2010 Long Beach Half-Marathon

Finished my second half-marathon, ever. Felt much better finishing this time, compared to my first effort (2010 Disneyland Half-Marathon). And, I achieved a new PR by 7 minutes, 13 seconds. I'm still doing too much walking. But overall, my running is improved, so I'm happy about that!

Breaking Rules..
Everyone says.. DO NOT try anything new on race day. (eg. shoes, gels, supplements, etc)  Throwing caution to the wind, I cautiously tried a few new things, and I lived to tell the tale.
 - new socks
 - Hammer Endurolyte Capsules
 - New GU Gel, sort of.. GU Roctane vs my usual GU Espresso Love

Carb-Load Dinner #1:   Sole Runners!
The Sole Runners met at a Long Beach Pizzeria for an excellent pizza/pasta dinner to launch their upcoming Fall/Winter Training session. I finally got to meet TheRunningGreenGirl in person, as well as Sole Runners Founder/Coach Steve Mackel. What a great group of friendly & positive runners! Also, briefly met Love2Mags. Signed up for the next training session. One of the mentors gave me this tiny satchel with a handwritten inspirational quote that the Sole Runners hand out to runners on the course.   How cool is that? Really nice!

I was going to save it for during the race, like mile 11.. when I would be sucking wind and really needing it. But, I had enough gear, and decided instead to open it up right before I left early Sunday morning. 

Saturday Expo

Went to the Expo late afternoon, right before a carb-loading pre-race Tweetup arranged by Glenn (@GWJones00 of TheRunningFatGuy). Registration & bib pick-up went very quick and smooth, almost without a hitch. They didn't have any more of my size expo shirts. Not entirely unexpected, since I strolled in with only an hour left in the expo! Hopefully, @Chicrunner can help me out here .. because the shirt looks AWESOME!!

Earlier in the day, I had almost the worst luck a runner could have the day before a race. My 3-yr old daughter dropped a book on my right little toe. Not just any book, a large picture dictionary. She can not even read yet! What is she doing walking around with a dictionary? It was not that bad, and actually didn't even hurt.. but I decided I did not want it rubbing against my 4th toe for 13.1 miles. I was going to use a bandaid or wrap it in a tegaderm from my work. At the expo, I found these cool Injinji Performance Toesocks, which looked interesting and felt great. They have 5 separate little sleeves, one for each toe and all seamless.

I bought two pairs for $20 cash .. still undecided if I was going to wear them or stick with my cheapo Champion C9 socks from Target. It would be a game-day decision.

Carb-Load Dinner #2
Tweet-up pasta dinner at La Parolaccia in Long Beach. Bunch of running tweeps! Did not get to meet everyone, but it was a fun lively bunch of us, and the food was great. Service was ok, especially for a pretty large group. Got to chat with TheRunningGreenGirl, Love2Mags, and our gracious host, Glenn, TheRunningFatGuy. There were others, but unfortunately I didn't catch tweet handles. I think Carol.. and Trevor (who was running his first-ever Half-Marathon!).

I went home, procrastinated, ate some more, and finally got around to arranging my music, and getting my gear together. Surfing the web while songs loaded, I reread @RunnrGrl 's Chicago 10-10-10 Recap. Great read. I liked the idea of chopping a race into parts, each with it's own "plan". Speaking of music, I guess I should add one more new thing.. I decided to go without my iPod this race. Instead, I just loaded my music on my Droid phone using this program called DoubleTwist. I have been running with Nuun water for my long runs, but my wife says the race is so well-supported, I should just use the water stations. I decided to pack a few capsules of Hammer Endurolytes, which I have never tried before. Directions say take 1-3 capsules every hour. Hmm.. I did NOT tell my wife about the electrolyte caps or the new Toesocks. She would just call me crazy and tell me not to use them on a race day. She did tell me to try the GU Roctane for my first gel.. which I did.

RACE DAY 

Hand-written inspiration quote from Sole Runners. THANK YOU!!

Alarm: 4:15am, ugh. Stuck to my routine here. Toasted english muffin with a little peanut butter. Coffee. Tried to go to execute a pre-emptive strike against the runner's trots.. nada. Drove to the Metro station to take the Blue line to the race. Still hadn't decided about my socks, so I brought my old C9 socks with me. One more trip to the porta-potties. Felt some rumbling.. but still, nada. Guess I'm bringing it with me. I knew some of the runner tweeps, bloggers, and some work friends of mine, were going to meet at the back of Corral #4, so that's where I headed. My knees felt great. Feet felt great. Socks felt great. I ditched the old socks and decided to roll the dice on my fancy new Injinji socks. Runners started packing in, and still no sign of anyone I recognized. Something didn't seem right here..

