Santa to the Sea Half Marathon- Race Recap

The plan to run 13.1 miles came after I committed myself to running 26.2, oddly enough.

Around mid-summer of 2011, I found myself mildly intoxicated (two glasses of wine) while talking to my sister. She was telling me how she wanted to complete a marathon before her 30th birthday and that the LA Marathon was a full 10 days prior to her big 3-0 in March of 2012. It gave her 9 months to prepare both physically and mentally.

I sat there thinking about what an accomplishment it would be to complete a marathon, to run 26.2 miles, to be able to do something so amazing.

I opened my mouth to wish her luck, but the words "good luck" came out as "I will run it with you." Ummmm... What?!?

Looking back I realize that was the smartest thing I've ever done. I offered because I thought that it would be easier for her to complete this with someone there with her offering support along the way, but I think subconsciously I did it because it was something that I wanted to do as well and this was my opportunity.

During our training we quickly realized that in order to complete a marathon we were going to have to put in a lot of hours and a lot of money toward our new hobby. And then we realized that we had never completed a half marathon. How on earth were we going to be able to complete 26.2 miles if we didn't even know if we could complete half of that...

And so we enrolled in our first half marathon. Santa to the Sea in Oxnard, California. We were told to not have a time goal because if we didn't achieve it then we may end up disappointed in ourselves and frustrated with running. However, my sister and I decided that we would like to finish in under 3 hours. In order to achieve this goal, we would have to run consistently around 13-14 minute miles. This was the perfect course to do this because the course is flat.

We surpassed our goal by 11 minutes, with a finishing time of 2:49:47. I personally felt like I could turn around and run back, while my sister said she didn't know if she wanted to follow through with running a full marathon. But, we're both stubborn and we knew that we would run a marathon and that we would smile as we crossed the finish line.

The best thing about finishing was our family and training group waiting at the finish line. There is nothing better than accomplishing your goal and having people there to celebrate with you.


Crossing the finish line.



Our training group.