Surf City USA Marathon and Half Marathon - RunMarathon

Started the run in the rain. it continued raining for the first 15 miles or so. I was fairly miserable and looking oh so stylish in my Glad Trashbag. There should be some great race photos of me...I may even buy one of them this time. The rain was steady and the wind would whip through you like you were not even there. In short I was fairly uncomfortable. I continued to fight through it as Mike and I found it hard to get into a rhythmn running together...usually this is not a problem but it seemed like I was waiting for him or he was waiting for me most of the day.

At mile 16, Mike decided he had had enough and continued towards the car while I turned on the bike path. I thought about going with Mike but didn't want to quit after 16 miles (plus the other 2 miles it would take to get back to the start line) when I knew I could finish the race. As I turned onto the bike path I immediately started questioning my decision because the wind was really whipping off of the ocean and I was very cold. I concentrated on just keeping my head down and continuing along which seemed to work fine.

Not run the race in the rain and get some additional mid-week runs in rather than just getting the long weekend runs in. Training was insufficient to put in a good time but was sufficient to get me through the race...so I survived.

I got my space blanket and went in search of food and water. Amazingly, I was unable to find any water which was really annoying. Maybe I missed it but the food tent had no liquids whatsoever inside of it.

Anyway, after a brief stop in the food tent I went off in search of Mike. I hobbled the mile or so to where we parked the car in the morning only to find that it wasn't there. This wasn't surprising since it probably meant that Mike checked our combined financial situation and realized that we didn't have the $50 cash to get my driver's license back. I then started walking back to the expo looking for Mike's car the entire walk back. Thankfully just a 1/4 mile from the tent I found his car but alas no Mike. I ended up locating Mike about 15 minutes later and we proceeded to go back again to the car so that I could finally get out of my extremely wet clothes and into something warm. After I changed I was feeling a lot better but we were still short the cash we needed to get my license back so we walked to the hotel across the street where we were able to locate an ATM and then back of course to get my license back.

All of that is a long way of saying I walked around for about 2 miles after the race trying to find the car and get my license back. I think that should count as a warm-down. :)


I originally hoped to go sub 3:45 at this race but lack of training and a couple rough weeks at work had me hoping for a slight improvement over my time from last year of just under 4 hours.


Once again there was little if anything left for the marathoners once they finished. I couldn't even find a bottle of water. I was handed a bag with some food in it but I could not find any liquids whatsoever. Very frustrating.