2007 Pacific Shoreline Marathon

I ran 21 marathons and wrote about them before I started this blog. I’m going to post my recap of each race (in order) every few days. Please keep in mind, this is what I experienced during on that given day. Sometimes, we run great and races seem that much better because of it. Other times, we bonk and a perfectly fine race is engraved in our mind as miserable torture.

Let me say up front that every race was probably great for some runners, and that same race on that same day absolutely sucked for others. My guess is that I’m way too harsh on a few, and in all likelihood it was because I wasn’t trained properly or I was coming off injury or I flat out just had a bad race. All of those things happen.

And, as I often tell newcomers to our sport, the bad races make the good ones that much sweeter.

1. Pacific Shoreline Marathon – Huntington Beach, Calif. – Feb. 4, 2007

Like a first kiss or a first day of school, your first marathon will always hold a special place in your memory. On Super Bowl Sunday in 2007, I left my room at the Huntington Beach Hilton and walked right outside to the starting line of the Pacific Shores Marathon. For the first 31 years of my life, I always said that it would take a special kind of idiot to run a marathon. To be honest, that opinion has never changed, but here I was raising my hand when the emcee asked who was running their first marathon.

I felt as bad as I looked

I had run a few half marathons, and I thought my training had gone great. At the starting line, with the breeze blowing in from the Pacific Ocean a few hundred feet to our left, I’m not sure I could have felt better. Screw it. I’m going for Boston, I thought. So I started the race fast, figuring I’d keep it consistent for the first half and hopefully speed up in the second half. We ran along Pacific Coast Highway, as well as the bike path on the beach for the first half of the race. I felt great for the first 10 miles and slowed down only slightly as I hit the halfway mark before heading inland.

Not long after, I met the wall for the first time. Running around some parks, I started to understand why everyone advised me not to go out too fast. I walked some, ran some and cursed every minor incline that appeared to be a mountain, when it was probably nothing more than a speed bump.

With just a couple miles to go, I had finally reached PCH again, where the slower half marathoners were making their way to the finish. There were mixed emotions at that point. I was happy to think that I was running a full faster than some people going half the distance. The other half of me was pissed to think that they only had to do half. Now, I’m not faulting or judging anyone who has the guts to get out and run any distance, but this is the type of motivation I need to finish a race when all I want to do is quit. I struggled through the final few miles. With more than a half mile to go, you can see the finish line, and I needed something to get me through it. That’s when the 4:00 pace leader strolled by. I told him, “No offense, but there’s not f-ing way you’re beating me.” He laughed and shouted encouragement, as I finished in 3:59:48. It was nearly 50 minutes shy of Boston, but I was overjoyed to be done. And I was more than happy to take a sub-four hour marathon for my first one.