San Diego Marathon 2007

Pre-game!

At 9:30 this evening, we ate our Pre-Marathon meal which consisted of pasta with meat sauce and have just finished laying out our clothes for tomorrows adventure which starts in 5 hours… how does that translate to the walk.. well we should be about 20 miles into our day!

Kerri and Becky’s gear

Janelle, Becky, Kerri

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o’dark early 3:30 am to be exact the alarm went of for the three of us to get dressed an on our way down from Scripts Ranch to the airport parking lot in downtown San Diego where we could park and catch a bus to the starting line.

After a very jerky bus ride, we arrived to the starting area where we grabbed some water and used the restroom one last time. I couldn’t believe how many people were there in the park to take part in the event. There were many different charity teams such as “Team in Training” who had coaches there to help motivate etc. We were inspired by an older women who was there dancing away at the start line!

At just before 6:30 the Marine Corp. Band marched by playing to signify that the race would be starting soon and that the runners should proceed to their assigned gate. We took our gate and patiently waited the start by listening to the guest speakers and also reading the back of many of the runners shirts. They were very inspirational and each person was walking for a different reason.

6:3o the Elite runners, The ones that would finish the race in 2.5 to 3 hours took off and then we were off! Being that we were at the back of the pack, it took us about 10 minutes to get up to and cross the start line (nothing like a hurry up and wait scenario!) So about 6:40 we were off, not bad considering there were over 20,000 runners!

Yahoo Mile 1 down!!!! The clock time is about 10 min of of what our actual pace was.

Janelle, Becky and I were on track to meet our 15 min mile pace for the first 5 miles but then had a slow down when a necessary bathroom break between mile 5 and 6 which bumped us to over a 16 minute mile. I guess we were not the only ones that had to because it took us about 10 minutes to get through the line. This was not good because that meant that we had to pick up our pace to make sure we would make the two cut off points. At this I started to pull away from Becky and Janelle and was jogging at a faster pace and kept on truck’en until about mile marker 17 where I then I decided to walk a mile and run a mile for a bit. I was still keeping up a 15 minute mile pace and checking in via phone with Janelle.