San Diego Rock 'n Roll Marathon Race Report

You may want to sit back, pop a cold one and relax...this is sure to be long-winded...


The whole week leading up to the marathon, I was a bundle of nervous energy. My sleep was as crappy as my attention span. I babied the crap out of my shins with constant icing and lots of stretching. Finally, finally Friday came. Tara, Aron and I met up for breakfast and then high-tailed it over to the train station. Along the route, we picked up Kristin and Julianne, and we all rode the rest of the way together into the San Francisco airport. There was a lot of giggling and squealing...thank goodness we had almost the entire train car to ourselves.

We checked our bags, got through security and procured some snacks without a hitch. Before we knew it, we were boarding the plane for our 1hour, 10min flight into San Diego.

The San Diego Airport was the airport that time forgot. We de-boarded and made a potty stop pretty quickly, but as we walked through the airport to baggage claim? Complete emptiness. We got to baggage claim and our bags (and ONLY our bags) were already doing laps on the conveyor belt. Weird. No one was around. I felt a little bit like we were on Lost. (Insert creepy Lost "clang" here.)

After picking up our rental car, we made it easily to our hotel. We had gotten a 2 bedroom, 2 bath suite to share and it ended up being awesome. We even had a full kitchen!

This is when Aron's iPhone decided to crash - not good. We found an Apple store nearby and proceeded to wander around the mall while her phone got fixed (sort of) and I of COURSE found something to buy. Our original plan was to grocery shop for pre-race night and race morning, then get ready in the hotel for dinner and bars in the Gaslamp District. We banked the grocery store run for the next day, and dropped dinner in the Gaslamp for dinner at an Italian restaurant in the mall. The meal turned out to be delicious and it was nice to relax just the 5 of us over beers and wine after the phone drama. My hats off to Aron for being so calm while her phone threw a tantrum. Personally, I refuse to function without my iPhone. Is that even possible?

We got back to our hotel and got ready to go out to Syrah Wine Lounge, which was a really AWESOME place in the heart of the Gaslamp district. We had an array of friends join us and it was a really fun outing. We had a little bubbly and were home around midnight. See? We went out but were still responsible!

Saturday morning we slept in and then all went down for our hotel breakfast, which was included with our room. Gold mine! I ended up eating all sorts of stuff, including a whipped-cream covered waffle that I shared with Tara and Julianne. We stole an entire plate of English muffins and about 123870192852093 individual packets of peanut butter for race morning. It was kinda funny how excited we were about this.

We all showered, got ready and headed over to the race expo for packet pick-up. I have to say, that while picking up my bib, shoe chip, and t-shirt were very easy, navigating the rest of the expo SUCKED. Once we left the registration/packet-pick-up area, it was a sea of people. It seemed to me that all the vendors were crammed in together and the aisles were tiny. For a race with 25,000 participants, this was not a good thing. Ugh, it was over-whelming and claustraphobic. I hurried through getting some freebies and over to the more open area where we had decided to have our blogger/twitter meet-up. When I passed the $1 beer tent, I just couldn't pass it up. Phew! I felt much better!

While waiting for the other people to show up, we took our standard Pantene commercial shot. Little did we know it at this point, but this is also a PR-buddies shot!!!

One of the first people we encountered was Danica, the infamous Chic Runner! She is as awesome and as lovely in person as she is on her blog. She's really funny too. And now, she's a marathoner!!

Danica with the ROHOs...she's been officially dubbed the "Koo-ho."

I also got to meet Maddy! Another lovely lady in person!

Here is the blogger girls' crew, which also included Alisa and Amanda!

It was so great to meet all these people in person. After a lot of online chatter, support, giving of advice...it was so awesome to put real faces to names. The cyber-running community never ceases to amaze me. You guys are all wonderful.


We left the expo and made a lunch/grocery shopping run. After some yummy food at Panera, we ducked into a nearby Vons for dinner items and race day breakfast. I ended up buying a few big bottles of SmartWater, Powerade Zero, bananas and pasta. We had decided to just relax in our room that evening and make use of our kitchen by cooking dinner.

