Space Coast South Course half marathon (Race Recap)

Cocoa Beach, FL

Sunday, November 28

Half Marathon #191

Weather - PERFECT!

Heather and I had been talking about this race for 10 years. Ten. She signed up earlier this year, and of course I had to invite myself along to join her. I asked Ariel if she had any interest in also racing, and she said "sure" - mainly because we were planning a girl's weekend and she thought that sounded fun.

Expo

The expo was being held outside, the same location as where the race start was. We didn't have a lot of luck finding parking, so once we were walking around we made sure to look at the map to find out where the best lots were to park in for race day. We got our packets, which included our GINORMOUS medal - apparently this was the 50th anniversary of the race, so that was neat. We found out that we got free beer, so we each had one while we walked around. Nothing of excitement for us, so we didn't spend a ton of time there.

Race Day

With four people in the house needing to get ready, we got up earlier than I would have planned. Based on how the morning went, it was good that we were up early. I had a bagel with peanut butter and some coffee, and we were out the door a few minutes earlier than planned, around 5:00 am - since our goal was to be parked at the mall with enough time to catch the last shuttle bus that was leaving at 5:30 am.

We got a few minutes away from the house when Ariel said that she had forgotten her shoes. I thought she was kidding, but she wasn't, so I turned around. She ran in and got her stuff and then we headed back out. We got about 10 minutes away from the house when Ariel says she forgot her bib. OMG. This time I'm a bit more agitated. We go back to the house AGAIN, and this time she assures me she has everything. We actually arrived at the mall with a few minutes to spare, but we are wondering why there are 3-4 buses and only a handful of cars. Either way, we get on the bus and are dropped off with plenty of time to spare. We got in the bathroom line while Ariel did bag drop.

The north course and full marathon had a time of 6:00, but we didn't start until 6:20. We had gotten back in line for a second bathroom trip, but Ariel was worried about starting on time, so I walked her to the 2 hour pace group and wished her luck. She has been training so hard all season, I'm glad I convinced her to run alone with a pace group than slum it with me and Maureen.

We actually started a few minutes early, so it was a good thing that we had gotten to our corral a little early. Steph had in my plan to take it easy and warm up for the first two miles, so I didn't feel bad at all for stopping briefly after the first turn to take a picture of the sunrise - it was gorgeous.

When we signed up we put 2:15 as an estimated finish time, but I'll be honest and say that I had hoped to run closer to 2:10, or possibly match/beat my time from Poland, which I believe was a 2:08. It wasn't in the cards for the day, but that was ok. We ran pretty relaxed, walked all the aid stations, took beer a few times on course (plus a Bloody Mary shot) and even used the bathroom once. I was pretty surprised when we saw Ariel running with the 1:55 pace group! She looked happy and relaxed. 

Pic from Heather (I wasn't ready!)

Pic from Dave - who we saw at the finish. Hadn't seen him in YEARS.

Another pic from Dave

The miles flew by with chatting and admiring the mansions that lined the road on one side, and the private docks on the other side. I don't know what I expected from the race, but I was really impressed with the course overall, and enjoyed the trees and quiet residential atmosphere, along with the water. It made for a very enjoyable course!

Once we hit the turn around, the weather actually seemed to improve. It was still overcast and there was a slight breeze, so the conditions were basically perfect for running. We actually picked up the pace towards the end - even running mile 13 at a sub 10 pace, and sub 9 pace for the "sprint" to the finish. Mo had a bit more of a kick than I did, and beat me by a few seconds. 

Pic from Ariel - trying not to die running into the finish

Overall, I felt really good during this race. With all the trail running I have been doing, I haven't been running roads/flats very consistently, so while I'm a tiny bit disappointed in my pace, it probably couldn't have gone much better. 

