On September 25, 2011 I ran in the inaugural Half Moon Bay International Marathon, and finished! It is still hard for me to believe that I finally completed a full marathon, and I am still really thankful that I was able to do it considering the issue I had with my Peroneal tendons. I am also thankful that I was able to fit in my long training runs and that I never had any real disasters during training, except for one long run where I definitely had an electrolyte imbalance and mild heat exhaustion. It has taken me about six weeks to finally sit down and write a post, but here it is.
Night Before
The night before we went to the Half Moon Bay Brewing Company and I had a grilled chicken sandwich with french fries, and a small 12 oz beer in honor of my husband's birthday that day (September 24). My husband had the beer sampler, which looked delicious. After dinner, back in our hotel room, I had some Annie's Honey Bunny Grahams and dipped them in peanut butter - pretty delicious. We watched some half-decent movie on cable in the hotel room and then went to bed around 9:30 p.m.
Morning of the Race
My memory is getting a little foggy now on the details, but I believe that I got out of bed at around 5 a.m. the morning of the race. I took a hot shower, and had coffee, a peanut-butter and jelly sandwich on white bread, and probably a few other small items (likely a few Annie's Honey Bunnies Grahams), and drank some water.
I filled my CamelBak with Gu Brew for the race. I was worried about my electrolyte balance since I experienced some problems with that on one of my longest run (discussed in a prior post). I also packed Gu Energy Gels, Espresso Love and Vanilla Bean, which tastes like cake batter, yum! The race started at 7:00 a.m., so we started walking to the starting line from the hotel around 6:30 a.m.
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| Photo taken a few minutes before the race started. |
The setting of the course was absolutely beautiful. The majority of the course was on dirt packed trails along the coast. The beginning of the course had a grouping of small steep hills, probably starting at around mile 2.3 through mile 9. Then the course was flat until about mile 16 or 17, at which point there was another grouping of hills around the Ritz Carlton. Below is information about the course from my Garmin watch, followed by a few photos of the course.
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View of the course looking south right after the race started.   |
I finished in 4 hours and 28 minutes, with a 10:14 minute mile average pace. I had hoped to run closer to a 10:00 minute mile, but in the end I was happy to have finished. Below is a shot of me crossing the finish line!
I didn't experience any pain (or if any very slight) in my ankle or in my hips during the race, which was great. At one point I think I twisted my ankle, but it did not hurt until after I finished the race. I was limping the rest of the day after the race and the following day, but after putting my entire foot in an ice bath the following evening, the pain completely went away!! All-in-all, it was a really successful race!
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