Today I might have been the slowest person on the mountain but that does not matter.
Today I ran my first half marathon. I suspect this will also be my last half marathon. Before today I thought to myself, yeah I can run thirteen miles. ( I was so cocky, so long ago. I mean this morning) Hell, I have run thirteen mountain miles on dusty, dirty mountain back roads before. Today will, well, not be easy, but it won’t be that hard.
Ha ha ha, famous last words, I thought in my trucker cap clad head, two braids on the sides of my tan face as I drove the winding mountain highways to Big Bear Lake with two of the best friends a girl could ever wish to have riding shotgun and in the back seat.
The sun was hardly above the horizon when I picked Alicia and Johnny up in our home town of Running Springs this morning at seven A.M. I thought they were just coming along for moral support, but as we crested the mountain highways and took in the view of glorious azure blue Big Bear Lake on the horizon, they told me they were running the race with me! My spirits soared up with the Red Tailed Hawk who would be waiting for us at the starting line. I’ve only done a few of these races, I mean I only began running a year ago, but having a friend run with you, even if you are miles apart, enhances the experience so very much. It just makes me feel so good to have a friend cheering for me when I run or limp or fall across the finish line.
The drive from our area of this scenic mountain town to the lake side oasis of Big Bear took us about thirty minutes. It gave us time to catch up, drink some electrolyte filled fluids, take our pre race creatine and get excited for the run ahead. Johnny would do the half marathon with me and Alicia was just doing the ten K, her back was bothering her and she just did break her wrist a month ago. The fact that she is running at all, a month after having pins put in her wrist is amazing.
Now I say Johnny was running with me and that is what he told me but I fully expected him to ditch me. I know for a fact that man may be fifteen years older than me but he’s also miles faster than I am.
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| Blurry, I was running FAST! |
The race began at one of Big Bear’s premier ski resorts, Bear Mountain Resort. As the Red Tailed Hawk circled in the autumn ski above us and the wind howled around us we tried to stay warm. It was only forty five degrees at nine A.M. race start time. Not bad at all when you think that back east the Chicago Marathon was going off on a thirty degree fall morning. God bless California and our amazing weather, even at seven thousand feet.
I was shocked by the fact that there were only about sixty other runners with us for my race (half marathon) the full marathon, and the 10 K combined. Last time I did a race, the Run 2 the Top, up California’s Mt Baldy, there were over six hundred people signed up! Earlier in the summer, I had done the Holcomb Valley Run up in Big Bear and there had to be a couple hundred people running! This race is part of the same series of races the Race Ready Series. I figured all the same athletes would do all the races, right?
Yet as we started our trek up 2N10, one of many dirt roads that cut through the alpine forests of Big Bear, there were scant few of us and one Red Tailed Hawk soaring on the wind, for luck perhaps? The beginning of the race was straight uphill for miles. Just as I expected, Johnny left me just after the starting line. It must be nice to run fast! I kept up my slow and steady pace up hill. All around me, many people were walking the uphill. They might have been going faster than me, but I can brag about the fact that I ran ninety seven percent of this thirteen miles!
As I ran along scenic 2N10 the scenery was just so gorgeous. The road turned into Sky Line Drive (Still dirt road) as the trees fell away and on the left hand side of the road and there was a shear drop off below. The view across the mountain side to Barton Flats was phenomenal. I could see far out West to the valley below and if it hadn’t been an overcast morning in the valley, I probably could have seen boats on the ocean and Catalina Island almost one hundred miles away. This is why I love my mountain home. I run in these forests every day. It’s not some where I come to vacation to, like a few people who were running alongside me.
This run had an elevation gain of over 948 feet, and much of that was in the first few miles. I could feel it in my ankles at first than a few miles later in my bad hip. (Thanks degenerative disks!) Besides a little pain, I felt great, I was loving my morning run through these alpine glens, lush meadows hogging each side of the trail until about mile eight. Than my hip started aching steadily and I was swearing hatred for every hill, every rock and every stick I almost wrenched my exhausted knees on. This race reaches altitudes of well over eight thousand feet and my thirty two year old knees felt every foot of that as I climbed higher into the forest.
Mile thirteen felt like it couldn’t come soon enough and by mile ten I was hating my life. My cell phone was dead at this point so I was kind of clue less about how many miles I had left to go. My fantasy time was to finish in less than three hours. My goal time was to finish at three hours and thirty minutes. At three hours and twenty minutes I passed a man coming up the dusty single track trail who told me I was half a mile from the finish line. Oh thank the lord, I muttered as I kept going, lengthening my stride, trying to stand up straight, so sure the cameras, the paparazzi (I mean Johnny and Alicia) and the finish line were around every turn.
My knees hurt, my back hurt, my bad hip was killing me. At least it was all downhill at this point. I was having a hard time just putting one foot ahead of the other. Every downhill step my legs felt ready to give out and I truly wondered if I could make it another half mile.
I heard the generators before I saw the finish line. Seeing Johnny’s sweaty back was a glorious surprise. More glorious than that, just past the finish line, and the free chili meal…. Was that a urination station? (Port a potty)
I crossed the finish line the second to last person in the half marathon. There was an eighty year old eighty pound anorexic looking great grand ma somewhere behind me, but that does not matter to me. I did it; I ran my first half marathon!
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| Finish Line, Finally! |
My best friend wants me to run the Las Vegas Strip Rock and Roll Marathon in December and I was considering it before today. The Las Vegas Rock and Roll Marathon has beer tents along the way and I think I will register and run the first seven or so miles, but after that, it will be time to drink! I will always be a runner. I love running in my forest with its Lodge Pole Pines, Red Tailed Hawks and sandy skinned does, but I learned today, I’m a beer drinker, not a marathon runner!
Now please enjoy this picture taken the last time I ate chili in 2004. Yes I am locked out of the car in the snowy Utah winter. Yes those are my friends flipping me off.
After a long day running in mountains, I just got home finally. I grabbed an ice pack out of the freezer. I’m exhausted and confused. I have no idea what part of my aching body hurts the most, no idea what body part to ice first!
Maybe my legs? As you can see here, by this close up of my dirty, dirty legs, this would be the first time in my life I would be a bright blue dot.
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| Johnny, half way done! |
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Fern Meadow
 Playing around with some photo shop on my phone, or maybe I’m just so exhausted from running that I’m high and the mountains really look like this? |