2013 Los Angeles Marathon - Race Recap

Date: March 17, 2013

Location: Dodger Stadium to the Santa Monica Pier
Start: 7:25am
Finish: 04:28:27
Elevation:

This race has been sponsored by Honda for as long as I can remember but this year Asics is the title sponsor. I really like Asics gear and wonder how the new sponsorship will differ this year.

I made a very quick trip up to the LA Convention Center on Friday with some coworkers to pick up my bib. It was such a quick trip that I didn't get any photos of anything. They've moved the expo back to the Convention Center this year and the expo is sponsored by Nutribullet. The expo use to be held at the Convention Center before they changed the course/management company.

Neon Asics green shirt in honor of Saint Patrick's Day which happens to fall on Sunday.

This was my carbo-loading meal. We went to a new to us restaurant that was amazing! I hope to post about that soon. I had not had much of an appetite since returning from vacation. Maybe I miss the island or just being on vacation mode, not sure what it was because I love me some pasta.

Woke up at 4am on Sunday morning to get ready to depart for Dodger Stadium at 4:30. I didn't get much sleep the night before due to noisy neighbors and only maybe 3 hours on Saturday night. I was tired as heck. Luckily, my honey was dropping me and friend Darren off. Even though I was untrained and sleepy, there was no denying that it was going to be a beautiful day for running. You can even say that it was ideal running weather. It was not too cold even in the early morning hours and stayed overcast for most of the morning. This time, I could not "blame it on the rain." This must be running weather karmic repayment for CIM. I'll take it and run!

Shortly before starting time, on our second trip to the potta-potties, Darren and I got stuck in some slow a$$ moving lines and ended up in the open corral which was fine in the end. We started out pretty slow due to the congestion and eventually settled into a pretty good pace. It was way too fast in my untrained condition but it was a good pace. We ran together until about mile 8.5, at which point I could no longer keep up.

I slowed down a bit and the 4:15 pace team eventually caught up to me. I ran with them for quite a while, until about mile 18. I was really starting to fade in a very bad way. I was feeling the way I normally would feel around mile 22. Again, due to wedding planning and honeymooning, I had not trained for anything over 10 miles at a go since CIM and it was starting to haunt me early. I mentally threw in the towel at this point and just went into survival mode. I sat down at a bench in the VA grounds feeling defeated and just really sore all over. After sitting there for maybe 5 minutes, I got up and started a run/walk thing to the end. It was painful for sure. It could have been way worse. I remember one year, it was actually my second LA Marathon, I had not trained for it and it took me 6 hours to complete. I'm guessing those couple of years of running experiences that I had under my belt somehow toughen me up a bit. It's all good though because yesterday's experience once again ignited my desire to train because frankly I would rather hurt a little bit during training than a lot at a race.

Despite my lack of training, LA is just one of those races that I will always love. Even when it hurts so good. I have two more years to go until I hit my goal of running this race 10 consecutive years in a row.