Myrtle Beach Marathon 2014

Thursday
I flew out of LAX on a noon flight for Myrtle Beach. After a layover at Atlanta, I arrived pretty late at the Myrtle Beach airport. I picked up my rental car, a red Chevy Sonic, and headed over to my hotel, the Dayton House Resort. Along the way I stopped by a Walgreens to pick up some snacks and drinks for the weekend. I found a parking spot in one of the garages and got checked in. Turned out that I wasn't supposed to park there, so I moved my car across the way next to my building. My room was much cheaper just because it was across the street from the beach and ocean. They called it the West Side View. I left the car in the same spot for the entire weekend. I didn't need to drive the car for the weekend other than to get back to the airport. Some destinations just don't have public transportation available as an option.

On top of being cheap, my room was super spacious. I guess it was good to be visiting Myrtle Beach during their off peak season.

Kitchen

More bed than I needed

Late night snacks and drinks

Friday
It was a crisp windy beautiful day the next morning. I walked on over to the expo at the Sheraton Myrtle Beach Convention Center located at 21st Avenue N and Oak Street. The expo was pretty small and straightforward. One thing I saw that was pretty out of the ordinary were a couple of chimpanzees. I could say that up until now, I had never seen them at a marathon expo.

Course map

Running in superhero outfit is becoming a new trend

Chimpanzees

On the way back to my hotel room, I saw a bunch of geese near the parking lot. That's an odd sight to see for this Californian. I stopped by the McDonald's along the way to pick up lunch. I went with the tried and true, Big Mac and 20 piece Chicken McNuggets.

I went through the items that we received at the expo. They gave us a pretty nice sling bag and a pair of socks among the usual race shirt, race booklet, and bib. The shirt was made of cotton and very thin, just the way I like it.

For dinner I went back out to check out some of the restaurants that I saw along the way when I was walking to and from the convention center. I bumped into a couple of Marathon Maniacs. One had to go somewhere for else for dinner and the other wanted to check out Dirty Don's Oyster Bar & Grill. Coincidentally that was the place that I also wanted to check out. So her and I grabbed a table. They had a special on shrimp and wings, 50 cents a piece. So I ordered a dozen each. I had a couple of Stellas and a Guinness. My check came out to be $26.21 which I thought was pretty neat for my pre-marathon meal!

Dozen shrimp and dozen wings

26.2

After parting ways with my new Marathon Maniac friend, I set out my racing gear before calling it a night. I noticed that on my way back to my room that it was super windy and a storm might be rolling in. But I was hopeful as the weather forecast was for no rain the next day for the race.

Maniac gear

Saturday
To my surprise, the rain was coming down as I walked out the door. For some reason I couldn't locate my plastic poncho. I always pack one just in case. I walked across the street to catch the bus to the starting line. If it weren't raining, I would've walked to the start. It was pretty nice of the guy at the hotel lobby to be handing out plastic garbage bags to anyone that wanted one. It came in handy. We noticed that the buses kept passing our stop. So we flagged one down and got on it even though it was standing room only. When we got to the drop off spot, it was still pretty early, so we asked if we could stay on the bus. The driver said that was fine but we had to go with him to pick up more runners. Once we were dropped off, I put on the garbage bag and walked towards the starting area. The rain was still coming down pretty good. As soon as the race was about to begin, the rain let up. Talk about perfect timing.

The race started at Robert M Grissom Pkwy and 21st Avenue N. I ran the first 5k with the 1:45 pace group sort of in view. We would run about 5 miles along S Kings Highway towards the airport. Just past the airport, we run up to and through The Market Common before heading down to Ocean Blvd. By mile 8, I was starting to have discomfort in my right hip. Too much racing probably had something to do with that. I had to keep it slow for a bit. Also as we're heading up the coast on Ocean Blvd, there was a pretty good wind in your face all along the way. I tried to just keep moving at the most comfortable pace that I could find. I took a one minute walk break every time I reached a mile marker. For the most part, the hip pain was no longer noticeable with that strategy. After running a pretty slow mile 23 due to some developing cramp in my legs, I realize that I shouldn't shut it down just yet and should keep pushing as much as I could to get a new marathon PR. After a couple of final turns, I finished at Pelican's Field with a PR.
1: 8:24
2: 8:10
3: 8:04
4: 8:56
5: 8:55
6: 8:23
7: 8:22
8: 9:05
9: 8:50
10: 9:10
11: 9:47
12: 9:26
13: 9:48
14: 10:36
15: 9:51
16: 10:24
17: 11:01
18: 10:32
19: 9:38
20: 10:55
21: 10:14
22: 10:53
23: 12:35
24: 10:03
25: 11:03
26: 10:06
26.2: 1:31
Finish: 4:14:41
Marathon #113
State #22 - Almost halfway there!

So I finally set a new marathon PR by almost 7 minutes. About time! It was by no means fast, but at least I'm finally making progress again. After several years of setbacks from injuries I was finally well enough to start running faster. The race actually felt like a slow jog especially the second half which made me felt like I could've done much better. Would've, could've, should've... next time! After collecting my medal and grabbing some post race food and drinks, I hung out with a fellow Marathon Maniac for a while just taking about our races and upcoming races. I thought that this race was very well organized from start to finish. You could even look up and print out your finish time. We then went our separate ways and I headed for the beer garden to get my beer. After finishing the beer, I walked on back to my hotel.

Post race beer

We liked Dirty Don's well enough that we met up at the restaurant for dinner again. I turned in my receipt from yesterday for some free shrimp fritters which weren't very good. I ordered the Barnacle Bill's Burger along with a few bottles of Guinness. The burger was okay, nothing spectacular. It was almost like eating a burger cooked in somebody's backyard.

Free shrimp fritters

Barnacle Bill's Burger

Sunday
I topped off the gas tank and got to the airport pretty early. Dropped off the rental car. It was super cheap. They only charged me $18.11 for the entire weekend. I noticed that the Myrtle Beach airport has some nice colorful chairs in their terminals, very different from the black ones that I'm used to seeing at most airports.

I flew into Atlanta for my connecting flight back to LA. I had time for lunch before my connecting flight, so I walked around the food court area to scope out my options. I ended up eating at Ecco. This was the only place that I found appealing. The other places were all boring unappetizing fast food. I ordered the olive oil-poached tuna salad, capers, pickled red onion, tarragon mayonnaise panini and a glass of St Andrews Cabernet Sauvignon. They informed me that they couldn't serve the wine until 12:30pm local time which I thought was kind of weird for an airport, but I was fine with that, I could wait. The panini had a nice taste and paired pretty well with the wine. It's pretty good food for airport food, but it's still expensive airport food. If I come here next time, I'll just stick to the wine and maybe some appetizers. One thing that I didn't like about this place was the sneaky upgrade from potato chips to french fries for a couple of dollars extra. Not a big deal, but at least let the customer know that it'll be extra. There weren't many patrons during peak lunch hour and yet the service was a bit slow. That was fine with me since I had to wait for my flight.

Olive oil-poached tuna salad, capers, pickled red onion, tarragon mayonnaise panini and a glass of St Andrews Cabernet Sauvignon

Then I had to involuntarily check my small carry-on bag because I was in zone 3 and all the overhead space was supposedly already full. When I got to my seat, the overhead compartment was empty. My bag isn't even one of those huge roller bags. Thank you for lying to me, Delta Airlines employee!

As per the usual, on the way home I stopped by What's Up Men to eat a nice bowl of ramen and some edamame for dinner.