minutes on my first half split. I'm embarrassed I even had to write that, because it was both stupid and unnecessary for me to run a 1:48 first half, and as a result, I certainly paid for it.

The actual finish breakdown makes me look much more bad-ass than I am. 30th in my age group? Top 150 women?!

Overall:	555 out of 2349
Women:	146 out of 961
F 25-29:	30 out of 165
Age/Grade:	58.04% Place: 614
Finish:	3:53:20 Pace: 8:54

As I mentioned when I blogged on Marathon Eve, the Expo was not the most informational or organized of race events. As it turns out, neither was the race itself:

Getting to the Race: Once we got a handle on road closures and the like, getting to the Huntington Beach Pier from Long Beach was pretty seamless (thanks Maddy!). It did require, however, that we leave the house at 4:40am (fun fact: it's currently 4:46am, but since I went to bed so early last night, I was done sleeping by like 4:00). We were able to pull right into the event parking lot and found it had plenty of spaces and was close enough for me to walk from the car to the start. The sweet parking also meant I could stay warm in the car with Maddy and Megan until 6:00am, eating a banana and listening to Miley Cyrus to fire me up.

The Start: Because the race started right at the beach, runner's had access to beach bathrooms in addition to the standard PortaPotties. I cannot overstate the awesomeness of this. To have access to flushing toilets at the start of a marathon, when every single participants is digesting their pasta dinner, was awesome. In addition, the lines were virtually non-existent; I was able to go to the bathroom twice before lining up for the start.

Unfortunately, everything else about the start was pretty terrible. The race corrals, of which there were only three, were labeled "7:00/mile pace (Sub-3:00); 9:00/mile pace (Sub-4:00); 10:00/mile pace (5:00 or longer)." Not only does that math not make sense (a 10:00/mile marathon is about a 4:20 finish), but for a race with 2000 participants, there were about 20 people in the first corral, and 990 in each of the last two. As such, the race officials tried to break these start groups down further on the fly; within each corral, a single race official tried to send us out in waves of a couple dozen at a time. This resulted in people crossing the starting mat and therefore initiating their chip time, and then being called back. Utter chaos.

The Course: The first 8 or 9 miles of the course took us from the beach side start into residential neighborhoods and then a park with paved trails. By mile 3, I already had to pee, but I looked around for a place to duck off the road and found that cops blocked every side street. Furthermore, no one else was making a roadside pit stop. Californians are so modest!

The first group of PortaPotties I passed were at the base of a climb. Disinterested in stopping to pee only to start back up a hill, I pressed on. By mile 5, I knew I had to stop at the next PortaPotty I saw. Unfortunately, this grouping was also at the base of a little climb. In addition, it was at the start of a hairpin turn, and set close to the road, a fact I didn't realize until I very nearly took out a fellow runner when I opened the door.

On the plus side, the course volunteers for the first 9 miles were all elementary school-aged kids, who said adorable things like "Keep Running!" to cheer us on. I also cracked a smile when we passed an elementary school band playing the theme from Peter Gunn, which I once played in band myself.

I had a Gu at mile 7, just under an hour into the race, and mentally rationed my two remaining packets. And then heard the dreaded foil-on-pavement sound as I lost one at mile 9. The worst. On the plus side, the 9 mile mark was the start of a double out-and-back along the beach, which in and of itself wasn't on the plus side, but it meant I got to see Maddy, Megan and Ryan 4 times. When I first saw them shortly after 9 (and Megan ran with me for a bit), I was fired up for a mile or so. But as I mentioned, I was exceedingly foolish in my pacing, for absolutely no reason. I could tell by mile 12 that my pace was unsustainable, but it took so much out of me that when Ryan joined me for a few minutes between 14 and 15, I told him "This is getting ugly fast." Ryan talked me off the ledge, ran me to the top of what was essentially the last hill of the course, and sent me on my way.

As for the course layout itself, miles 9 to 12 were in one direction on Pacific Coast Highway along the beach, 12-16 were in the other direction, then 16-21 zig-zagged back again, this time bringing us down to a running path right on the beach, and 21-25 back up that same path before we cut back to PCH and to the finish line. While it was breathtakingly beautiful, with surfers dotting the HUGE waves and dogs playing on the beach, I was hurting so much that I didn't fully take in the views until about mile 24. All the out-and-back-ing was pretty tedious, but truly I was so focused on just getting the race done that I didn't have a lot of time to think about poor course planning.