We had to do a drop bag to get finisher pictures with our medals since they gave them to us at the expo

Official Time - 2:20:48

Official 10K - 1:08:07

Official Pace - 10:45

Garmin Time - 2:20:55

Garmin Distance - 13.27 miles

Garmin Pace - 10:37

Overall Place - 759/2632

Gender Place - 391

Mile 1 - 11:04

Mile 2 - 10:33

Mile 3 - 10:33

Mile 4 - 10:33

Mile 5 - 10:36

Mile 6 - 11:55 (bathroom)

Mile 7 - 10:15

Mile 8 - 10:58

Mile 9 - 11:20

Mile 10 - 10:19

Mile 11 - 10:07

Mile 12 - 10:32

Mile 13 - 9:50

Mile 13.27 - 8:45

Ariel with her new "bestie" - the 1:55 pacer, Heather. Ariel ran a 1:53:39!! That's 5 minutes faster than my PR!!! So brought of her.

Thoughts:

• As I said, we've been talking about this race for a DECADE. Did it disappoint? NO! It was a fun atmosphere and the day was basically perfect.
• Shirt is a "cheap" brand, but pretty cool looking. Unisex size, however.
• Medal is HUGE. I compared to the others in my collection when I got home, it's the third biggest one I have after Little Rock marathon 2013 and North Country 50 Mile.
• Logistics seemed more complicated than they were. The parking was free for race day and the shuttle was easy. Signage after the race to get back to the buses were easy to follow.
• Post-race was really good! Beer and chocolate milk, plus a bizarre combination of mac and cheese (delicious!) and eggs (?). I did not have eggs.
• The ONLY thing I didn't like about this race is the weekend they have it! That is the reason I have never done it - it really sucks traveling over Thanksgiving because of how expensive airfare is.
• Would I run again? Yes, if I was closer.

Week in Review (November 23 - November 29)

Tuesday (6,693 steps) - Work in the office. Left work early so I could get my booster shot.

Wednesday (8,672 steps) - Work in the office. Actually got out of work early for the holiday and met Ben at New Image for a beer. 

Did a Peloton ride when I got home. It actually snowed a bit! (It did NOT snow at the airport, so we are still officially snow free for the season still.

Thursday (14,762 steps) - Slept in a "bit" since we didn't have plans to meet up with everyone until 9:00 for a turkey trot on the canal trail by North Table. It was a lot warmer than I thought it would be, since it was sunny. We brought Pika with us and I decided to run with her since I was supposed to be taking it easy anyway. Ariel ran with Lisa and Ben ran with Joe doing a loop on the upper trails.

Pika hasn't been running much and I was really impressed that she was able to run the entire time. When Ariel passed us on the way back she was running and trying to catch her, but thankfully, she couldn't keep up (because I wouldn't be able to run that fast either, haha).

Lots of dogs today!

Headed home to have a small lunch, shower and finish packing. Kristin had invited us over for Thanksgiving "dinner" (it was at 3, so not sure what meal that is). It was DELICIOUS, and the perfect meal before our travel started.

Thanks to the traveling over Thanksgiving, the only affordable way to get to Florida was a red eye ON Thanksgiving. Ben gave me, Ariel and Maureen a ride to the airport around 8:00 for our 11:20 flight. We barely were able to get a beer before they shut down all the restaurants for the night.

I was not surprised at ALL that I was not able to sleep on the first leg of our journey (oh, did I mention we had a connection in Fort Lauderdale?)

Friday (9,234 steps) - We arrived early enough in Fort Lauderdale that nothing was open yet. I desperately needed coffee. Since the "long" flight was a bust in terms of sleep, I knew I was in for a long day of sleep deprivation. We amused ourselves by watching a maskless woman take approximately 300 selfies of herself. Breakfast was coffee and a croissant - yum! Flight to Orland was really quick, only about 30 minutes. After we landed we had to take the shuttle to get our rental car. The rental itself was pretty easy - and we opted to go back to the airport to pick Heather up. We got "lost" driving around in circles trying to find her - ending up with accidentally ending up in the lot for commercial vehicles and getting yelled at. We were all hungry so Ariel did some research and directed us to a restaurant for breakfast. I had MORE coffee and a giant burrito. We still had time to kill before we could check into our AirBnb, so we went to a nature preserve on the way to Cocoa Beach. We didn't see much other than a few birds and a lizard. 