I notice the neon green pace sign. "4:15".. hmm, that would be a 2:07.30 half-marathon pace!! Sh*t.. I'm in the wrong corral! Idiot! I took a picture of the sign marker at the front of corral #4, while standing in the back of corral #3. Duh.. too late now. I hugged the fence and let these Wave 3 guys run by, hoping to merge back into the stream near the back of Wave #4.

My race started, and I was off running. Felt pretty good, and once the crowd thinned, who do I run into? Glenn.. (TheRunningFatGuy). I also met a friend of his, blogger Slomohusky. We ran together for a few minutes and chatted before they pulled away. I mainly did run/walk, and tried to stay in a higher heart rate zone, to determine my walk intervals. I'm not sure that worked out too well. My heart rate never really got too high, or too low, so it ended up just being random run/walk intervals. I managed to stay well-below 170 and realized that I'm way undertrained. For averaging 146bpm, I wasn't moving very fast. I need to work on my cardiac conditioning, and losing a few more pounds. But more so, I just need to get more medium and long runs in. What ended up bothering me most were my knees & hips. After Disneyland Half, I was sidelined with a left quad injury for 3 weeks, so I really only got in 2-3 mediocre long runs before Long Beach, with mainly crosstraining (swimming & rowing) in between. Definitely undertrained. Oh well..

No real drama out on the course. I used 2 GU gels.. first the Roctane GU at around Mile 3-4. No noticeable difference over the regular Espresso Love GU. Alternated about every 3-4 miles gel breaks with water+Endurolytes. I was worried about stomach pains so I only took 1 Endurolyte capsule (instead of 2-3). Early on, I felt like I had to pee, and possibly more. Surprisingly, I just kept passing bathrooms and felt like I could make it to the next bathroom. Around midway, my bladder and bowels decided to stop bugging me and go along with my plan. From the start, I felt like I was sweating a lot for some reason. I missed the first water station that was on the left. I was on the right and couldn't cut across the herd of stampeding runners. I hit all the other water stations, but skipped the gatorade/powerade, on the advice of my wife. Along the beach path, around Mile 6-7, it got really crowded. I don't know why I was in such a rush, since I'm so slow.. but I decided to pass some walkers on the right, in the sand. I did not twist my ankle, but as soon as my right foot hit the sand, I got a sharp pain in that ankle. That's about it. Ran thru it and it went away. Humbling.. I saw a lot of fit-looking runners along the way, stopped, leaning on trees, fences, each other.. stretching out their legs with pained looks on their faces. I hoped they weren't running the full marathon, because they still had a long way to go! Maybe I paced myself better this time, but I didn't have any cramps until the very end. My legs felt good. Feet felt good, and pretty light & cool. I noticed the lack of any seams or stitching rubbing across top of my toes (unlike my old socks). Preliminary two thumbs up for the Injinji socks! Around Mile 12, I had a few fluttery twitches in both calves. Stopped for a few seconds to get my calves sprayed with Kool 'N Fit .. which really did seem to work nicely.. or maybe it was just a cool refreshing placebo. Whatever works..

Was really starting to feel some pain around mile 12.5 in my right hip and knee, but I was still running. I heard my name and looked left.. saw my wife and 3 kids jumping up and down screaming my name at mile 13. This time, I managed to actually smile and RUN across the finish mat:      3:06:59

Sorry no race pics. Major props to Glenn and others who seem to do full video documentaries and tweet while running a marathon. Don't know how you guys do it?! I just focused on not falling or dying. I did have to switch up my playlist on my phone at one point, so this was my chance to take my only race shot.

Reflections..
I can not be anything but happy. I may be slow, but I am blessed to be able to move. I was undertrained for Long Beach, and still managed to PR by 7 minutes! Even sweeter.. this time my legs did not feel totally wrecked and useless after the finish. The whole event was so nice and well-run, well-supported, awesome shirt, nice medal, etc. I can see why it is one of my wife's favorite marathons. And now, mine too. I used to think running was just about shoes and running. I can now see how so many bloggers get freebies and post reviews for products. Without even trying, I feel like I could review a half-dozen different products from this race alone! (but, I'll spare you) Finally, typing up this race recap, I realize how much goes into other people blog posts.. and for all of that, I am grateful. This is my first "real" recap, so my apologies if this is too long, too short, or too rambling. Thanks for reading this far. Time for me to go look for my next race..