This would turn out to be the best idea of the weekend. We hung out in our pj's and compression socks and talked about anything and everything. We chugged water and sports drinks, cooked pasta with assorted toppings, made endless trips to the bathroom. I can't describe to you what an amazing group of friends I have. We laughed, we cried, we talked about gross things and futures and dreams. I am so grateful to have these 4 girls in my life. They make me feel better when I'm upset, they make me laugh until I have a stomach-ache, they make me believe when I question, they pick me up when I'm down and cheer for me when I'm up. Strong, amazing, fulfilling friendships are hard to come by, and I am lucky enough to have 4 in this inspiring group of women.

Suffice to say, no one was really 'feeling' going to bed, but we knew it was getting late and we had a 3:15am wake-up call. So after a group hug, we all went to bed. I alternated between sleeplessness and zonking out to the point of drooling. It was weird. I probably got a solid 4 hours at the most. When the alarm went off, I have never been more grateful. I was ready to stop fighting the giddyness and get the show on the road!


We hooked up an iPod and got some jams going as we got ready. Here's what our kitchen table looked like:

After some waiting around for our shuttle to the start, we hopped on board and were off. It was already a very humid morning, though only 62 degrees. I drank Gatorade the whole way there and had to make 2 port-o-potty stops before getting into the corral. This is unheard for me, but I wasn't taking chances with the humidity. All of us were in the same corral, so after another group hug and bit of emotion during the national anthem, we were off! I crossed the start mat almost exactly 2 minutes after the gun, with Julianne at my side.

And here is where I did EXACTLY what I said I would NOT do. I started out way too fast. The course had a lot of downhills at the beginning and I was feeling great and like I wasn't making a big effort on my pace, despite the fact that Gloria kept ticking off miles at 9:30 or better. Julianne kept asking me if the pace was okay, to which I would reply a resounding, "I'm feeling great!" We got to the part of the course that looked the most difficult on the course map, miles 7-10ish, where the big incline/hill is and where it was rumored you ran on a cambered strip of highway. Julianne and I flew through this part, although the hills did slow our pace down a bit. At some point, the 4:15 pace group came up behind us. Crap. We had definitely been going way too fast.

After consulting a bit, we decided to hang onto the 4:15 group as long as we could. The pacers were also going WAY too fast. At this point, we had passed the hill part and were pretty much on straight-aways, with maybe some slight incline to them in parts. My first few miles with the pace group ticked off at 9:23-9:35. Still very fast for the 9:43 avg pace of a 4:15 finish. But I was still feeling great.

Sometime between the 16 and 17 mile marker, it all caught up to me. My legs went solid as concrete. I took my first walking break and the 4:15 pace group left us. Julianne did great with the pep talk and we picked it up again. I was going unbelievably slow at this point. I kept trying to speed it up, but that would just hurt more and I would have to take another walking break. Julianne is awesome at 'tough love,' let me tell ya. I'd yell that I had to walk and she'd bark, 'okay, 10 SECONDS!' at me, then gimme a shove when it was time to pick up my feet again. I ran completely out of fluids in my fuel belt around mile 19 and started walking through the aid stations, chugging Cytomax and water. It was humid out there. By mile 21, I was drinking 2 cups of Cytomax and 1 cup of water at every aid station. I just couldn't drink enough to feel okay. I was drenched in sweat and my legs were getting stiffer by the minute. Julianne kept telling me all the slow paces I could run and still get a PR. But I kept getting slower and slower and slower. I was fading fast. I cursed myself a thousand times over for starting out too fast. Duh. EVERYONE feels great at the start. I had conserved nothing for the end and at marathon #5, I KNEW better. Except I hadn't.

