Rock n Roll Pasadena Half Marathon 2012

Friday
I took a personal day off from work to attend the expo. I had planned to eat ramen before driving out to Pasadena, but the traffic was horrible. So I skipped lunch and headed straight for the Pasadena convention center. Even as I arrived in Pasadena, I had to use side streets to get away from the crowds. I didn't remember this place being that busy in the day time, but I guess people were going out to lunch on a Friday afternoon with beautiful Southern California weather. I parked at the Paseo which gives you free 90 min parking with validation.

I got to the expo about 15 minutes before it opened. I met up with my friend, Marathon Mitch. The expo opened promptly at 1pm. We both went through the somewhat lackluster expo in a matter of minutes. There was hardly anything worth looking at, pretty unusual for a Competitor Group Rock n' Rock event.

Expo time!

I visited my friends at the RunRacing booth. They were carboloading for the expo and checking out the stuff that was in my goodie bag. There was a GU Roctane! But that was about it. They weren't impressed with the race shirt. I concurred. It was okay, but definitely not better than Long Beach's shirts.

The shirt is not better than Long Beach's

I visited the Dodge booth to fill out another questionnaire and won yet another draw-string bag. I refused the bag, but they gave me the red flashing light thing. I picked up some Sport Beans. I bought a pair of mid-weight Injinji socks because I really liked them when I tried them out at the Carlsbad Marathon. Since there was nothing else to see, I went back to the Paseo. I needed to replace one of my old dress shirts, so I bought one in Macy's, validated my parking ticket, and headed home.

Haul from the expo

Dude I was starving during my drive home. The traffic was so horrible that I couldn't make it back in time for any of the ramen shops. They all close at 2:30pm. So the backup plan was to eat at In-n-Out. I hardly eat here because the delicious food always gives me a massive food coma. I got my usual meal, 2 double doubles, fries, and a drink.

"carbo-loading" at In-n-Out

after

Sunday
Weird, my car had a little trouble starting up. Please don't tell me that it's breaking down already! Once it started, it was fine. I got to Pasadena at about 5:30am and parked at Parsons for $5. The address was on Walnut, but the entrance they want you to use was on Fair Oaks. They should probably let us know that in the instructions next time. At about 6am, I gathered my stuff and walked over to the Rose Bowl. It was a fairly long walk, about 1.5 miles. But I figured it would be good post-race walk which was why I didn't opt for the $10 pre-paid parking at the Rose Bowl. Along the way I talked to a girl who was from Phoenix, Arizona. She had just recently started getting into running half-marathons and was going to try and run a sub 2. I gave her a few tips.

The Rose Bowl

At around 7am, I checked my gear bag and went for a little jog to warm up. The right leg is at about 80%. It was good enough that I actually could do a warm up jog. I still had noticeable discomfort when I pushed off on the right leg. But it was much better. If the jog produced too much discomfort, I was going to abort starting in corral 1. But since it felt okay, I decided to give it a go in corral 1.

Starting line

Goal A: sub 2
Goal B: finish better than 3:21:08 to earn a free Brooks cap

The race
I started with a few of my friends at the back of corral 1. I ran the first mile at somewhat of a hard effort. The first mile marker was in the wrong spot, but I'm guessing the first mile was a low 8 min mile. There was a time when this pace felt much easier. I backed off a bit when we ran up California and Orange Grove. This felt like another fartlek run because I had to slow down whenever I started feeling like I was overheating. Going into this race, I figured my right ankle had enough to sustain about 6 good miles. When I first saw the course, I thought the out and backs off of Green would be a pain in the butt, but they ended up being pretty cool since I got to see all of my friends. After taking a walk break around mile 7, I just could not get the legs going again. My hip was starting to bother me at mile 11. But I took walk breaks to try and lessen the discomfort. It was a good thing that the race ended with a loop around the Rose Bowl. Having ran the loop many times, it was nice to have familiar surroundings when I was struggling with the right leg. There was a short climb around the end of mile 13. After that it was enjoyable to be able to run somewhat fast again for the finish line.
1-2: 16:55 (8:28)
3: 9:13
4: 9:35
5-6: 17:42 (8:51)
7: 9:53
8: 9:43
9: 10:53
10:10:05
11: 11:16
12: 10:58
13: 10:26
13.1: 0:51
Finish: 2:07:31

