Capitola half marathon race re-cap

I love the Capitola half marathon, and this was my third year in a row running it. But oh my, this was a bad race day! I feel like everything went wrong. 🙁

To start off, I didn’t sleep well the night before. I kept waking up and my stomach was in knots. I don’t know if it was what I ate for dinner or stress about the race.

I managed to drag myself out of bed around the right time, and continued to have digestive problems. This was not boding well for running 13.1 miles.

Once I got dressed and in the car, I started to feel better. I arrived in Santa Cruz right on schedule (6:30am) only to find my GPS took me the wrong way and the road between me and my preferred parking was blocked (duh, that’s where the start line is!).

I backtracked a few blocks, found a parking lot and got in the (really) long line to pay. Fortunately, I discovered I could pay online using my iPhone, so I skipped out of the line and went back to my car to put my wallet away and make sure I had all my race essentials.

At this point, I was starting to feel anxious again, and in my hurry to get to the start line and meet my friends, I closed the trunk while my keys were in there. OOPS. No time to deal with it, so I headed over to the race area.

It was a little chilly in Santa Cruz this morning but I’d rather run in cold weather than in hot (or even warm) weather. I regretted not having warmer clothes, but I knew once we started running I’d be fine and probably even need to remove a layer.

The race started promptly at 7am and we were off! Runkeeper updates me every 2 minutes with my time, distance and average pace. At 2 minutes, I was at a 10 min/mi pace. OOPS. This is way too fast, and I was going to burn out early for sure if I kept that up.

I tried to slow down, but again at 4 minutes, 6, 8, 10, the average pace was a lot faster than what I wanted. I soon realized that my GPS was a bit off, so I was getting credit for extra mileage… at the one mile marker, I felt like I was on track and running a good pace. Everything was going well and my digestive problems didn’t come back during the race (the one good thing today).

Then around mile 7 I started having chest pain. A stabbing, sharp pain, slightly on the left side. It went away immediately when I stopped running, so I took a short walk break. And it came back immediately when I started running again.

I alternated walking and trying to run for about a mile, and then decided walking was best for my health. Unexplained chest pain can’t be good, and I didn’t want to take any chances.

Since I walked pretty much the entire last 5 miles, no PR today for me. However, the weather was perfect and the location of the Capitola half marathon is absolutely beautiful.

Oh and my brand new bluetooth headphones started acting up. The music kept getting static-y and cutting out. I’m trying to see if Plantronics will send me a new pair, and in the meantime, I updated the firmware. I came across some reviews that the combination of iPhone and Apple watch + running app can some time causes issues with these, and the latest firmware is supposed to help. I guess we’ll see, they are working fine now that I’m home.

Kimmy and Lisa also ran the half and both had a pretty amazing day. Kimmy got an amazeballs PR and I’m so proud of her! 🙂 🙂 🙂

Once we all finished, we headed over to my car to see about retrieving my keys. Turns out my AAA is expired, but they gave me the # of the local towing company. Paying the tow truck guy directly was actually cheaper than a year of AAA and this is the first time I’ve ever actually needed it in decades, so maybe I won’t renew it after all.

Keys recovered, we headed over to Saturn Cafe for some wonderful vegan milkshakes and breakfast burritos. Yum!

Despite everything that went wrong, I still feel it was a good day. I’m happy to have been able to run (even if it was only part of the race), to be outside in such a location place, and to spend time with my good friends. I’m already planning my next half marathon adventure… check back soon for an update on that topic.

QOTD: Have you ever had a bad race? Or just a bad day in general where everything seemed to go wrong?

2 thoughts on “Capitola half marathon race re-cap

  1. I’ve definitely had bad race days. As soon as one thing goes wrong, it seems everything else for the rest of the day is just out of sync :/
    I’m sorry you had a crappy day, but really glad you ran. You did incredibly well all things considered (especially the chest pain – that’s really no good!).
    Thanks for talking me into this, I really had thought I wasn’t going to run any more of these, but I’m really glad I did. And I’m glad I did with you and Lisa =)

    • Some of your comments were flagged as spam by wordpress, boo!

      I’m happy I finished and glad we all did it together. I’m taking it really easy on my runs until I can see my doctor, which won’t be for a week or two since I’m pretty busy taking care of Indy right now.

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