Rock ‘n’ Roll San Diego Marathon Recap

Yesterday I ran my first RnRSD race with Refuel with Chocolate Milk. 

Check out this post about the race and the little extra somethin’ somethin’ I bought later on in the day.

The race started at 6:15am so we walked to the shuttle pickup at 5am.  Monica came up big and booked us a hotel right across from the shuttle area.  I knew she was good for something.

^{Chandra, me and Monica}

It took a long time, like 47 hours, to get to the start so we didn’t have much time to get in the corrals, and the lines for the porta potties were so long I thought there might have been Justin Beiber tickets wrapped in the toilet paper. 

There was no way I was gonna make it so I dashed off in the woods to pee and sprinted back to my corral with 3 minutes to spare.  I don’t like cutting it that close, but everything worked out and I watered a plant.  Call me a green thumb.

And I even found Pam:

Like I mentioned here, I wore my SPIbelt to carry my phone in case anything happened with my hip and I had to pull out of the race early which, thankfully, nothing did.  I’d rather run without a belt, but I’d also rather my dog not to have the worst rotten fish breath ever and then try to lick my face.

The race started on time with foggy, cool weather that was perfect for running and terrible for sunbathing.

The first mile my left hip (that’s been a little tight) was really painful.  I didn’t have any time to warm up besides my outdoor bathroom tree dash, and I think it was just super tight.  That’s when I thought, I’ll just drop down to the half and when we split with the halfers at mile 8-9, I’ll go with them.

Mile 2 it was still sore but loosening up a little.  And then right after the 5K mark we split from the half marathoners.  What?  For some reason I was expecting the split to be later in the race?!  I’m really amazing at looking the course maps beforehand.

I thought to myself, You can’t bow out this early so go with the marathoners to the left!

From then on it was really a mental battle for me to stay in the game.  The amount of miles left felt overwhelming and sometimes when you’re not running close to your “normal” pace, it drags you down mentally.  Also a drag?  Dating someone 60 years younger than you who’s already jilted you once.

It wasn’t until mile 7 when I started physically feeling ok, but the head battle continued the whole race.

We ran by Petco Park.  I’ll do a race review later in the week, but the first few miles are interesting and scenic, the middle miles suck (running on a slanted freeway for multiple miles) and the finish is pretty near the water in Mission Bay. 

San Diego might be “America’s Finest City” but there’s really nothing fine about their freeways.

Anyways, I ran with Matt Elvis from Compex for maybe 10 miles in the later parts of the race which was a huge help mentally to talk to someone else (I didn’t bring an ipod) and get out of my head. 

He ran the whole race in a full-on Elvis suit and wig; color me impressed.  and a bit jealous.  I love running in costume.

I also saw Pam out on the course – she killed it with a huge 3:21 PR.  So so so proud of her; she worked hard for a long time for that goal.

The last 6 miles were tough as they always are.  I feel like my endurance took a big hit during the last month of barely running so I really struggled to keep pace.  I was telling Matt, I felt like I was running hard at a 7:20-25 pace when really, I wasn’t even breaking 8s.  awesome.

But I’m proud that regardless of the numbers, I pushed myself hard and battled the whole time.  All you can give is what you have on that specific day.

I finished in 3:32:38.  My splits:

5k: 8:06

10k: 8:01

13.1: 8:06

16.8: 8:04

20: 8:06

25: 8:08

I drank at least 1-2 cups of water at every aid station, no Gatorade but took gels at:

Mile 9.3

Mile 14

Mile 18.8

Mile 22.5

Afterwards I found the Team Refuel booth and chugged a milk.

I didn’t know this, but Anna showed me they now have milk with 20-30 grams of protein.  Check out the nutritionals because the red boxed ones (the one I randomly picked up and drank) has 190 calories but the blue ones have 280.

And the very coolest part of the day…

Being with Team Refuel, I was able to go into the VIP tent after the race where they had a super sweet spread of food:

There were salads, wraps, cookies and brownies, fruit, water, chocolate milk and coffee.  I’m usually not hungry after a race which is why drinking something is way easier for me, but I had part of a wrap and a little fruit. 

It was a tough race but a fun time; I’ve missed running and racing!  Thanks to Refuel with Chocolate Milk for having me be a part of Team Refuel and not kicking me off the team.  If anyone in my family was team captain, they woulda booted me.  just because.

Tagged as: chocolate milk, race recap, san diego