Santa Barbara International Marathon Recap

WORKOUT – Ran outside 9.25 miles/1:21  easy recovery miles w/ tunes

The secret’s out that Sarah and I both ran the SBI Marathon this weekend.  We drove up Friday night timing it perfectly to hit every possible traffic scenario.  fantastic.

Once we made it into town we went to the expo to grab our bibs and goodies:

After dinner with friends, we crashed at their place homeless-style.  Thanks Erika and Derek!

Wake up was at 5am to drink coffee and get ready.  And by ‘get ready’ I mean ‘do business in the bathroom’.

We left the house at 6:10 and got to the start in Goleta with plenty of time to appreciate the weather – it had rained hard Friday night and was suppose to rain that morning, but we woke up to clear, beautiful skies and fabulous running weather.

Sarah’s goal was to run a marathon under 4 hours and mine was to run positive splits. really.

If I want to PR, I need to work on starting faster so my goal was to start at a slightly faster than I would want to run pace and then if I blew up at the end, I’d blame it on something. or someone. probably her:

Before the start we met reader Stephanie who was going for a sub 5 finish:

And Scottie who is Jaymee’s cousin and looks exactly like her:

And reader Caitlin who set a 3:53 PR yesterday.

It was fun meeting all you, lassies; thanks for saying hi. It took any race nerves away since I was more focused on not picking my boogers in front of you guys.

The race started right on the dot at 7:15 and I clocked the first couple miles at 8:05, 7:50, and 7:48.  I felt good about those times being a little faster than I would normally start but not being too crazy.

I ran the first 10k in 49 minutes; I didn’t bring any music so I tried to focus on finding the pace that I could sustain a little uncomfortably.

Around mile 9-10 I started talking with Kelley, a lady I met in line for the porta potties.  She’s run 35 marathons so we geeked out on races for a couple miles which made the time fly by.

We parted ways at the halfway mark and I crossed it at 1:42:30.

A lot of the first half of the course felt like it was downhill or flat, nothing hard.  At mile 15 we ran on a bike path along a river which was really pretty.  Miles 15-16 felt great – I was running 7:38-40 min/miles and was riding the endorphin high like a killer wave.

I don’t know if I started pushing too early but 18—>on were tough.  The endorphin wave crashed and I went into survival mode much earlier than I had anticipated.

Fake smile.  Not happy, struggling but still full of nostrils.

I don’t remember any splits, but I do remember at 18 thinking, just get off this bike path! – the path that 2 miles ago I was wanting to marry I loved it so much.  I think I was running around 7:50s but simply trying to maintain at that point.

The last 6 miles were hillier than I expected and tougher too.  There was a nice mile decline at 22 and then nearly a half mile climb at 23 which I almost walked part of.  Thankfully after scaling Kilimanjaro, the rest was downhill to the finish.

Those last 3 miles were painful: I had no kick, no energy, I was so done which is generally not the way I finish a race.  Normally my finest hour is the last 6-7 miles of a marathon, but yesterday I had nothing left.

I think my slowest mile of the day, besides mile 1, was the very last.  It was one of those weird moments where you’re telling yourself to go faster and your legs won’t move.

I finished in 3:25:49, 2nd in my age division, 8th woman and 70th overall.

And yes, I achieved that elusive positive split, running the 2nd half in 1:43:18.  I can’t even remember the last time I ran pos splits, probably my first marathon.  so proud.

I’m happy that I started faster and was able to work on that, but I finished so much weaker which wasn’t fun.

GU’s at:

mile 8.75

mile 13.5

mile 18

mile 22

Yesterday was a confidence booster knowing that I’m getting closer to 3:18ish but also a reminder that I have a lot of work to go because I had to kill it yesterday effort-wise to pull a 3:25.

More importantly, Sarah ran a PR! 3:57:34

I laid on the grass for a bit, stretched and then went looking for Sarah and saw her about .3 from the finish.  I was going by my watch time and didn’t think she’d make it so I started screaming at her to run faster and then I chased her across the parking lot, through a fence to the finish and saw that she KILLED it with minutes to spare.

I’m SO proud, I feel like a mom sorta.  Yesterday was a great day because she reached a goal that she’s worked so hard for.  Congrats, Sarah!

Dang it, she’s taller than me.  must get Tom Cruise lifts in shoes. stat.

Tagged as: blogging friends, motivation, race recap, santa barbara