Because I didn't want to pay for parking, I parked at the lot near the baseball fields on Arlington just North of the fairgrounds. I noticed that it was a pretty hot day as I walked across the street to the expo. Packet pickup was pretty painless. As with years past, they had it in a separate adjoining area from the exhibition area with all of the booths. I bumped into my friend CharliePro and his wife. He was going to be one of the pacers for the half marathon. It's always good to see a familiar face at a race expo. After picking up my stuff, I went to check out the booths. I had not planned on it, but I ended up signing up for the Surf City Marathon for $99 and the Long Beach Marathon for $110. That was a pretty good deal for Surf City. I would argue that they have the best finisher medals. I just had to register for Long Beach as it will be their 30th anniversary.
The stage
5/4 - Race Day
Per the instructions, I parked near the starting area in Fashion Island in front of Muldoon's Irish Pub. There was plenty of parking and there was no traffic getting into the lot. I think most people opted for parking at the finish area located at the OC Fairground for $7 pre-paid or $10 race day. After I got my stuff ready, I headed over to the Marriott that was next to the starting corrals. I talked to a bunch of my friends that were waiting inside in the lobby. Before going back outside to take a pre-race Marathon Maniac photo, I used the hotel restroom.
Marathon Goddess
Marathon Maniacs
Starting corral
The marathon started before the half marathon and it was still dark. I started with the 3:30 pace group and ran with them through about the first 5k. Then I back off a bit, but I still could see them as I went through the 10k mark. My legs started to feel heavy by mile 10 so I backed off on the pace even more. As soon as I slowed down, I was passed by a couple of my friends. I went through the first half in a little over 1:50. It got pretty toasty in the second half. I liked the aid station that had an UFO theme. The decorations were very cool! The finish was a little deceiving. You think you're almost done as you run by the stage and feel the energy from the crowds, but you still had to run out into the parking lot before running back to the finish line. I'm not sure why they show me going 40 seconds faster. I used a stopwatch and it's never more than 1-2 seconds off.
Watch time: 4:26:43
Official time: 4:26:03
After picking up my finisher medal, a pretty nice throwaway jacket, and some drinks, I headed over to the expo area to pick up my extra Beach Cities medal and a dog tag bottle opener. The Beach Cities Challenge medal was for running the Long Beach 2013, Surf City 2014, and OC 2014 marathons in succession. The dog tag bottle opener was for running the Surf City and OC marathons in the same year to complete their Double Dog Dare. That's quite a haul for one day!
Medals!
I then made my way to the finishing chute and found a spot to wait for my friend. I spotted him as he came rolling in a tad after 5 hrs. For some reason we missed each other at the exit. I waited for a while and still could not spot him. The battery life on my phone has been pretty short lately and it died before I could text my friend to find out his location. Eventually I walked to the parking lot to see if I could spot him. Fortunately we found each other. We then went to get our free beers. He gave me his. We hung out a bit with some of my running friends before leaving to go get lunch.
We then drove over to the nearby Habit to eat some post-race burgers. He then gave me a ride back to my car to save me the hassle of waiting for one of the shuttles.
Dan the man
About a month later, they sent us an email saying that the finisher certificates were ready for download on Marathonfoto. It looked nice but it showed the actual time of day that I finished the race instead of the chip time. So it looked like I took 10 hours to finish the marathon. I know that I was slow, but I wasn't that slow! :) I left them a message on their Facebook page and they were pretty quick in getting that corrected.
Incorrect certificate
Corrected
This was only the second time that I've run this race. The last time I ran it was 7 years ago. I did volunteer as one of their section commanders in 2010. I might want to run this race more often as it's a local race, pretty well organized, and logistically easy.
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