I guess that means I’m a runner now.

This past weekend I ran in my 3rd 1/2 marathon! Yep 3rd! One year ago I walked my first 5k and here one year later I have my 3rd 1/2 marathon under my belt! 🙂 I ran with Greg and Daisy, well I just ran with Daisy, Greg was behind us (but not by much). I am still deciding if I liked the race of not. It had its ups and it had its downs. The jury is still out.

One issue I had, was that I had a hard time getting my beach cities metal. They had it recorded that I ran the OC marathon last year (meaning I would have gotten the medal at Surf City) Um, pretty sure I would remember running a marathon! Anyway after that all sorted out I got a new bib and unfortunately the tag didn’t register and I didn’t get an official time :(. I had my Garmin so I got a time from that…. but I looked up Daisy’s time and then subtracted my time (from a finisher picture) from her time (official) and got 2:55:35, which was just a tad off from my Garmin. New PR for me and I reached my goal of a sub 3 hour 1/2 marathon!

 

The day started  with a 4am wake-up call. I had no problem getting up since I was so excited for the race. We left at 4:30–and boy am I glad we did– and ended up getting to the fair grounds (where the suttles take you to the start) at 5am, even though my shuttle time was for 5:45, I wanted to be safe. It turned out to be a good idea since the shuttle line was over 1/2 a mile! It took 40 minutes to get on a shuttle and we barley made it to the starting line (see this is why I have mixed feelings about the race). Anyway I ended up meeting up with Daisy and before we knew it, we were off. The race started with a one mile incline, but it wasn’t that bad and I even was at my normal one mile pace for long runs (about 11:40). I picked up during mile 2 and the first 6 miles seemed to breeze by. I was doing great! I slowed down and walked through a water station at mile 7 and then kept running until mile 8. At mile 8 I started to walk .25 of each mile until mile 12. At mile 12 I walked 1/2 a mile before jogging the rest of the way in. I am really proud of myself for this 1/2 marathon! Not only did I PR, but I I actually jogged most of the 1/2! Even better than that, I wasn’t even sore at the end and today only my abs are sore 🙂 Yeah. I am going to totally call myself a runner from now on!

Me at the finish, with my AWESOME beach cities medal!

Me with my ‘Finisher’ shirt.

Giving Credit where Credit is due:

I have to say thank you to my best friend Daisy. I honestly don’t know if I would have done sub 3 without her. She pushed me on my long runs, we kept each other accountable and she was such a big help getting through the first 7 miles! I also have to give props to Greg, he PR’ed too and was only a tad sore!

This was our joke. The night before Daisy was telling out friends that she was going to ‘die’ and I was going to have to carry her across the finish line.

Orange County ½ Marathon
Pros	Cons
Amazing Course (breath-taking, beautiful)	Beach Cities Issues
Tons of water stations! Amazingly Helpful	Unorganized Shuttles
Good Expo	Tag didn’t register
Nice Medal	Little Support from staff
Easy Run (despite the hills)	RUDE ‘Event Staff” (that is what their shirt said, I think they were fair ground staff

Overall the Pros outweigh the Cons and I will probably run it next year… Unless the Safari Park 1/2 marathon happens to fall on the same day again.

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I would like to say that yes I know a lot of people can do 2:55 in their sleep for a 1/2 marathon, but the only person I race against is myself. My first 1/2 back in October took me 3:34 in February I did a 1/2 in 3:20 and now in May I broke 3 hours!

 

Also, I know a lot of people judge ‘runners’ differently, like it is an elite club or something, but I don’t care, I am a runner. I don’t care that I don’t train as hard as others, or can’t run more than 8 miles straight, or run slow 1/2 marathons. The thing is, I run, I run often, I run hard, I run and thus I am a runner. <– I have a post coming up about this later!

 

My super awesome medals that make up the beach cities. 🙂 I am trying to think of a way to display them… any ideas?