Long Beach Half Marathon - Oct 17th

During the month of October I work two jobs my normal everyday, and then at night I do makeup at a Halloween Haunt event. My time is extremely restricted so my running gets put on the bottom of to-do list. Every October when Long Beach Half Marathon comes closer I feel less confident that I'll do well because of training. I wasn't going to run it this year, but it fell on my dads birthday and he really wanted me to run it with him. I'm so glad I did!

I stayed at mom & dads the night before the race, since dad was running too it was more convinent to stay with them. My alarm began screaming at me 4am which gave me a solid 4 hours of sleep that night. Not the greatest amount, but I woke up feeling ok. My dad and I planned to leave the house by 5:15, so that gave me enough time to get my body ready. I always give myself a good hour or more before leaving, cause all runners can agree using the restroom at home on race day is allot more comfy then trying to get'er done in a porta potty. So we got everything in the car and off we went.

We made it down to Long Beach around 6am. People all over the parking lot were stretching, taping, and just having the look of "I can do this today" on their faces. The weather was beyond perfect, so I decided to run in a tank. I was starting to get the race butterfiles which caused me to have hiccups for almost an hour. Finally we were both ready...bibs check, GU check, ipods check, KT Tape check, knowing were mom was going to on the course with the camera check...we are ready!!

I gave dad a big "Birthday Good Luck" hug and he headed off to his wave. I tried to get in touch with Penny to met up with her but it was a big cellphone fail. Nothing was working however, I was able to find Maggie . We went to our wave and found my dad again. He wasn't able to move up to his wave, so he decided to just stay were he was. After waiting for about 20 mins we were finally moving, then off we went. Dad took off and I knew I wouldn't see him till the finish. Maggie & I were doing great chatting, running, and enjoying ourselves. Miles 1-3 are always the worst for me, my body is warming up and I'm just not into it yet, so having someone with me was great. Maggie started not to feel well and told me to just go without her cause she didn't want to hold me back. I made sure she was ok and off I went. Now I'm running alone so I raised the volume on my Ipod and just went with it. I felt fantastic, my body was all warmed up and I was hitting 9:30 - 10 min miles with minimal walks in between, I was excited to be hitting miles that fast with minimal training the past month. My confidence to finish this race faster then my San Francisco half was getting bigger, "I could totally do this" I kept telling myself.

Then mile 5 a song kicked into my Ipod that totally gets me every time "Marching On" by Timbaland featuring One Republic. It made me think of all my friends running with me and those that were cheering me on via Twitter & Facebook. My little feet were just pounding that pavement. May sound odd, but music always makes my runs so much better and this song kicked in just in time. Mile 6 I found mom. She was all smiles, I got a hug and she got a quick photo of me before I took off again.

I finally hit the beach strand when I notice a runner wearing a pink shirt with paw prints on it. That has to be Penny!! I was so excited to had found her. She was doing great even after running extra miles she threw in before our half. I said a quick HI, then off I went. My pace went to 10:30-11 mins, which I was still very happy with. I was starting to get a little tired miles 8-10, but I had some great tunes kickin in my ipod, Linkin Park, Eminem, Street Drum Corp, Pink that were helping. I even caught myself singing out loud at one point.

Mile 10 is when I usually crash, so I took a GU hoping it would help, and texted my mom to let her know I was 3 miles to the finish. I kept telling myself "only 3 more miles, a 5k come on don't let mile 10 ruin your great run today" So I picked up my feet and I was off!! I was just going, not feeling anything really. My thoughts were just all over the place "what was I going to eat after this", "I wonder if my boyfriend was awake yet sine he got home from work at 2am", "I wonder if dads finished", "are thigh high boots really this year fall boot, I'm going to look so short wearing them" All sorts of random things where going through my head. Then by the time I knew it was looking at the mile 12 marker. I noticed a girl next to me that was doing great but, she started to slow down a little so I told her "Come on only 1 more mile" She actually listened to me without wanting to punch me in the face for the cheeleader pep talk. I have no idea who this girl was, but her and I ran our little hearts out to the finish. I heard someone yell "Go Kristy Go" and there was my dad with his medal cheering for me through the fence!! I hit the finish with my Garmin telling me 2:38, which was 1 min faster then my San Francisco half. I wanted official time to confirm, so I called my boyfriend (at this point I could careless if he was awake I wanted a time HAHA!) who was getting text updates. He told me that not only did I not PR by a whole minute, but I hit the same time as San Francisco. OHH BOO!!

I do have to admit I wasn't unhappy about my time. I ran hard and felt great the entire race. I hadn't ran a good training run since early September, and never thought I was going to feel the way I did with this race. It also made me happy to know how excited my dad was that we ran together for his birthday...well sort of ran together he finished in 2:11.

Now we are both preparing to run Carlsbad half, and my first full LA Marathon...let the training begin!