Because we were along the beach, we had access to plenty of beach bathrooms - again, a godsend for anyone with a shaken-up marathon stomach who can't bear the thought of braving a PortaPotty that's been decimated by 2000 other runners, 23 miles into the race. At one point, I did stop to pee again. As I sat down (say what you want about public restroom sanitation and sitting on a toilet seat, but I dare you to try to squat and hover after 23 miles) and thought to myself "I could actually just fall asleep in here right now."

Blissfully, at 23 I realized I probably wasn't going to die, and took this fact to heart. It was my birthday! I didn't have to kill myself! I had 7 whole minutes to spare and still come in until 4:00! These cheerful thoughts actually sped me up for the last mile or 2.

Coming down the finish chute, I spied Maddy and Megan in the crowd (Maddy has had primo chute positioning in the last 2 races of mine she's come to), and was obviously excited by this fact:

(You can't really tell in this picture, but my bib says "Bday Girl!!" on it, which I thought would garner a lot of "Happy Birthday!"'s from the crowd, but actually got a lot of cheers for either "Baby Girl!" or "Bidet Girl!" neither of which are particularly motivating nicknames.)

The Finish: Things were much more organized at the finish than they were at the start. After collecting my medal (perhaps the best one I've ever received, and probably the hardest won), my Mylar blanket, a bottle of water, and a pre-packed plastic bag of fruit, pretzels and a granola bar, I made my way to the spot I'd planned to meet the crew.

Another flaw of the expo was that there was no information on a designated "Family Meeting Area," so you were either left to fend for yourself, searching through 20,000 Marathon, Half-Marathon, and 5-k runners and their families for your party, or have some familiarity with the area and pick a meeting spot. Fortunately, we had the latter, having gone to the Hyatt at the finish line the previous day for a cup of tea after the Expo, so we planned to meet on the Hyatt lawn. This also worked out for me because I got to use the Hyatt's bathroom to wash my face and generally get my life in order, having run 26.2 miles.

My knee felt fine for the duration of the race, but taking off my shoes at the finish was a different story. I'll spare you the photos, but suffice it to say my toes took a beating. Thankfully, I had flip flops in my bag, and the four of us were able to relax and enjoy some SoCal sunshine before getting back into the car (or in Ryan's case, back onto his bike. Such an athlete, that one!)

Conclusion: If you don't have two awesome college friends who live in the area and an awesome high school friend to fly down to support you, and other things to do while you're in the area, I'd say don't run this race. Totally disorganized. Though you forget a lot of that when you're staring at palm trees and surfers and sunshine. And the most amazing medal ever:

As for the Wrap-Up, I'll try to keep it short:

Number of Miles Run This Week: 35

Number of Beers Consumed This Week: In reverse order - 5 yesterday, because it was my birthday, the Super Bowl, and I ran a marathon; 0 Saturday because I am a responsible runner; 2 Friday because I'm not that responsible; 3 Thursday because I was on vacation; 0 Wednesday because I had to wake up so early to go to the airport; 0 Tuesday for no good reason, which means I should have had one; 1 Monday over dinner with Ryan, because we also drank $15 glasses of wine. Ouch. Anyway, that's 11. What a slacker. Don't fret; I'll need to drink a fair amount this week just to keep warm back in NYC.

Types of Beers Consumed This Week: True to my word, I drank all beers from West of the Mississippi on the trip, excluding the Bud Heavies I put back during the game yesterday. Unfortunately because I am unfamiliar with these Western treats, I don't remember many of their names. One kind had a picture of a red truck on the label, and another had a surfer. Wow, maybe I should be drinking less, not more, given my memory...

Thanks again to all those reading this blog, and to all those who were thinking of me yesterday, and to all those who wished me good luck and/or happy birthday, and to all those who were there with me for the big day. But not to those who don't like beer, because what is wrong with you??

Oh! One last note: Megan and Maddy took TONS of pictures yesterday, and I have plenty of pictures of my non-racing pursuits on this vacation, so stay tuned for evidence of fun times.

With love and thanks,

3:53:20. Bitches.