I began running with AREC two years ago. It has motivated me to do many races I wouldn’t have done before, and I’ve gotten to meet many new people. I have enjoyed a running club that is about running first, even though I also enjoy my running club that is about socializing first. In fact, my favorite thing about AREC is the point standings and the fact that someone keeps track of our Personal Records, but doesn’t pressure us to train harder than we want.
Earlier this year, I heard of a group of AREC members who were running a marathon per month. I thought doing 1 marathon was goal enough for a significant achievement, but one a month for a year would be amazing. I quickly realized that this was a goal that was currently completely out of my reach. However, my co-worker and fellow AREC member Doug Martin and I came up with an idea to do a HALF-Marathon a month for a year.
Now this seemed like an achievable goal. Yet, it was crazy enough that non-runners wouldn’t understand why someone would want to do this. (Isn’t that part of the fun of running? I love getting crazy looks from non-runners who don’t get it.) We soon had a lunch meeting at the Irvine Spectrum to devise a plan. Doug and I had done 3 half Marathons together already. We did one in San Francisco that went over the Golden Gate Bridge in October ‘03, we did the first Arizona Rock ‘N Roll Half Marathon in January ‘04, and then the Pacific Shoreline Half Marathon in February ‘04. My PR to date was 2:06 at the Pacific Shoreline. (I had also done a half marathon in high school, but I was 40lbs smaller, didn’t feel pain, and was running 70 miles a week. I have no illusions of reaching that level of fitness again, so I’ll keep that time secret from the AREC records).
Personally, I have two goals to achieve through this process. First, I want to complete all 12 half-marathons consecutively without an injury that would force me to miss one. Second, I want to lower my time for the distance to sub-2:00:00.
We decided to start our Half-Marathon a Month with the I.C.B. Long Beach Half Marathon in October ‘04. It made sense to start with Long Beach because we had two months to train, and AREC is the official training club for that race. I had never done Long Beach before, and it was a much larger race than I expected. I knew AREC would have a tent for people to hang out before and after the race, but when it was 15 minutes to race time, and no Doug yet, I was wondering if we were still on. I went to the starting line, and on the way, there was Doug, ready to go. Our quest of 157.2 miles was about to begin.
I did not run a smart race on this course. I should have known not to try to run a PR on the first try. I was very frustrated during the first mile. I was behind lots of walkers and constantly had to start, stop, jump around people, jump on the curb, duck under a road sign and just did not have a rhythm. Then we went over the Queensway Bridge. I thought this was a flat course? By the turnaround by the Queen Mary, I was mentally “toast.” I was running too fast. I was trying to catch up my pace to the gun time, instead of knowing I had a 3-5 minute cushion because of chip timing. By mile 4, I was at 37 minutes gun time. I should have been at about 41.
All runners know of hitting the wall. During the Long Beach Half Marathon, I hit the wall in front of Yankee Doodle’s Sports Pub. The feeling was horrible. My legs felt like logs. My mind was wondering why I had ever started this. Who came up with this dumb idea? I spent much of the last five miles walking and slowly jogging. Many people passed me, including Doug at the 12th mile marker. My chip time for Long Beach was 2:14 and I was surprised it was that good.
The fun part of the Long Beach race was coming down the stretch with Ian, and passing him because his girlfriend called his cell phone, he ANSWERED IT on the course, and made sure she would see him finishing!!
Well, one down, and on to San Diego for the Open MRI Center’s Silver Strand Half Marathon. Doug’s girlfriend joined us for this trip. She did the 5K that started and ended at the finish line. We had dinner at a BBQ joint in Hillcrest with some of Doug’s friends and went to a dive bar for a pre-run beer. I try not to drink the night before a race, but the girls were cute, and I figured it would take my mind off the bad race from the month before. I guess it worked.
This was a very well planned race. It was an A to B run with the start a mile up from the Hotel Del Coronado, and ended at the Imperial Beach pier. Mile 1 was right in front of the Hotel. I had a MUCH better mindset for this race. The first 8 miles I kept chanting to myself, “Just slow down.” I kept a good pace, and kept hitting my correct pace of 9 minutes per mile. Another alteration I made was completely walking through the water stops. I let my heartbeat recover for 30 seconds and it seemed to keep me fresh.
At mile 5, the teenage volunteer at the mile post yelled “24 minutes!!” Those around me looked at each other with a very confused look. I knew we were doing well, but certainly not World Record pace. I started talking with someone from that pack kept a steady pace with her for the next 4 miles. Those San Diego girls are great runners, and I had to let her go finally. She beat me by about 4 minutes over the last 4 miles.
My time for this race was 2:04. I was very pleased that I had dropped my time ten minutes in one month!! Maybe sub-2:00:00 and a half-marathon-a-month were achievable? I went with Doug and his girlfriend for lunch at a Thai restaurant with renewed hope that I could reach both goals.
December brought us to the inaugural Orange County Marathon and Half Marathon. This was a cold, windy rainy morning with the race starting at Fashion Island Mall in Newport Beach. This was actually a good learning experience race. I learned to not let factors out of my control affect my ability to race well. And believe me, there were MANY factors out of my control. The easy things to notice were the lack of parking, the fact we had to pay an extra $5 for parking after paying for the race already, the lack of restrooms at the start, and again, not being able to catch up with Doug before the race started. (We need to improve on this one).
I will give them credit with the course. The only hill was during the first mile when we would hardly notice it. (Of course, again, with 20,000 people running there was no way to get a good rhythm, but I handled it much better this time.) Mile 3 thru mile 5 was all downhill, and the rest seemed totally flat on bike paths. A light rain started at mile 7 to keep everything cool. Again, I told myself to keep slowing down, and walked the water stops.
For the second race in a row, I ran a PR This time 2:01. I was in a great mood at the finish line, until I went to get my bag to put on a sweatshirt. It was really cold and raining now. The bags were lined up without any supervision, and basically without any logical layout. There was a line for 0-2000, 2000- 4000, and so on. People were holding up bags and screaming out numbers. Luckily, I had nothing but a sweatshirt I didn’t care if I lost, and had been smart enough to hide my keys on my car and not take my wallet or cell phone. I know people lost such items at this race, and am glad I wasn’t a race volunteer that had to deal with them. It took me 20 minutes to find my sweatshirt.
The final straw for this race was the shuttle back to the cars. The line to get on the buses was extremely long, and not moving. The race organizers made an announcement asking the public that anyone that had a SUV at the end please take runners back to their cars. I felt that was very unprofessional, and decided to go ahead and walk back ANOTHER mile and a half to the car. Leaving the race area, I ran into Doug and we got to talk about this race. As you can see, we had plenty to comment on.
Back at my car, I took off my shoes to get into my post-race sweats. I looked at my foot and saw the largest, most disgusting looking blister on my left pinky toe I had ever seen. It looked like a bright red cherry. It literally raised off my toe about 1 full centimeter. My joy of having run another PR was replaced by worry of how bad was this injury? I had made it 39.3 miles with only a self-induced problem during the first race. I was really looking forward to more races, but now I had some adversity to overcome.
Doug and I are scheduled to do the Arizona Rock and Roll Half Marathon in January, Pacific Shoreline Half Marathon in February, and the Agoura Hills Half Marathon in March. See us at any AREC run if you are interested in joining us in any of the upcoming races.