Mountain to Beach Marathon
My... I don't remember the number anymore... Xth marathon is in the books and it once again totally sucked! Well, it sucked less than the last one for sure, my famous failure in Honolulu in December where I couldn't run past the first 5k. This time I was working on pacing and was going quite slow but fast enough that I should've made it under the 5hr mark. But alas my feet started hurting, then my legs started hurting, and I ended up having a difficult time of things during the last 10K.
I did get a PR at 5hr 13min. I don't think it was because of the "mountain" to "beach" downhill thing, which was overhyped as there's plenty of uphill, including the first 3 miles or so. But in order to really get under the 5hr mark I'm going to need to solve the FOOT problem. I actually think if I can get under 5hr I can get WAY under 5hr.
San Francisco is just three months away...
The marathon itself was a mixed bag. It starts off in Ojai, a beautiful mountainside town and surrounding pastures. But once you get to the bottom, you're running alongside freeways, factories and even oil pipelines. You barely even run by the shore! I loved the first half so much that I was pronouncing it the prettiest marathon ever, but hated the second half part so much that I don't think I want to run again. (But if I do run it again, I'll stay in Ojai instead of downtown Ventura.)
