Last weekend, we headed up to Humboldt County to run the Avenue of the Giants half-marathon. It was quite a crew – my dad came from Istanbul, my buddy James came from Raleigh, Matt came up from San Jose, and then Micky, Amelia, and I filled out the group.
We found a place in Ferndale, and setup base camp. There was no wireless, which made for a desperate attempt to steal from the neighbors, which went exactly no where. That did mean though that we spent a lot more time just hanging out, playing guitar, and chasing Amelia around the house. There was a cute little grocery store in town where we got our food for the weekend, and spent the day before the race checking out the North Coast.
Massively windy. Massively beautiful. Don’t know that a coastline like California’s can be rivaled. There’s something to the cliffs and the sheer coldness of the water that makes for this beautiful yet distant combo. Unrivaled in what I’ve seen.
On to the race!
The race sucked. I just didn’t train enough. I got to 7 miles and some steps at a perfect pace. I was really happy with what I was doing, and then I just couldn’t keep going. I hit neither my time (2:28:56) nor my objective to not walk (about half-a-mile over the course of the race). There was an epic hill at about 1.8 miles to go, and it just knocked me flat.
BUT
I ran the last half-mile as hard as I could, and Amelia and Micky were both at the finish line to cheer me on. It was quite awesome. That was by far the best part of the whole thing.
Lessons learned for next time:
- Do a training run more than 7 miles
- Set realistic goals, and accomplish them
- Bring Micky along for the whole ride
Don’t know when it will be, but looking forward to the next one.