After nearly a year off; I was keen on getting re-aquainted with the marathon. I had a very good training cycle based on the last 12 weeks of Pfitz 18/70 and looked forward to the race. My plan was to run 20 miles at my long run pace and then jog into the finish. The goal of this whole exercise was to get in a supported long run, get used to running 26.2 and get some race experience. :p

Long Beach is relatively close and convenient but the race itself is a bit of a dog with lots of flat hard concrete, plenty of smog and idling cars. (Car Exhaust became the agent of my demise last year) :(

I followed the plan perfectly for the first 20 miles. I hit the 10 mile in 1:13:47 (7:23 Pace), the Half at 1:36:42 (7:23 Mile) and the 20 Mile at 2:27:29 (7:22 Mile). At that point, I had to muster more than a bit of intestinal fortitude to throttle back and jog into the finish. It took a mile or two but finally settled into about 10 minute miles but had a few tough moments when first the 3:20 Pace Group and then the 3:30 pace group passed me by. I really wanted to run hard to the finish and crank out a PR, but I needed to stick to the plan.

Once I settled down, I was able to find a comfortable easy/recovery pace and started chatting it up with other runners (many of whom were fading) and spectators and started the recovery process with plenty of water, G'Ade and fistfulls of pretzels. I finally crossed the finish line in 3:37:43 which was good for 42nd Place AG and 1575 Overall. More interesting, this was a Course Record for me by 12 Seconds. (I ran a 3:37:55 two years ago) When I ran this race in 2006, I ran all out and this year it was a training run.

The plan then called for me to run a race in November, but life intervened. Executive Management where I work for decided it was time to start the long delayed restructuring of our company and laid off about 3/4 of our staff. The working theory at the time was that the rest of us would be out of a job by the end of the year. My boss advised me that it was time to start looking for another job and in spite of the crappy economy, I started the process.

Needless to say, I did not feel comfortable spending a bunch of money on a race in November so I scrapped the idea and figured that if things improved enough, I would just run Tucson. Since that time, the job situation has improved a bit with my current employer but I am still engaged in the process of finding a new job.

I continued to train, but interviewing, responding and meeting with folks in an attempt to find a job was becoming, well, a Job and was really all consuming. The job search process was a serious mental distraction for me and Heading into race week, I had to make a decision to race or not.

After some consultation with you folks, I decided I needed a break and would run the race, but had no clue what the outcome would be. I had totally lost my focus on my goals. I registed for the race and booked my hotel on Thursday, race week and was quite happy to be doing Tucson since it is small enough to be able to pull this off at the last minute.