![]() Run
Comments: Started in the pouring rain, but with temps in the 60's, once I started running it felt great. Of course, I tend to be a fan of the rain as long as it's not too cold. Decided to run a mile and then walk .2 each mile, since I was severely under trained for this marathon ( ran a total of about 40 miles in the last 2 months and nothing over 4 miles at once). I got into a good rhythm and the intervals were working great. The rain was pretty continuous and sometimes it was a downpour. I was totally soaked and loving it! There was some lightning, but it was pretty far away and I wasn't too concerned. Crossed my mind a couple times that being out on the beach in a lightning storm probably wasn't the safest thing, but that was about it. At mile 9 a car pulled up on the beach next to me. The woman driving said there was a really bad lightning storm about to hit and they were trying to get the runners to take shelter until it passed. I asked her if they were closing the course and she said no, I could continue on, but they were really trying to get runners to take shelter. I told her that was a pretty hard call to make if I had a "choice". I thanked her, but told her I was going to keep going. No sooner did she pull away and a bolt of lightning struck down close by with the crack of thunder nearly instantaneous. Scared the crap out of me, not literally, but you know what I mean. I was sprinting and waving my arms,trying to flag her down, because I had suddenly changed my mind, ha! I finally caught up with her when she stopped to let another runner get in for shelter. I told her that last strike had changed my mind, and she told me to get in. I was soaking, dripping wet, and felt bad about getting her car soaked. I apologized, but was happy to be safe. To make a very long story shorter, 20 minutes later when the storm had mostly died down to just rain with an occasional distant thunder. I started back out from where I had stopped. After sitting for 20 minutes I had stiffened up a lot and gotten chilled. Things definitely didn't feel as good as they did when I had stopped. There was also a very strong head wind. I got back to my run .8 / walk .2 and continued on, but my pace was a bit slower. Made it to the turn around and was quite a bit warmer and the running was a bit easier, but I think I drank too much because I had to pee about 4 times in the last 9 miles. The port-o-lets were higher up on the beach in the soft flooded out sand, so each stop cost me at least 3-4 minutes. I thought about just letting it go, since I was soaking wet anyway, but I just can't pee and run, or even walk for that matter. By mile 20 the lack of training was definitely letting itself be known and every muscle from my waist down ached and was heavy. I power walked a mile and only lost about a minute from my "run" so decided to power walk until mile 24 and then run it in. Ended up walking the rest of the race until I shuffled into the finish line. Texas: DONE! What would you do differently?: Train...or at least keep enough run volume up to be able to run 26.2 for fun without as much walking. ![]() Post race
Warm down: Went into the Stahlman Park building and grabbed some pop and a cookie. They had a really nice bbq buffet set up too, but I can never eat much right after a race, so didn't have any. What limited your ability to perform faster: Stopping for 20 minutes, having to take so many pee breaks, and of course, not training. Event comments: Really a great race! It was so much fun running along the beach and listening to the ocean waves. Very well organized, great swag, awesome volunteers from the local high school who stood out there in the rain all day. Huge thanks to them! I do recommend using some mosquito repellant if you do this race, because I didn't notice it at the time, but by the next day both my husband and I were covered with mosquito bites Last updated: 2012-01-15 12:00 AM
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United States
67F / 19C
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Drove to Stahlman Park for packet pickup and was really surprised to get, not only, a great long sleeve tech race shirt, but also a really cool coaster made by a local artist with the race logo on it, a 2011 race t-shirt, and a really awesome duffel bag with the race logo. They also had personalized race bibs. Very cool stuff for a small race!
Got up at 5am, got dressed, and ate a GF blueberry muffin with almond butter. Drove down to Stahlman Park, parked on the beach about half mile from the start line. Walked to the start line and went inside the park building to get timing chip and stay warm until the start, because it was windy and rainy. Stretched a bit and waited for the start.