An old friend who was on the course saw me at this point, and jumped in to run with me for a while. He gave me a bit of a pep talk, even though I was giving him the please-shut-up look, and I felt a bit better. Between him and Julianne, I picked up my feet more and he said goodbye after a mile and left me with a big high-five. I was tired, but I knew I was going to cross that line now that I was in the 20's. I started watching Julianne's feet in front of me and tried not to think about anything but just chugging along and ignoring my now-screaming quads. I kept talking myself out of looking at my watch, too. I was sure my PR was long gone, especially since the 4:30 group passed me around this point. (Turns out, they were going WAY TOO fast also.)

The end of the course is BO-RING. There was nothing to look at, except the others around me who were also fading and cramping. I remember I said to Julianne, "I'm tired" and someone around me responded, "we're ALL tired." I had to laugh. So true. Sadly, I saw him pulled over just a few minutes later, stretching out a cramp that looked painful. I kept on trucking.

At the mile 24 marker, I let myself look at my watch. I was running an 11-something pace and after some quick math, I realized that keeping this pace would get me across the mat at almost the EXACT same time as my PR. My brain and heart said, "Hell No." I can't tell you where it came from. I was so unbelievably tired and it was so humid out there. But I made my legs go faster. This made Julianne really happy and she picked it up with me and stayed by my side. I skipped the last water stop and ran straight through, too scared to slow down and not be able to pick it back up again. They were the longest 2.2 miles of my life. When I got to the 25 mile marker, I knew I could run this fast for just 10 more minutes. I had sub-10 my last mile, and felt like I could do 1 more. My quads were on fire, but I wasn't letting go of it now. I kept waiting and waiting for the 26 mile marker so I could feel relief and sprint the crap out of the end. FINALLY. FINALLY I saw it. Julianne and I both started sprinting (she totally pulled away from me, speedy!) on that last stretch and I counted 12 people that I passed.

I saw my family on this stretch - my sister, dad and mom had staggered themselves and they each held up a giant sign for me. I smiled a giant smile and waved, chugging it all the way to the end. I saw the clock and realized that even the gun time was under my previous PR, and knew I was in the clear. Crossing that finish mat had never felt so good and my eyes swelled with tears. I stopped my watched and looked down at it.

4:33:59

Nearly 3 whole minutes faster than my previous PR. I was ecstatic. I hugged Julianne and then heard Aron shout for me. She was on the other side of the finish gate, with Tara and Danica. I gave her a big thumbs up so she'd know I'd done it. I got my medal and some snacks and saw my family through the gate.

I grabbed a space blanket and tried to call Jen, who I've called almost immediately after every single marathon I've done. I had good news this time around. I couldn't get a call out (duh, I was in the Marine depot) but I managed to get a text through. She told me she cried, and I have a sobby voicemail to prove it. ♥ Love that girl.

I proceeded to the family reunion area, where I drank my free post-marathon beers and ate some delicious cupcakes that my sister and her boyfriend had brought. YUM!

This was the first sign I saw from my fam as I ran through the final stretch. It made me laugh and also, made me push a little harder.

I was so excited to hear about everyone's achievements. Tara, Kristin and I had all gone in with a plan to PR, and all three of us did. Julianne and Aron had gone in with a plan to support, and they DEFINITELY did. I know I would have walked a lot more, had Julianne not been there to push me. Thank you so much, pacing buddy, for helping me reach my goal. I needed you on race day, and you were there for every step of 26.2 miles. Thank you!!!!

Me: What letter should we meet at in the 'family reunion' area?

Tara: Let's meet at 'H'....for 'ho's.'

All in all, it was a wonderful day and a great race. It was painful and mentally, my toughest marathon to date. But with every tough race, come lots and lots of lessons. This was an amazing experience and I am still in awe of what I can make my body do. I had no shin pain on race day and still have none now. Apart from some quad soreness, I'm feeling great today. I know that with more training and a smarter race strategy, I can wipe this PR out, and it won't be another 4 years in the making this time.

I can't tell you how tired I was of looking at that freakin' PR time. Since 2005. It was getting old. I was sick of it. So three, glorious minutes? Oh, how I love you.

Thank you for reading and as always, thank you SO MUCH for your support.