2012 OC Half Marathon - Race Recap

Date: May 6, 2012
Location: Fashion Island (Newport Beach) to OC Fairgrounds (Costa Mesa), CA
Start: 6:15am
Finish: 1:45:58
Elevation:

Mile 1 - 8:09                     Mile 8 - 8:08
Mile 2 - 7:23                     Mile 9 - 7:54
Mile 3 - 8:03                     Mile 10- 8:10
Mile 4 - 8:01                     Mile 11 - 8:04
Mile 5 - 7:45                     Mile 12 - 7:55
Mile 6 - 8:08                     Mile 13 - 7:42
Mile 7 - 8:21                     Mile .30 - 2:12

I got up this morning with the intention of setting a new PR but I fell short. My training has not been stellar lately so I shouldn't be too disappointed with my time but I am. Inconsistent pacing and going out too fast may have been what contributed to my sub-par performance. I guess if nothing else, I got a good long run in. I have another chance next week to try again. I will spend this week doing a couple of shorter runs to try and align my pacing.

And with this race, I've completed the Beach Cities Challenge!

I ran the Long Beach Marathon last year, Surf City Half this year and the OC Half Marathon today to complete the challenge and picked up an extra medal. It is huge and heavy! 

I arrived at the runners drop-off area at Fashion Island around 5:20am. I saw that the marathoners were about to take off but there was some sort of delay so they didn't start until about 5:45am. I went into the Marriott to use their restrooms. Real restrooms! A nice perk to this race. I had a lot of time to kill so I stretched a ton and jogged around to warm up my legs. I've been dealing with some major shin split issues lately on my training runs so I've been rolling it out these past couple of days in hopes of preventing it from happening today. It worked! And with 15 minutes left until the half marathon start time, I checked in my sweats and headed into my corral. The weather was perfect for me but maybe it might have been warmer to some for that time of day. It was overcast and to me it was perfect running weather so the fact that I didn't do well is no part due to the weather. The half marathon started right on time at 6:15am. The course was well organized and manned by some great volunteers. The only thing that was not so smooth was the issue with exiting the fairgrounds parking lots after the race. Because there was a half and full marathon going on, as well as a 5K, all the exits out of the fairgrounds were blocked due to the way the courses were routed and we were not able to leave until about 9am, about an hour after I cross the finish line. That's water under the bridge now.

So one of the side effects of running at threshold, at least for me is that all my race photos are fugly. I mean they are usually fugly anyways but when I am mustering up all my energies to run a good race some things gotta give and that something is really really bad race photos. This is the only one I found where I actually appear to be semi smiling. Can't tell where this was taken but probably early on in the race. I look like death in my other photos.