Carlsbad Half-Marathon Race Recap

This past Sunday I ran my first distance race of the year - the Carlsbad Half Marathon! I had never run this race before for some reason, but most of my local running friends run it each year, and have always said that they liked the course. The course goes out and back along the beach and has moderate rolling hills.

 

Race Expo

As part of my duties as a running ambassador for the San Francisco Marathon, I worked the SFM booth at the Carlsbad Race Expo all day Saturday. Working the SFM booth was a lot of fun and starkly different from my regular booth experiences I've had for my day jobs. More on my blog "Tradeshow Warrior".

Training

To prepare for this race I laid out 9-week plan which involved 5 days of running and 2 rest days. In those 5 days I scheduled 2 easy runs, 1 hill/speed day, 1 tempo run, and 1 long run. I've historically been terrible about staying on a training schedule consistently over the span of several months due to conflicts with work and my work travel schedule, but I'm proud to say that for the first time in years I didn't deviate too much from the schedule I had laid out! Spending the weeks around Christmas and New Years on the East Coast threw things off a bit, but overall I did pretty well.
 

Pre-Race Time

The night before the race David and I went to Poseidon in Del Mar for a nice sunset dinner. I have been wanting to take David here for a long time, and was very excited when a Groupon-like deal came up on Sign-On San Diego's Daily Deal. $35 for $75 worth of food! Awesome! We each had an amazing 3-course prix fixe meal which was part of their San Diego Restaurant Week offering. Yum, yum, yum.

For breakfast the next morning before the race I had half of my usual pre-long run meal. I usually have egg whites on an english muffin with bacon and a bowl of oatmeal and chia cereal. I had run out of eggs and bacon so instead I just doubled up on the serving of oatmeal and chia. (This might have been an issue later.) I drank some Gu Brew on the drive up to Carlsbad, and had half a Power Bar 30 minutes before the race start. Overall I had about 700 calories before the race. I hate eating race fuel along the course and have found that if I have a 600-800 calorie breakfast before a long run, I can usually make it between 10-12 miles without having to refuel. In the event that I did need to refuel, I had two packets of Gu Roctane with me (which I hoped I wouldn't need. I didn't! Yay!)

Race Start

The day before,  I found something in the supply box at the expo that got me really excited. A VIP Parking Pass for race morning since I was part of the "Race Crew". Score! I'm totally a "slide up to the start line with just enough time to run to the portapotties and then go" type of person, so having VIP parking and getting to save time there was such a treat! (I'm also a "if I walk up to the gate right as the plane starts boarding I've won" type of person as well. I hate standing around waiting!)

I knew that several of my friends would be running the race, and I was specifically looking for my Rock Running friends at the start line because I was hoping to run with them. Amazingly, out of the thousands of people milling around, I found them!

Ready to Run

As luck would have it, when I turned on my Garmin race morning it was dead. ARGH! I had charged it the night before but my laptop had gone to sleep at some point, and if the watch is connected to the base and the computer has the power off, the base drains the watch battery. (I discussed this with an engineering friend of mine a while ago and he gave me along explanation of the flaws in the circuitry design which allowed this to happen.) My friend Stacey had forgotten her Garmin completely, so we were going to be running 'naked' for this race. We set a goal of 1:45 for the race and tried to run with  a feel of a 8:00-8:30 pace.

We started off with what I thought was a good pace, but I noticed after a few miles that I was starting to get really winded. Finally at mile 4 Stacey asked someone running near us what time it was. Oh no! We ran the first 4 miles at a sub 8:00 pace! I knew that I personally couldn't sustain this pace for the next 9 miles, started stressing about burning out from running too fast up front .. and maybe this is about where my mind got the best of me. About a mile later my stomach started cramping ... just like in the Rock 'n Roll San Diego race this past June! (When I was also running with my Rock friends. BAD deja vu!)  I let Stacey go ahead at one point and started to run/walk, and just like at the RNR, my stomach felt better when I walked. The pain wasn't anything that had me running for the bathroom (as if you wanted to know that),  the pain just felt like a knotting that would subside when I walked. I ended up walking/running for the next 9 miles, and gave up my hopes for a 1:45 PR.

Finishing the Race

Back in June when I was cramping during the RNR Marathon I really started to freak out, stress out, and get really down. I walked and ran for the majority of the last 20 of 26, miles  and had to hold back tears (unsuccessfully) for a lot of that time. After spending four months training diligently for something, its devastating to see it all blow up in just one day. Luckily, I didn't feel this same despair in this race, and just accepted that some days aren't your day, enjoyed the fact that I was running along the beach, and just appreciated that I even had the ability to run a race like this. Not everyone can run a half marathon, and I've been blessed with the ability to do it over and over again for years, pretty much injury free!

As I approached the finish line I had no idea what time it was (there were no clocks anywhere on the course!) and was expecting to see a 2:20 finish. I was shocked to see the clock say 2:03 ... and since I started a few minutes behind the gun, this meant that I probably finished right around 2 hours! I looked up my official finish time later and was excited to see a 2:00:54 (9:14 pace). Excited but disappointed of course. I'm so hard on myself. :o(

My half marathon PR is 1:52, I've run the first half of a marathon in 1:48, and I feel that since I could run a 1:48 and then run 13 more miles, I should be able to run a 1:45 half marathon! I also ran a 1:17 15K two weeks prior to Carlsbad, and doing the math I should have totally been able to run a 1:45 even if I significantly slowed down in the last few miles! Sigh.

Triple Crown

This year I've decided to go for another 3-race series (similar to California Dreamin') called the Triple Crown. This series includes the Carlsbad Marathon, the La Jolla Half Marathon, and the America's Finest City Half Marathon. I've never run the first two, but have run the third several times. If you complete all three races in the series you get an extra medal! Who doesn't love the bling? The next race in the series (La Jolla) isn't until April, and between now and then I am running the San Dieguito Half Marathon in February, and I'm doing the Super Seal Sprint Triathlon in March. It's going to be a busy race year!