My Surf City Half Marathon Race Report

Disclaimer: I received an entry into the Surf City Half Marathon as part of being a BibRave Pro. Learn more about becoming a BibRave Pro (ambassador), and check out BibRave.com to review, find, and write race reviews! All opinions are my own.

It’s been almost three whole days since I last ran my 24^th half marathon and let’s just say that I met my goal of not freezing to death and finishing the race. HOORAY!

How did the race actually go? Well, that’s another story – one that I’m willing to share. Now, let’s start off with the positives. 🙂

1. The Surf City Expo – Despite the intense rain and wind, I had a blast at the expo. The expo is held outside every year at the Huntington Beach parking lot and thank goodness it was underneath a tent because that wind was HOWLING and the rain was crazy. I had some extra time so I helped a friend out and volunteered at the Honey Stinger booth on Saturday morning. I cut up samples, chatted up some runners, and sold Honey Stinger gels, chews, waffles, and hats! It was a nice change of pace from my usual routine so I had a ton of fun. Plus, other runners I knew would come by and say hi to me and I do love saying hi to other runners. 🙂 I also had a chance to walk around the expo and say hi to other vendors and gush over how much I loved their stuff. LOL.
2. Parking was SUPER EASY. I don’t like having to pay for parking on race day so I appreciated this so much. The race organizers had marked a bunch a different lots for us to park at for free and shuttle over. Made race morning much less stressful.
3. The rain or lack thereof on race day – Hallelujah! I was on weather watch the entire week and up until Sunday morning, I truly believed I’d be racing 13.1 miles in the rain. I was worried about not being able to feel my fingers, but luckily, it only lightly sprinkled for maybe a mile and was dry the rest of the time. 🙂
4. Seeing friends on the course – Seeing other runners yell out my name and me yelling out theirs is a favorite experience of mine. When I needed that extra push, two fellow BibRave Pros yelled out my name (Renee and Linda) and with a smile, I pushed on. I also saw other friends along the way and with each one that I saw, it pushed me to keep going.
5. I finished! – LOL. Wasn’t that the goal? I finished with all my toenails intact (with the exception of the one I lost at the last half) and was able to hobble my way to the shuttle to get home. J I also got a nice pretty medal to go along with it.

Now that I’ve highlighted the positives, let’s quickly go through the negatives.

1. The wind – Oh lord, the wind was so intense and it was pure headwind on the way back to the finish line.
2. The course – This course is an out and back and despite a lot of it being along the beach, you don’t get a lot of different scenery. I think due to the poor weather, everything seemed rather gray, which is really unfortunate, because I remember liking this course the first time I ran it.
3. My tummy – I’m not sure why, but my tummy has been under GI distress a lot more easily lately. It did not help that whatever water they were handing out at the aid stations did not agree with me. Thankfully I did not have to stop by a porta potty (Gross!), but I did have to walk a lot more than I had wanted due to stomach pain.

So there were definitely more positives than negatives so in the end, I did come out a winner. 🙂 Hooray!

Question for you: How was your weekend? Also, are you a fan of pHed water? I’m not, clearly by my reaction to it. LOL