Carlsbad was my first of three marathons I'm running as "long runs" in preparation for Boston. I had enough of our horrible PNW winter and decided to head south for some sunshine, some beach time and a little hill training in the form of a marathon.
I arrived on Wednesday and it appears I brought the snow with me. Malibu was reporting snow fall and it was downright chilly in Carlsbad. The days leading up to the marathon were filled with 3-4 mile runs on the beach and longer barefoot walks. Since I was approaching the marathon as a long run, I didn't feel the need to taper.
Marathon morning I gave myself an hour to get to the start line. That seemed reasonable since my hotel was less than 5 miles away. I was wrong! Traffic was at stand still approaching the parking area, so I detoured and parked in a strip mall about a mile from the start. By the time I parked, I had less than 15 minutes to get to the race and as I approached, I heard the start gun go off. I found myself behind thousands of half marathoners and walkers... it took me an additional 5 minutes to cross the chip-mat ( both the marathoners and half-marathoners started at the same time). I was with my BF who was running the half, so we decided to stick together until the marathoners split off at the 5 mile mark. It was great fun to run together, weaving and dodging through the crowd. Soon I split-off to follow the full marathon course east and up a long grade while the rest of the crowd continued along the ocean. There were only 1,000 marathoners compared to over 6,000 half marathoners, so after the split the course really opened up. I really enjoyed the run up past the Airport. It was enough of an uphill to get the heart beating but not horribly difficult. The downhill was great for conditioning the quads! We returned to run along the ocean at mile 15, through nice rollers and a slight headwind after mile 18, which I found refreshingly cool.
I crossed the finish line in 4:14 chip time. I had a nice negative split of 2:13/2:01 with the last 6 miles being my fastest. The best part of the race was the way I felt afterwards… like I had just been out for a 4 hour walk. It’s nice to feel that way after running 26.2. Later in the afternoon I had enough energy to take a 3 mile barefoot walk along the beach for a total of 30.2 miles for the day. Maybe it’s time to think about an ultra!
FASHION FLASH....
Black marathon skirt, yellow Maniacs singlet, orange Brooks Adrenalines and sunglasses that BF deemed as making me look cool and unapproachable. No watch, no diamond studs, strictly business.
