Laguna Hills Memorial Half Marathon

I've ran this race 4 straight years, but skipped it last year to run the LA Marathon. Since the LA Marathon was moved to another date, I'm back to run one of my favorite races. I love courses that are undulating. Flat courses are unappealing to me. They might net me a better finishing time, but I love the challenges of running uphills and downhills. From looking at the final instructions, I've realized that they've made a few changes to the race course. They took out the initial loop around the mall and started both the 5k'ers and half marathoners at the same time.

I got there pretty early around 5:10 am. I parked at my usual spot at the Taj Mahal, but later decided to park a little bit closer to the starting line. It turned out to be a good call since I managed to park in the volunteer parking lot before they blocked it off. I picked up my bib and milled around a little bit. Didn't see anyone I know. Went back to my car to attach the timing chip to my shoe and the bib to my singlet.

T-minus 1:19:45

The goal was to run around 1:59 give or take 10 minutes. My legs have been getting stronger so I wanted to push the pace early in the race to see how they would react. My right ankle has been bothering me still so I had to factor in the possibility of me running into trouble which would cause me to finish around 1:59 or even slower. As it would turn out, I know my body pretty well.

Why do I always get so nervous before a race? :)

After using the potty several times. I headed back to my car, but ran into a few familiar faces: Mitch, Jeremiah (Mitch's friend), Nadia (ran the 5k), Andrea, and Jeff. After chatting a bit, I wished everyone a great race and went off for my warm-up jog. Nothing hurt, so I made my way to the 7:30 min mile pace section of the starting corral. It seemed like everyone had the same idea, since I saw the same people again. After a few opening memorials to those in the armed forces and the national anthem, it was race time!

Race
The start was still somewhat clogged even though we were really close to the front. I followed Jeff and let him pave the road. He's a much stronger runner so once the crowd loosened up, he took off on me. I then saw Andrea who is also a stronger runner than I am. Mitch and I followed her for a while. I dropped back after the 2nd mile to conserve energy. Nearing the mile 3 marker, I saw my coworker who lived in the area. She came out again this year to watch me run by. I definitely got caught up with the 5k runners and was pulled by them. Once they broke off for their finish line, I finally settled back to a more reasonable pace. I took a PowerGel at the 1 hour mark. Mile 8 was when it started to heat up just in time for the steady climb. On my way to mile 9, I saw my friend Alison. I only recognized her because of her awesome Ironman visor. I have a hard time recognizing people when I'm suffering during a race. I caught and passed Mitch. He was also having difficulty with the heat. I took a salt tab at mile 10 and boy did I need it. The last 5k was horrible. The right hip just did not feel right. I tried to focus on my form and breathing. Then the right foot/ankle started feeling off. Just to make things interesting, let's throw in back spasms at mile 11. I was tempted to just walk it in, but again I just slowed down and tried to find a comfortable pace. I had to jog it in. In the final mile, I was passed by the runners carried flags for each of the armed forces. That kind of got me going a little. I had a very hard time convincing myself to open up my stride for the finish. But I was able to pass a grandpa and a girl in the last 100m. :)
1: 7:30
2: 8:03
3: 7:55
4: 8:39
5: 8:50
6: 8:31
7: 8:56
8: 9:30
9: 9:34
10: 8:58
11: 10:38
12: 10:07
13: 10:28
13.1: 0:59
Finish: 1:58:45

I waited for Mitch to finish. Looks like he had a rough day since this guy almost always beats me. His excuse was the heat and he couldn't find his Garmin this morning. :) We made our way to the food line. They handed out Monster water. I was sort of baffled thinking that they were trying to kill us with a caffeine overdose. But the volunteers assured us that it was only water. I took a can and also a Myoplex Chocolate Cream drink and spotted the RunRacing booth. I went over to say hi to my friends Danica and Lynda. We then headed over to pick up our T-shirt and goodie bag.

I picked up another can of water for Danica and Lynda. Danica couldn't believe water would come in a can. Yes, those are my chicken legs.

I headed over to the finish line area to watch my friend Alison finish, but I missed it. She finished ahead of schedule. She had just crossed the line and was talking to her mom. I went back to the RunRacing booth and hung out for a little bit mostly to get my bearings straight. After eating a piece of banana and drinking the Myoplex, I was good to go. I said my goodbyes and headed to the shuttles to get a ride back to my car. The girl I sat next to on the bus also ran the Palos Verdes Marathon. What a small world. Next stop San Diego!

