Carlsbad Half Marathon race recap

I finally have a working laptop again! I dropped it off at the Apple Store on Friday. They did some diagnostic test while I was there that showed there weren’t any problems with any of the hardware, so I left it there and they just completely wiped the hard drive and reinstalled the operating system. When I picked it up yesterday, it was like a new out-of-the-box computer again, so it took me a while to get everything back to how I had it. But it works, and the software reset was free, so all’s well that ends well.

I had thought about just trading it in for a brand new one after they got it working again, but this way, I don’t have to spend hundreds of dollars, so I’m keeping it. If it screws up again though, I’m pulling the plug on it.

Anyway, now that I’m not posting from my phone, I’ll write out a full recap of the Carlsbad Half Marathon on Jan. 15.

Clark and I stopped by the expo at a Holiday Inn Express the Friday evening before the race to pick up our race bibs and premiums This race always gives runners a long-sleeved shirt and either a quarter-zip top or a full-zip light jacket. This year, we got another quarter-zip top, with thumb holes. I’ve already worn it for a run and it’s pretty nice.

The day before the race was quiet. I met the running group in the morning and ran 8 miles with Karen and Kathy, but it poured the rest of the day, so Clark and I mostly hung around the house.

We did go to Pizza Port for dinner though, where we saw a bengal cat on a leash?

Sunday morning was race day! The half marathon starts at 7:45 a.m. and the start area is less than a 10-minute drive from our house, so we had a relatively leisurely morning.

The weather cooperated. There was more rain in the forecast for later in the day, but we wound up getting a perfectly dry block for the race, and it wasn’t too cold either. Really nothing to complain about.

In the port-o-potty line before the race, Clark suggested I run with him. Up until then, I’d been planning to start in the first wave and aim for 1:55 to 1:57, but his idea sounded like more fun. So I got in the fifth wave with him and eventually, we were off.

The biggest hill of the course is in the first mile. We ran all the way up it, and then through the second mile, but then Clark started taking walk breaks. That was about how the rest of the race went — a little running, a little walking, rinse and repeat.

Around halfway. I swear we were having more fun than this picture suggests haha.

We ran back down that same big hill from the beginning, and our last mile was our fastest — 9:38. We finished 13.1 in 2:31:42, changed into dry clothes and then hit the beer garden.

My official stats from the race:

• Chip time: 2:31:42
• 175th/306 F 35-39
• 1,092nd/2,184 women
• 2,386th/4,093 overall

So that was a good long training run for the Algonquin 50K.

And now, just to catch this up to the current day, this weekend wasn’t nearly as productive in terms of running. I did meet the running group Saturday morning to run 6.4 miles with Karen.

But I didn’t feel well at all when I woke up Sunday morning, and I didn’t just skip the 20-miler — I didn’t run at all! The only thing I did all day was pick up my computer, watch football and finally go to Leucadia for dinner with Clark.

This morning, I got my laptop hooked back up to my office computer so I could work from home for the first time in almost two weeks. In the late afternoon, I ran 4 miles at a 9:03/mile pace.