TBA
Long Beach Marathon
Long Beach Marathon and Half Marathon. Run baby run baby run!
Nik dropped Amy and I off near the starting line, then proceeded to organize random people cheer squads for Amy while she ran the 26.2 miles of the marathon. (Amy did we mention before that you have an awesome husband? Nik's awesome.)
Meanwhile, met up with Mike at the starting line, then slummed it by the 3:40 marathon pace group as that's the pace Amy planned to run. Plus, uh, yes, Mike and I are weenies and a 1:50 half marathon pace sounded good to us.
The start hit-- to the tune of U2's Beautiful Day, which marked nice, slightly cool, overcast race weather, perfect for fast times-- and we were off. Mike ran off to find a restroom and then catch up, but he somehow missed us most of the race. Probably because he was flying by.
Amy put a minute in the bank early as we tried to keep the 3:40 race group just behind us (it was a huge mob!) on a course that was much better laid out than I had been worried about, then cruised at a consistent 8:24/mile for a 3:40 pace pretty much the first 10.5 miles. Even saw Nik cheering a few times, once overlooking us from the bluffs as we ran along the strand.
Mile 10.5 the courses split, waved good-bye and good luck to Amy, then I decided to see if I could catch Mike. He passed Amy about mile 4 or so, I caught back up to Amy at mile 5, and could see Mike only a few hundred feet ahead, drawing slowly away... unfortunately pouring on the speed didn't quite work, but it put me just 33 seconds behind at the finish line. Not too bad!
Mike and I collected our medals, then headed to the beer tent for our free beer. Relaxed for a bit while waiting for Mike's wife, Allison, to finish the 5k with the kids (Bryce and Aiden). Watched random Little Caesars pizza making kits wander by (don't ask, we don't know why) and had a good time til they had to leave. I then joined the chaos trying to meet up with Nik so we could cheer for Amy. It was a bit too nuts though, although we both finally met up as Amy crossed the finish line (sub-4 hours!).
Race results: half marathon, 1:46:06 (new PR!) for me, 1:45:33 (new PR!) for Mike. Marathon, 3:59:47 (new PR!) for Amy.
Pretty awesome. We then tried to meet up with one of Amy and Nik's friends for lunch, but traffic at Beverly Center due to AIDS Walk LA + road construction + on-call for him killed things.
Made a fun, busy, packed weekend! And congrats to Amy for breaking sub-4!