Post-race
I picked up a water bottle and a Gatorade bottle from the volunteers. I then spotted my friends in the photo line. We picked up some Snickers marathon bars. They went back to their car and I went over to the UPS trucks to pick up my gear bag. I changed out of my singlet and headed over to the beer tent. Just as I got my free beer, the post-race concert was just beginning. I made my way pretty close to the front and spotted one of my friends. There was a bunch of beach balls being tossed around. I only spotted her because I hit her with one of the beach balls. Later we were joined by our maniac friends. It was a good concert. It took me back to the 90s. :)

Extra long line for the diet beer

Sugar Ray!

After Sugar Ray had performed most of their hits, I said goodbye to my friends and made the trek over to my car. It seemed much longer going back and everyone around me was walking very slow. I just wanted to get back to my car so I can go eat! I finally made it to the ramen shop that I wanted to try out, Ramen Yukinoya in the City of Industry. It was not bad at all! I think I've finally found a ramen shop near where I live that's decent. This place is cash only. Everyone in the restaurant was glued to the TV because Jeremy Lin was helping the Knicks beat the Mavericks late in the 4th quarter. Asians never really cared about basketball until he showed up. Asians are usually more into golf and tennis. :)

Ramen Yukinoya's tonkotsu ramen and pork rice

Well, I guess it's always good to do a self-evaluation every once in a while. I knew it was too soon for a sub 2, but I gave it a shot and got some feedback on how much the ankle has healed. Once I'm able to start training again, I'll be sure to take it easy and not to rush back into it.

I picked up my current injury a week before the San Jose Half Marathon during a training run with Train 4 Autism. I had just run 2 half marathons under 2 hrs and thought it was a good idea to start ramping up the training. I knew that I should've skipped the run, but hindsight is always 20/20. Since getting hurt I always try not to DNS any of my races as long as I can meet the course time limit at each race. I knew that healing would take a bit longer if I continued to run marathons and half marathons. But I was willing to take that risk just to earn the Rock Idol medal. It's just something that I want to get out of the way.

I've played tennis and gone skiing despite injuries, so I'm somewhat accustomed to playing sports with an injury. I didn't think much differently with running. But having ran more races with an injury than I care to admit, if you're careful with the pain management, injuries eventually heal. I did not take a single pain pill for any of my races. I have to be able to tell if I need to back off during a race. Slowly but surely, things started to get better and the times began to drop down even though I had not been running at all between races. I've stuck to weight lifting, core exercises, and the occasional bike ride.

10/02/11 - 3:09:47 San Jose
10/30/11 - 3:21:08 Los Angeles
12/04/11 - 2:29:00 Las Vegas
12/26/11 - 2:27:40 Operation Jack
01/07/12 - 2:21:30 Disney World
01/21/12 - 2:24:51 Temecula Valley
01/29/12 - 2:08:41 Tinker Bell
02/19/12 - 2:07:31 Pasadena

No one needs to take things as far as I have. We all have our own adventures to go on. My current adventure may have been a long struggle for me, but I've enjoyed every bit of it. Sure I may have cursed myself immediately after each race, but after a day or two, I'm already formulating a strategy to tackle the next challenge. With that said, the challenge that I'm most looking forward to is training for a BQ. First I need to close out the maniacal chapter in my running life which is scheduled to end in June with the Seattle RnR Marathon. Then the races will really be few and far in between until I get it down to hopefully 4 marathons a year. I'll still be using half marathons and other races of various shorter distances as training runs.

Next stop: Little Rock