The weekend of the race I drove down to Irvine and relaxed at Ryan's apartment with his girlfriend and roommate. To give my legs some down time we mostly played video games and watched Adult Swim shows. I went to bed kinda late and wasn't able to sleep well, but that's no surprise. I was pretty excited about running my first Half and getting an official time on it. I like setting benchmarks. They keep me on my toes and give me personal goals to break. If there is anything I learned in school is that setting goals is the only way to get things done.
After waking up, showering and getting ready I headed to the OC Fairgrounds to park my car, eat my bagels with peanut butter and get shuttled to the starting line at Fashion Island. I decided to wear my red Asics shirt since it feels good and it has a pocket on the shoulder. I thought this was a great idea since I could put my car key in there and not have to leave my car open. So I did that and headed to the bus. As usual, I was early and had to wait for about an hour before the crowd started to show. To relax a bit I talked to a couple of other runners who coincidentally were also running for the first time. I like how this community is so tight, everyone is friendly and they're always so chipper. As time moved on we started to get ready on the corrals and after the anthem and all the particulars, the race was off. There were a lot of people running this event so it took about 10 minutes to get to the starting line and my personal time going, but after that it was 13.1 or bust!
Since I lived in Irvine for 3 years I was really excited to run this race. After a couple of turns after the start the course took us pass Corona del Mar. If you've never been there, you need to, its such a beautiful and secluded beach. It was here when it happened. All of a sudden I felt my car key drop inside my shirt, hit my leg and clank on the pavement. I was really confused since I assumed that the shoulder pocket was secure and would keep my key safe. What I didn't notice was a hole on the top of it that was big enough to make anything fall out of it but small enough so it can be easily missed. this worried me much. I put the key back in and continue running. I made sure to check the pocket and felt the key about every 2 minutes to make sure it was still there. After that the course winded around some richy residential areas of CdM. By then there were a couple of people out waving and giving all the runners support. Seeing people out there supporting the runners always makes me smile.
But, of course, at about mile 4 my smile went to a frown when I reached for the pocket and didn't feel my car key. Great. I completely stopped. I had a couple of thoughts: I could walk back and look for it, or I could keep going, finish up and then come back to the same area and look for it later. I contemplated doing the latter but I figured that would simply be the stupid move so I started backtracking looking at the ground for it. While I did this I heard a couple of people say "He's going backwards LOLZ"..... I really like how astute some people are. The gods must have been happy with me because I was able to find the key in less than 5 minutes. I grabbed it, quickly decided that I would hold onto it the whole run and try to forget about it. At this point I was not feeling too great. The key issue coupled with sluggish legs were really keeping me down.
Somewhere after mile 5 my legs stopped feeling weird and my stride improved. From then on the race went more or less without a hitch. I keep my pace and enjoyed the scenery of the Newport Back Bay. After a bathroom break at about the 8-mile marker I decided that I could pick up my speed somewhere between mile 9 and 10, but, somehow I missed those markers. By the time I picked up my speed I was coming up to mile 11. The last few miles I was running way faster than I should have been able to if I had maintained a faster tempo the entire race. Oh wells. I finished in 2:11:55. A bit short of the 2 hour mark, not to shabby but with a goal to break. Soon after I passed the finish line I heard Jillian and Ryan calling for me. They made an awesome sign to encourage my running. How awesome is that?!
