I finally ran three years in a row and made it to the Longboard Legacy Club! In past years I had always intended to make it three years uninterrupted, but for some reason or another I always had to skip the third year. Last year I almost had to bail from the race but ended up switching to virtual at the last minute. So glad I finally did it.
The course has remained unchanged in all the years that I have run it…mostly flat along the beach route, with a little bit of hills going into the residential area. The weather this year was cool and breezy, with a chance of torrential rain. A major storm was moving in to southern California that weekend and the runners and race officials were closely watching the weather reports. I’ve run in the rain before — see Doha Qatar 10K — so I was not too worried about it. When you’ve experienced the worst case scenario, everything else seems easy.
Since I was unable to complete an official half marathon at Disney World during the Dopey Challenge, and because I had a course diversion during Boulderton Half Marathon, this was my first half marathon in 9 months. I bought a Gymboss timer ahead of time to help me keep 30 second intervals. I’ve noticed that my phone battery has been performing poorly lately. The timer also has a haptic setting. It comes in helpful when I’m really slogging it out there and when my mind is a little foggy. I tend to question if I accidentally turned off my timer or ignored it, but this physical timer keeps me in check.
I used this race as an opportunity to try out the 30/30 intervals and to put some of my learnings into practice. I specifically focused on acceleration and deceleration gliders. I noticed that the quick and sudden stops during WDW Marathon really impaired my ability to keep pace and also made me much more sore. I picked a spot on the right side of the course and took deceleration as slow as possible. Same as acceleration. I have also been practicing it on the treadmill during my gym classes. It worked beautifully! I was hardly sore after the race and even had a pretty good time, all things considered…3:26:26. After I crossed the finish line, a woman even thanked me for unofficially pacing her, which was really sweet. You never know who is watching!
Amara in Training 