Bay Breeze Half Marathon

I almost didn't want to write about this one, it just wasn't a good day.  And the funny things is that as early as last night I knew something was going to be off.  I guess it's just the years of competition that help me know when things are gonna go well or not.

The race was at San Leandro Park just south of Oakland.  I stayed at the same hotel I stayed at before the Coyote Hills half even though it was a little bit of a drive; it was still a really cheap hotel.  Anyways I put off getting dinner because I had a late lunch and I was busy occupying my time in my room watching Friday the 13th movies.  This is what I get for being a fan of a crappy movie series.  I had planned on going over to the Mexican place I had gone to before and seeing as I had had Mexican food before all 3 of my previous Cali races and done well at each of them I really did NOT want to break the trend, especially being such a superstitious person.  Well my procrastination lead to me not leaving my room until just after 8:00 and obviously the restaurant closed right at 8.

My other options were either sushi, Korean, or McDonald's and none of those were going to happen.  I went back up to the room to check out the delivery options instead of aimlessly driving around this small town looking for a place to eat, something I tried to do last time.  I nixed this idea though because there was a $15.00 minimum with a $6.00 delivery charge and 15% gratuity included.  Does that seem absurd to anyone else?  I wasn't going to spend $25.00 on a burrito and a salad!  So no food for Chris...awesome.

The other mistake I made was not picking up my packet the night beforehand.  The packet pickup was about 30 miles north of where I was staying so I decided to just get it before the race.  I will never pick up my packet on race day again, ever...unless early pickup is not an option.  I got to the race around 7:15 for an 8:00 start and it was pouring rain out.  This just caused pure chaos and it didn't help that I had to go to one tent to sign a waiver, another tent to pick up my number, a third tent to get my shirt and a fourth tent to drop off my jacket and pants.

With all of the whiny Californians complaining about how cold and rainy it was and the people at the tents trying their best to efficiently get everyone through the lines as fast as possible, while also whining this process just took forever.  Once I finally had everything, got ready and dropped my clothes off I heard the 10 minutes to start announcement...doubly Awesome!  I hadn't warmed up and wasn't going to get to stretch either so I knew this had potential to be an interesting race.

I stretched the best I could and at 8:00 on the dot the gun went off.  Now not warming up doesn't just take away from my legs, it takes away from my lungs.  My usual routine is to run at least a mile beforehand and get my breathing going, warm up my body and then stretch afterwards.  It took a while for my breathing to get under control but my legs seemed just fine.  My ankles were a little tight but other than that my biggest issue was just trying to find my breathing pattern.

Finally by mile 5-6 I was ready to go and I worked my way back from a 7:40 pace up to a 7:15 pace.  The weather was clear by now and I knew that all I had to do was just stay consistent and I could still finish with a decent time.  By miles 7-9 I was tearing it up with 7:00 miles and held strong throughout the rest of the race.  My Garmin was reading 6:45-6:54 for most of my last three miles.  As usual I had my sights set on a bunch of people I wanted to pass and one by one I caught them.  There was only one guy I didn't get but if the race had been 10 feet longer I would have.

This was the easiest course I've ever ran for a half-marathon so I was expecting to get a PR (personal record), which I did at 1:35:06 beating my previous PR by just over two minutes.  BUT I should have destroyed it!  I won't give you any excuses and even though my stomach was NOT happy throughout the entire race (I kinda/sorta yacked up some GU/Gatorade/Water mid-stride, mid-race...yummy) this race came down to preparation and I don't know if I was fully prepared.  Maybe I just got content with my routine, cocky with how easy this race was going to be, or just lazy.  I have yet to figure it out and I really don't know what was upsetting my stomach so much but I need to figure that out so it doesn't happen again.

So no placement in my age group this race but maybe next time.  No races planned in the near future so it's time to focus on marathon training now.  I did actually run an extra 2.5 miles after my race today because I was supposed to run 16.  I'll get officially back on track starting tomorrow.

Oh yeah and I saw snow on the way home!!  That was pretty cool.