Sabotage

05-22-10 - I ran ~11.8 hilly miles in 1:47:30 at approx. 9:07 pace. Had a close call with a car too near the end of my run. It felt good today. I was almost 4 minutes faster than 2 weeks ago. The ankle still felt weak on the uphills. The anterior tibial tendon was still puffy after a run, so I slapped on the ice pack. I need to buy a new icepack. :)

Spongebob icepack strapped on with a rubber band :)

I felt as if my body's self-preservation tactics would always kick in whenever it knows that we're going out for a long run. I would feel sick and then contemplate scrapping or downgrading the run. Also I usually suffer from GI distress right before a marathon. Last night I had a bout of diarrhea. I'm guessing it was from eating too much shrimp chips. MSG was one of its ingredients. My body can't really tolerate too much of it. So I guess it was a bad idea that I ate a huge bag full of it. :)

Shrimp chips - too much of a good thing

Who knows... maybe I subconsciously make poor snack decisions so I can get out of running. :) Anyway I think my body is almost ready to handle some light regular mileage. I hope so, because these 5 hour marathons are really hard to handle mentally. I hope to set a new PR at the Laguna Hills Memorial Half Marathon. It shouldn't be too hard since my PR is only 1:54:17, but my endurance is still lacking. I can't wait to run the San Diego Rock n' Roll Marathon. The race has undergone changes, but I'll still run this race every year. I really think that they shouldn't have added the half marathon. They were getting plenty of runners even as a marathon-only event. But a business has to make decisions based on maximizing profit and the half marathon brings in more profit per runner per hour.

Palos Verdes Marathon

Do Over
Not being able to complete the Country Music Marathon in Nashville really bothered me. Me and my rather obsessive compulsive personality did not like the weather-forced DNF one bit! I was supposed to take a month off from running a marathon in May due to my ailing ankle and hip. But I kept my eye on the Palos Verdes Marathon. I've always loved this gem of a race. In 2008 I ran the half and in 2009 I ran the full. Still I had all the intention in the world to sit out the entire month. But when I took a ~12 mile run, the body parts felt good enough that I sent in my registration the Monday before the race. I've taken a break from running for the most part, so today was both a test run and a make-up marathon for the one in Nashville.

Pre-Race Stuff
I got to the park at about 5:30am. I went over to use the portapotty and to pick up my bib. They did not have my name on the list, so I had to fill out a scan-tron card. They just assumed that I've paid. I bumped into Marcia, Mitch, Nadia, and James. Right before the start, I bumped into a few more friends, Deo, John, Rocco, and Yolanda. I'm probably missing a few. We just keep bumping into each other at these races.

The volunteers were not morning people :)

The plan for this race was to finish around 5 hours. I wanted to push hard for the first half and just jog/walk my way in for the second half. I also wanted to use this race to fiddle with my salt/gu schedule. Most of the mile markers were off so I will not be listing the splits.

1st half - ~2:00:00
I intended to go out as hard as I could, but I was stuck behind very slow runners early on. After getting around them, I finally was able to open up the stride. I ran next to Skinnyrunner for the first 2 miles. I did not know it was her until after seeing her picture on her blog. She quickly ran away from me on the first big climb. I realized that I could not climb very well with my bad ankle. It was great seeing Colin and Kristin on their training run, two very great runners! They will be running Comrades very soon. By mile 8, my hip was already feeling weak. I hung on as well as I could. I wanted to get to the half at about 1:54, but I'll take the 2 hrs.

2nd half - ~2:50:40
I was taking a salt cap every hour, but had to increase the frequency since my muscles were headed to cramp city in a hurry. I was taking about 1 Powergel every 30 minutes and sometimes sooner if I felt hungry. I need to work on my race morning fueling. The next 3 miles was not pretty. My legs were entering marathon-shuffle mode. I saw Colin and Kristin again a little after mile 16. There were miles where I opened up my stride which felt okay for awhile, but the hip and foot would complain. So I alternated between shuffle, walk, and actual running. My friends (Jake, John, Noel, Rocco) started to pass me around mile 18. But I was able to pass 2 of them right before the finish line.

Finish - 4:50:40 (watch)

Post-Race Stuff
While a bunch of us were waiting for Jessica to finish, I ran into Lori. I had no idea she was running this race. She was pacing her friend in his first marathon. This was and probably will be the last time that I ever beat her in a marathon. :) Unfortunately Jessica could not finish. She's been dealing with the lingering effects of food poisoning. She was able to cover about 23 miles before being picked up by the sag wagon.

Finally a shirt that looks good enough to wear! I don't mind a cotton T as long as the design is good.

