Race Recap: La Jolla Half Marathon

To finish up our month of racing, we stayed local and ran the La Jolla half marathon. Sean had run it a few years back but this was my first time.

Sean & I went to the expo on Saturday afternoon.  They had the expo at the Hilton Del Mar near the race track where the race would start.  There was a free dirt parking lot where we would park both days or you could pay $3 to self park at the hotel.

We walked into the expo and WOW it was crowded, I seriously felt claustrophobic as soon as I walked inside.  You had to go to the left to pick up your bib and then all the way to the right to get your bag & shirt.

The shirts, well, they were nice, I just wish they had done the same color for everyone vs. yellow for the ladies and blue for the guys.  I am not a big fan of yellow but it wasn’t a bad shirt overall.

The expo, well it was crowded and claustrophobic but we did get some Ultima on discount and we also picked up a tens unit which we’ve both been using and it seems to be working.

We got some dinner, got our stuff out and then relaxed.  The race didn’t start until 7:30am but we had to drive about 40 minutes so we still got up around 5:30a.

Now this race is not easy to get to and you can sit in traffic on the highway forever.  We managed to get there relatively easily and then got parked and headed to the start area.

There were a ton of port a potties so the lines went really quick so we could get to the start area.  We didn’t bring a drop bag, but they were handing out plastic bags to put your gear in and they had different lines for the various corrals to separate them. No UPS trucks or anything like that for this race.

Sean was in corral 1 and I was in Corral 4 so we took a few pre-race photos before heading to our corrals.

It was a very uneventful start, I started out nice & easy because I knew there were a lot of hills coming.  Once we made the turn up the first hill, I felt really hot and I remember thinking that they definitely should have started this race way earlier.

I just kept chugging along, power hiking up some of the hills and then running the minimal downhills and flats.  We had an awesome down hill in mile 5 before we hit the big hill up Torrey Pines.  It was definitely brutal and I have to say everyone around me was hiking up the hill.

I finally made it up and then did a lot of run/walking the rest of the race.  I swear the hills were never ending.  We finally got a bit of a down hill only to get a steep hill up in the last mile. Seriously!? I was not happy, lol, I’m joking but there were a lot of hills in this race.  But at least this time unlike the last few hills, we had a nice downhill to the finish.

As we ran down to the finish line, I remember the distinct odor of dead fish, which was disgusting, but fortunately I was able to get past that part pretty quickly.  And then we hit the grass and the finish line!

I was so happy to finish this race, I kept thinking that this was a one and done race and at the time I never wanted to run it again.  Well I might have to do it at least one more time if I want to try for the Triple Crown that includes Carlsbad, La Jolla & America’s Finest City.  We didn’t run Carlsbad this year so we don’t qualify but one year maybe we will do all 3 races.

After finishing they handed us our medal, a bottle of water, a paper bag with snacks and then there was cold chocolate milk, which I drank as soon as I met up with Sean.  They had nice snacks too, there were Food Should Taste Good sweet potato & multigrain chips, Go Macro bars (my fav!), Lara bars & a banana.  I will say though, while nice to have a bag with our goodies, the paper bag broke and got soggy since I was drenched.

We walked around the post race expo, there were a lot of booths.  We got free Nature’s Bakery fig bars, which are super yummy, some beef jerky, mini Sambazon Acai samples before taking a few photos.

As we were taking our own photos, this photographer, Rich Cruse, who was taking photos for the race, asked us if he could take our photo and we were like sure.  So he got this awesome shot of us.

After photos we headed over to the shuttles to get back to the start. They had nice buses, thank goodness because it took almost an hour to get back or so it seemed.

And so there you have it, that’s the La Jolla Half Marathon in a nut shell.  It’s a beautiful, very hilly course.