My First Half Marathon!
Today was the day I ran my first half marathon. The route takes you around downtown Monterey, Cannery Row, downtown Pacific Grove, out along the coast to Asilomar and then back to Fisherman's Wharf in Monterey.
There were three of us running in amongst the 5000 folks taking part, John (in the middle, a friend who used to work at Cellfire and the guy who cajoled me into doing it) and Jonathan (on the left, another friend from Cellfire who I work with every day).
The run starts at 7am, so we got down to the start line around 6:45am. The runners are in different corrals based on anticipated running pace, so the faster folks go first, with the elite runners starting when the gun fires.
Us folks back in corral 'C' actually crossed the start line about 5 minutes later, but you have a timing chip attached to your shoe, so your time starts when you cross the line.
This blurred shot is our view of the start line (the red hoop) - it's barely dawn, so it was easy to take blurred shots (that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it).
I had my GPS watch on to help pace myself, and Jonathan and I, both firt time halfers ran together using my watch to make sure we didn't get over excited and go too fast. John, who has run these before, started with us but then gently pulled away.
There are live bands, drink stations, toilet stations etc. along the route and it was fun running with so many folks all going around a similar pace.
It did shower on us a few times, and we were feeling it near the end, but we were feeling good enough to speed up for the last half mile.
At the end, they had those silver mylar blankets to keep warm with, so we grabbed one each and then headed over for the free beer and soup (yes, beer at 9:30am - it had to be done).
Then it started to rain more heavily, so we headed home wrapped up in our blankets and grabbed some hot showers.
It'll be interesting to see how the legs are tomorrow!
My official timing stats are below:
Overall: 2821 out of 4258
Men: 1345 out of 1668
M 40-44: 185 out of 223
Age/Grade: 45.13% Place: 3351
Finish: 2:18:54 Pace: 10:36
The GPS trace can be found here (note, includes detour down the alley by the aquarium for a toilet break at the public toilets there!).
The next question is, will I do it again sometime? - we'll see (let's see how those legs recover first).
There were three of us running in amongst the 5000 folks taking part, John (in the middle, a friend who used to work at Cellfire and the guy who cajoled me into doing it) and Jonathan (on the left, another friend from Cellfire who I work with every day).
The run starts at 7am, so we got down to the start line around 6:45am. The runners are in different corrals based on anticipated running pace, so the faster folks go first, with the elite runners starting when the gun fires.
Us folks back in corral 'C' actually crossed the start line about 5 minutes later, but you have a timing chip attached to your shoe, so your time starts when you cross the line.
This blurred shot is our view of the start line (the red hoop) - it's barely dawn, so it was easy to take blurred shots (that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it).
I had my GPS watch on to help pace myself, and Jonathan and I, both firt time halfers ran together using my watch to make sure we didn't get over excited and go too fast. John, who has run these before, started with us but then gently pulled away.
There are live bands, drink stations, toilet stations etc. along the route and it was fun running with so many folks all going around a similar pace.
It did shower on us a few times, and we were feeling it near the end, but we were feeling good enough to speed up for the last half mile.
At the end, they had those silver mylar blankets to keep warm with, so we grabbed one each and then headed over for the free beer and soup (yes, beer at 9:30am - it had to be done).
Then it started to rain more heavily, so we headed home wrapped up in our blankets and grabbed some hot showers.It'll be interesting to see how the legs are tomorrow!
My official timing stats are below:
Overall: 2821 out of 4258
Men: 1345 out of 1668
M 40-44: 185 out of 223
Age/Grade: 45.13% Place: 3351
Finish: 2:18:54 Pace: 10:36
The GPS trace can be found here (note, includes detour down the alley by the aquarium for a toilet break at the public toilets there!).
The next question is, will I do it again sometime? - we'll see (let's see how those legs recover first).
posted by Tim H at 6:48 PM
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