My San Diego Rock N Roll Marathon Race Report

It’s finally over, my first Marathon is in the books. Didn’t get the time that I planned on but for my first Marathon I had a nice experience. I was really surprised on how well this event was organized, I had no issues nor did my family who took the trolley in from the Q. 

I set two alarm clocks the night before just to make sure I got my butt out of bet at exactly 2:30 AM. I knew I had to get down to the parking lot by 4:00 so I won’t get stuck in traffic and won’t have to rush anything. I made an awesome smoothie , found spots to put all my GU and Jelly Beans, geared up and out the door I left at around 3:45 AM. Once I hit the parking lot all the nerves and excitement hit me and hit me it did, I had to find a bathroom fast. One thing I can say is that I had to use the porta-potties numerous times and surprisingly enough I always found one with no line..I found that to be awesome

I got there early enough that I sat around for a little over an hour before the race started. I was in coral 10 so it was pretty easy to locate your coral and set up camp and wait until they let you in. I took the time to slowly slam some GU and jelly beans. I started to look around me at the other 30,000 runners and though, I wonder why they are running this event. There was so many different level of runners and types of people, it was pretty neat to see them all together with the same goal of Marathon.

·       Start 00:00:00  06:22:36

After getting everyone ready for the start the way it worked was the first coral will go then every minute plus the next coral would go, this worked out pretty good there was never a moment where I felt uncomfortable about being around too many runners in one spot.

·       5K 00:28:15    6:50:50 am   9:06 pace

The first 5k was like a walk in the woods, with all the emotion, excitement and bands playing it didn’t even feel like I was running in a marathon. Passing Petco Park was pretty cool, need to take the son to a Padres game I thought as I passed. I was really surprised on how fresh I felt. I wasn’t worried about starting to fast since I felt SO FRESH.

·       10K 00:55:13  7:17:49 am  8:41 pace

This was my best section of the race between the 5k – 10k mark. I was flying! Felt fresh and was on my way to a sub 4:30 time, I was sure of it. I started day dreaming about training for my next marathon with my wife. This is such a great experience so far I need to train with Tiff and come back together next year.

·       13.1M 01:59:08 8:21:44 am 09:17

At the half way point I FELT AWESOME!!! I was blazing, went down the 163 into mission valley and I was enjoying every moment of the race. I was on pace for a sub 4 hour marathon and I was stoked!!! But I had no idea that reality was about to hit and hit hard.

·       20M 03:31:04 9:53:40 am 13:20

At about mile 16 is when I first started to feel some pain in my legs. My knees didn’t hurt, my ankles didn’t hurt, my heals didn’t hurt..But my LEGS hurt as one unit of pain. I made the dreadful decision to walk for a bit at around mile 18. This is when I started my walk a few and then run a few and this will be how I finish the race.

·       26.2M 05:08:08 11:30:44 am 15:37

The last section of the race…Oh man!! I have never felt so much pain in my legs..Between miles 20-24 was probably the worst for me. My legs hurt so bad that I couldn’t run very long then when I would walk my legs would hurt more than they did when I was running. I stopped a few times to try and stretch but every time I stretched I would crap up in random spots that I didn’t know I even have muscles. For some reason at about mile 24.5 the pain didn’t hurt as much anymore and I was able to start running again. I tried to push it the last 2 miles. The last 8 miles I didn’t care about my time anymore I just wanted this to be over. I crossed the finish line at 5:08, I started to tear up I then found my wife gave her a giant huge and whispered into her ear “Don’t let me do something this stupid ever again”..haha

After all the paid and hardship that time of 5:08 is stuck in my head and all I can think about is getting back out there and killing that time. I’ll be back!!!!!

Run2SD