LA County Holiday Half Marathon Race Recap

I got up at 5am and the whole family left the house by 6:15am; even Marni came with us.  We arrived in Pomona at the Fairplex right at 7am and it was a good thing we weren’t late because parking was already backed up:

Had to pay $9 for parking (super lame) and then I went in to the expo to get my bib.

Grabbed my bib, dropped my stuff off at the car and went to line up for the 8am start.

I know this is akin to beating puppies and strangling rainbows, but I don’t like running Students Run LA events.  And this was a big one.

Yes, it’s absolutely a great program, yes, I’d want my kid to do it.  I just want them to run a different race than the one I’m running.  There, I said it.  I’m an awful person, I know.

Anyways, before the start I talked to the stroller dad who always beats me at races with his double stroller.  I swear one time I saw him hand knitting afghans for the children, feeding them and changing their diapers… all while running faster than me.

I refrained from punching him which was good because he said his wife loves the blog.

So we start at 8am and it’s getting warm; an earlier start would have been nice but that would have guaranteed that Jaymo would not have come.

The first couple miles I felt really tired, my legs were dead, but eventually they loosen up or just give up complaining and go; I ran the 5k at 7:25 pace.

The course was surprisingly pretty; we ran through a lot of parks and around a big lake.  I had expected it to be all on residential streets so I was happy.

It definitely wasn’t flat and had some good rolling hills to it.

The shade through the parks was super duper.

We even ran over a dam.

I had originally planned to run around 8 min/miles or a 1:45 finish.  The first 5-6 miles were tough; I was just tired.  But I kept telling myself, Run this mile fast and then you can slow down.  Run to the halfway point and then you can slow down.

Finally around 7 or 8 I started getting some energy and decided to keep the pace going.  Taking a gel at mile 8 helped.  And that you only have 5 miles left.

Marathons skew your perception of “long” in a good way.  I only have 9 miles left?!  That’s nothing!

I kept going at a steady pace, around 7:40s and finished as strong as I could.  I definitely felt better the second half of the race than the first; I think it took me awhile to mentally get in the race.  I just didn’t want to run fast until the race was nearly over.

I finished in 1:38:35, 7:32 pace. 96th out of 3693 overall, 13th out of 1736, and 1st in my age division out of 103. 

(I take that back; I was 2nd in my age division.  When I look up my personal results, it says I’m first.  When I looked up all the women by time, I was 2nd in that division.  Not that it really matters one way or the other…. unless you’re 1st in the whole race, you’re still not #1.)

After the race I hurried to the car and we headed out to Calabasas where we spent the day with our friends Reese and Jim.  They make these fabulous Sunday brunches for us and we just sit and stuff our faces.  It’s pretty awesome.

*I’ll have the race REVIEW up next post; I’m trying to get better at posting them quicker after the race instead of being lazy and waiting a week or two.  And I’ll have the winner of the SportHooks giveaway too.

Tagged as: race recap