EricByers.com

It was a great morning, everything for the most part worked out very well. Since there was lots of runners, there was a lot of traffic, making it hard to get dropped off and picked up. Thankfully Rebekah dropped me off and picked me up, making it a lot easier on me (and ruining her relaxing morning). Had she not picked me up, I'd probably still be waiting for a bus, it was wall to wall people. Probably 10,000+ people in a small park. Good times.

The course, as advertised, was very scenic. A lot of the miles were run either next to the ocean or overlooking them. The route also went through Torrey Pines State Park, which has some great scenery as well (almost enough to make you forget you just climbed a 450' hill). It was also a point to point course, so you actually felt like you went somewhere.

One of my goals was to run every mile under 10 minute pace, while running that I realized that was nearly impossible for me, as the biggest hill was nearly a mile long (I came in at 11:41 pace for that section). I did however meet my other goals --finishing under 2:15 (I finished in 2:12) and doing a Negative Split (second half the race faster) [Update: Upon looking at my lap times, I may not have actually gotten a negative split, for what it's worth, I felt faster on the second half :)].

According to my Garmin 305 (and motionbased.com) I averaged 9:57 min/miles, which is standard for my runs on flat surfaces. My heart rate averaged 168, with a max of 184, this is lower than the 10k I just did, mostly because for longer runs I don't push myself as hard (as in, I want to make it over the finish line). I also was careful because I'm still training, and want to be able to go out and run this week without having major issues. Hitting up the last hill on this race was brutal, as I completely forgot about it, complicated by not eating anything before the race, my three Clif Shots already being used, I found myself nearly out of energy and getting light headed --I'll have to figure something else out for the marathon, as this was really the only thing holding me back.

On to the graphs, Green is elevation, Red is Heart Rate, Purple is speed:

The lap breakdowns...:

Official results have not been posted, but should be very close to what was posted above due to chip timing. This also means that you can cross the start line whenever you want. This means I watched the race start from the line for the bathrooms, and crossed the start line over 8 minutes after the official start. Normally this wouldn't be bad, but that means for the first 4-5 miles I was dodging people walking the course. I've never seen so many fuel belts in my life.

Update: Official time puts me at 2:11:55, with a pace of 10:04, but that's assuming course length of 13.1, when I actually ran about 13.2. I also finished 2787th out of 4572 (even though they said 5500 were running).

And I got a blister (Yes I know I have ugly feet):

Update2: Official race results can be found over at Active.com.