Shawn Burke's Blog

After IMC, I really felt motivated to work on the running over the winter.  The plan was to do a January marathon as a forcing function for a lot of solid running. We picked this one since I'd heard good things about it and I like the area.

We got a hotel in Del Mar and kicked back in San Diego on Friday and Saturday.  Man, it's easy to love that area.  Highs in the low-to-mid-60s in January were mighty nice compared to what we've had around here.  We went to the zoo on Friday, which was a lot of fun.  I'm not a huge fan of putting a lot of those animals into cages, but I suppose the San Diego Zoo is as good as it gets.  Anyway, one of the highlights of the day was when we were standing in front of the hyena enclosure watching one of them pace back and forth.  He was only a few feet from the rail, and I noticed every so often, he'd stop and his hackles would go up, then he'd start pacing again.  About the third time, I noticed it was whenever there was a young kid in front of the cage.  I leaned over to Deb and whispered "oh!  he wants to eat the kids!".  I might have had a little too much excitement in my voice because the folks next to me immediately grabbed their little one and moved on down the road.  It was kind of funny.

Anyway, for race day, I felt like a 3:20 was a good goal for me based on what I'd been doing out in training and at the Seattle Half in late November.  I joined up with the 3:20 pace group and we cruised on out onto the course, starting with the almost 8,000 half-marathoners.  Due to the crowd, our first mile was slow at about 8:15 so our pacer picked it up and had us back on pace by mile 5 or so.  Anyway, running in this little group was fun.  Everyone was chatty and happy until about the half way mark.  Then it got kind of quiet.

The course rolls along the ocean front for about 5 miles, then heads solidly uphill for about 4 miles. Then it comes back down and continues along the water for the remainder of the race.  On the way up the hill, we kept to our goal pace of a little under 7:40/mile. This seemed OK but when we hit the top and headed back down I started feeling like maybe I was overdoing it.

Near the 12 mile mark, I happened across Mitch Gold (CpC Grand Poobah and all around solid guy) sitting on his bike at one of the intersections, which was a nice surprise.  It seemed impossible to hold my pace for another 14 miles, but I focused on running smoothly and started taking Endurolytes which made a big difference.  Like races before, I just kept thinking "one more mile" and making that all that I was concerned about.

I ran well with the pacer until about mile 19 when I started falling off on the climbs then having to catch back on the flats or down hills. By mile 20 I was getting steadily gapped and spent the rest of the race telling myself "sub 8 to the next mile marker" at each one.  As they say, those last 6 miles are REALLY hard.

It gets hilly again at the end - the elevation graph doesn't do it justice - and I fell down to almost 8:30 on a few miles. Held this until the 25 marker then gave it everything I had left on in.

The 3:20 pacer was now out of sight, and I really didn't want to slip past 3:25. An added incentive was that Deb started at the 6:30 early start and we kind of had a little bet about whether or not I'd be able to catch her. She did a 5:15 run a IMC, so I figured a 4:25 would be a pretty good day for her out there. Well, she busted out a nice 4:16 so there was no way I was making that up. We crossed paths twice out on the course, the last time being when I was at mile 17 and she was at 19 or so, and I thought it was a done deal.  I even spotted someone wearing almost the same thing as her when I was near mile 24 but it wasn't.

Wow, marathons are brutal!  Maybe I need to run harder at IMCDA but man oh man did that race hurt. I was basically incapacitated for about an hour after the race, it hurt too bad to even stand up! After 15 minutes standing in the ocean - highly recommended - I felt much better though.

I'm happy with that effort and very pleased I picked this race.  We had a lot of fun down in San Diego and I thought the race and the venue were fantastic.  I really enjoyed the course.  The only real negative was the race featured Ultima (energy drink, not good) and Accel Gel (has protein, not for me) on the course.  This meant I needed to carry my nutrition, so at the expo I bought some of these Race Ready shorts.  If you click on the link, you'll see the shorts have a series of mesh pockets across the back.  These things were perfect for the race - I was easily able to carry 8 gels with me, and a tube of Endurolytes.  For distance running, or maybe even an Ironman, these are the way to go.