Myrtle Beach Half Marathon 2017

Ah the Myrtle Beach Marathon. The best and really only good reason to visit MB. This time it was made better because we left the kids with Kelley's mom so we got a weekend all planned out for ourselves!

Road trip!

Couple of hitches, however. Ella has been sick off and on for about 3 weeks. Poor thing has been blowing it out of both ends, bless her heart. Sometimes at the same time (gross!) so it hasn't been pretty. Also my foot prevented any running at all since Jan 12, so I was going in totally cold. Not just untrained, but untrained and still in a fair amount of pain. I've been swimming, so hopefully a combination of arthritis medication and lung capacity could muscle me through something. I decided to drop back from the full and just run the half.

Packet pickup was smooth, but had the longest line ever seen for the swag. Great swag though, nice tech shirt and socks, even a new pair of orange sunglasses. And I ran into my friend Ocean there - hadn't seen her in a while.

Race day started really smooth. Got up before the alarm, dressed, medicated, ate breakfast, walked out to the start in plenty of time. Only problem was this asinine security line to nowhere. They had fenced off the sidewalk to be sure only the runners got into the starting corral, but it just turned into a bottleneck. I told people specifically that I would be hanging out around the 4 hour pace group and to find me there because I would be looking for them.

Have to turn right at that stop light to get to the starting corral

Literally, I made my way to the back of the massive pack of runners (about 4000 people total?) and heard 3 - 2 - 1- GO! No chance of finding my friends.

Still got a starting line picture

Then it was time to run. Took a couple of minutes to get over the starting line but eventually I took my first steps in over 7 weeks and it felt amazing. Muscle memory is a funny thing. As soon as my legs started turning over my foot began hurting worse, but I expected that. Mostly I tried to just appreciate the moment of finally running again. Since I started at the very back it was easy to pass lots of people in the first few miles.

I hit the 10k mark in 1:02, so that's not bad at all. In those first few miles I saw my friend Charlotte, running her 99th marathon and we talked for a while. I also ran some with Relentless Forward Commotion - always great to see Heather out there.

Charlotte always runs in costume - she was 99 bottles of beer today

Eventually I also caught up with the 4:15 pace group, but then had to poop and never saw them again. Really miles 6 - 10 were pretty uneventful, thank goodness. I didn't wear the garmin (that 1:02 split came from the official results), but it started at 6:32 am and I took this pic at the 10 mile marker at 8:20 am, so we'll call that around 1:48. Pretty sluggish by my standards, but again I was just happy to be out there.

Still almost smiling

At the mile 11 marker the wheels fell off. My arthritis really kicked in on my hands, I couldn't come anywhere close to making a fist anymore. My legs were killing me, the injured foot felt like it was going to fall off. I decided to just walk it in from there. It had gone from "not fun" into "completely miserable" territory. I would jog a little bit here and there when I wanted to get away from someone annoying, but for the most part I just kept my head down and kept moving forward.

Evil Genius decided to call me in mile 11. Fortunately I wasn't even out of breath and could easily talk to her, although I did feel like kind of a douche for taking the call in the middle of a race. She said mommy wasn't answering which meant Kelley was still asleep and she needed to relay some instructions. Ella had barfed again that morning, a couple of times and wanted us to come home. Actually, EG gave specific instructions. 1. Finish the race 2. take a shower and eat something 3. take Mommy for a long walk on the beach where you can hold hands, then 4. drive back to Raleigh. Isn't that sweet.

Got my medal!

I hit the finish line in 2:27:38, which is a far cry from the 1:47 I put up the last time I ran the half here. But you can only be so upset about finishing a half marathon with absolutely no training. I didn't really stick around for the post race festivities this time, but they are fantastic. I really wanted that beer, but first priority was finding a bathroom. Those were on the way out of the park anyway, so I just headed back to the hotel.

After a quick shower we still hit the breakfast at the hotel. Our little secret is that we always stay at the La Quinta at Broadway at the Beach. It's nice, clean, cheap, and you can walk to the start/finish line. We also managed to walk some of the stores at Broadway, and did hold hands for a bit. But then headed back to Raleigh pretty soon. Stopped in the small town of Calabash NC for some lunch and shopping, and still made it back to Raleigh before dinner. Ella was feeling better the next day. And my first race of 2017 is in the books.