I swear I'm getting out of this maniac business. 2011 will be the year that I finally get healthy. Then I'll put in some real training and run some quality marathons. In case you're wondering, I drove all the way to Costa Mesa to eat ramen. The wait for ramen was 1 hour! I shopped for snacks in Mitsuwa to kill time. Well worth the wait. I've said it before, maybe I need to change my blog to "I Love Ramen". :)

OC Marathon Section Commander#1 Volunteer Report

The Plan
Just a quick recap concerning my injuries. Back in October when I first hurt my Achilles, that was when I halted my out-of-control race sign-ups. Too bad I was signed up for races clear out to June of this year. But luckily, I have a breaks in May and July. This year has been rough having to get the ailing body to the finishing line without causing additional damage. There has been more rest than actual training. Every time I've felt better, I've had to fight the urge to fill those months. What I've been doing to prevent myself from signing up for races was to volunteer at these races. Thus I was section commander#1 for the OC Marathon. I was in charge of the first 3 aid stations, approximately the first 4 miles of the course.

Getting ready for the action
I got to the starting line at Fashion Island at around 4:30am. Hopped on the cart and drove through the course. It was really dark and I missed the turn at Narcissus Ave. Oops! I eventually got to first aid station at mile 2 and watched them setup. I'm definitely not used to being a commander. All I wanted to do was get out of my cart and help setup. After I checked up on the 3 aid stations, I parked myself near the first aid station. I radioed in that section 1 was ready to go. Shortly thereafter, the race began.

Mile 2 Aid Station

Early Race Action
I got out my camera and took a video of the first runner. Then I tried to find my friends in the sea of humanity. I saw Sam and Jeff running strong. I got pictures of them but really didn't have time to zoom in since they were moving pretty fast.

The half marathon leader approaching the aid station at mile 2.

Later I spotted James, Howard, and Marcia. But I could not get clear pictures of them. It was rather hilarious to see Bert and Ernie out there. Most of the people I spotted were Marathon Maniacs since they really stood out in the crowd with those super bright yellow singlets.

Marathon Maniacs: Silver and another dude

Bert and Ernie!

Mile 4 Aid Station

Impromptu Rescue Missions
There was pretty much no problems except for a few things. Before the race, we had to go pickup keys from a course marshal since her car alarm was going off and they were threatening to tow her car. Then a runner was feeling really nauseous and wanted to drop out of the race. I called it in and a van came rather quickly to pick her up. There was an angry homeowner whose house got trampled on because the portapotty lines were pushing the runners' path onto his lawn. Looks like they will need to put those portapotties somewhere else next time. After my section was cleared, I was told to take the cart to the finish area. No problem! But here was where the fun began!

I drove the course and headed for the finish. This was very very slow since the course was pretty narrow when I got to the bike trails. Sometimes I would have to follow walkers that couldn't hear my loud cart because they were listening to their music. I was fine with that because it's their race. I wanted to hurry up to the finish to watch my friends, but at the same time I didn't want to disturb their race experience. I ended up giving rides to runners that wanted to drop out. I picked up 1 runner while in the Back Bay section and drove her to the medical tent at mile 9. From there I picked up 2 people that wanted to go to the finish area. It took forever to cover those 4 miles. Plus when the roads were finally wide enough for me to drive faster, I got yelled at by a cop that jumped in front of my cart saying that I couldn't do what I was doing since I was driving against oncoming traffic. I told him I was transporting injured runners so he let me go and told me to be careful. Thank you officer, I was.

Once I dropped them off, I had a hard time getting the cart to the return spot near lot F. I finally just drove out of the parking lot at Newport where the half marathoners were entering and went all the way around to the other side using Arlington.

As I was going to checkout at the volunteer area, Sam spotted me. He was with Lori. I took a picture with them and agreed to hang out with them later. Luckily I was able to see some of my friends finish. I'm glad I saw Howard almost break 3:54. I also saw James, Dennis, Rocco, and Deo finish. Dang it, I hate being on the sideline!

James approaching the finish

Dennis approaching the finish, who just ran Boston and Big Sur

Lori and Sam

Dude, Where's My Car?
I met up with Lori and then we went out to find her car. That took us awhile to find it since all she remembered was that it was near some trees, grass, and the shuttle pickup spot. She thought it was in parking lot 1. She was in D1. That was actually fun since I was sitting in a cart for most of the day. We met up with Billy and drove to the Costa Mesa Omelette Parlor. Rachel, Alan, and Sam met us there. It was about a 15 minute wait before we were seated. I had a ribeye steak and eggs... my favorite breakfast food and I didn't even run today. Afterward Lori drove me to Fashion Island to pick up my car. Thus ended a long but fun day with the OC Marathon.

Ribeye, 3 eggs, and potatoes

Other Thoughts
I really really want to sign up for Palos Verdes, but I also really really want to heal up so that I can start working on a BQ. My anterior tibial tendon has been bothering me lately as well as the hip and weak butt muscles. I'm pretty sure that I don't want to volunteer again so soon because it killed me to sit in the cart. As fun as it was, I just wanted to ditch the cart and run a few miles.