We had MORE time to kill, so we went to a brewery near the BnB - this one was "meh" - but it was nice to sit and relax for a bit.

FINALLY, it was time to check in. I had found a Disney themed place that seemed like it was centrally located for everything that we wanted to do over the weekend. 

My room

We were hungry pretty early and decided to go to the pizza place down the street. We all shared a large pizza and it was actually enough food for all of us. 

Made a trip to Publix to get food for breakfast and a bunch of bottled water before heading to the Florida Key Lime Pie Company. Ariel and I got a Key Lime pie slice, as well as a chocolate cheesecake slice to share. This place also sold Florida craft beer by the single can, so I ended up getting 12 (gulp) to drink over the course of the long weekend.

Shouldn't be a surprise that I was completely exhausted and went to bed VERY early - although I think I made it past 8:00.

Saturday (13,112 steps) - Slept in, and got over 10 HOURS of sleep, haha. I guess that doesn't even really make up for zero sleep the night before, though. After breakfast Ariel, Maureen and I went for a shake out run. We didn't have a plan of where to go and ended up near the water. It was warm and it felt really hard.

We all showered and then headed over to the expo. It was set up outside and we didn't have the best luck finding parking, so figuring out race day logistics seemed very important. 

We were able to get a beer with our packet and we wandered around the expo a bit, but there wasn't anything of interested to me. We walked across the street to the "Village Idiot" for a quick lunch and a beer. 

Our big activity of the day was going to the Kennedy Space Center. We had thought that a few hours would be plenty of time, but turns out we could easily have spent at least another hour there. It was "expensive-ish" but worth it. Even learned a few things!

Definitely worth the wait to see this!

We had decided to eat at the same pizza place for dinner. We ended up having to get it to go because they were severely understaffed and the wait was pretty long. We got a couple pizzas to go and this delicious dessert that Ariel and I shared. 

Time to get stuff ready for race morning, as we were going to have a VERY early wake up.

Sunday (29,167 steps) - 4 am wake up call for Space Coast (South Course) half marathon. Recap to follow.

We headed back to the BnB. No recollection of the rest of the day. Heather left with her sister to go to Disney World and Maureen went out to eat with her brother. Ariel and I just sat around the BnB and watched 30 Rock (yay, it's back on Netflix!). Ariel had decided we were going to go get burgers for dinner - we went to a place called Checkers that was... ok. We don't have those in Denver, but it was basically fast food.

Relatively early bedtime again!

Monday (14,385 steps) - We had to be out of the BnB by 10, but since our kayaking had been moved to the afternoon we got to sleep in a bit. Checked out around 9:30, picked up coffee at Dunkin' and then headed down the coast to Desoto to see the manatees!

We couldn't believe how many there were! We watched them for a bit - they were so cute and came up fairly often to breathe. We still had some time to kill before our kayaking adventure, but most of that time was spent trying to find a store to buy sunscreen, we eventually just stopped at a gas station. I was glad that Ariel preferred doing something like this rather than spend a ton of money going to Universal or Disney. Our group wasn't very big, there were only four other people besides us and the guide. We ended up kayaking over two miles and a couple hours on the water. We only saw one manatee while we were out, so I was happy we had gone to see them earlier. 

A jellyfish that doesn't sting!

Mangrove tunnels

We finished up the tour around 3 and we were STARVING. The place the guide recommended ended up being closed, so we went back to the pizza place AGAIN, but this time, we got pasta. It was tasty!

Immediately after finishing we headed to Orlando, since we had plans to crash a run club. On the way there, we stopped at a plant store so Ariel could get a "Florida" succulent. It was there that I realized I didn't have my credit card, I had left it at the restaurant. It was over an hour to go back there, so I told them to just cut it up since I had a back up card on me. Frustrating. We found the run club without any problems, but also realized that we were early - so we sat outside while we waited for other people to arrive. It wasn't a big group and they were all much faster than us, so Maureen and I did our own thing and Ariel waited in the car since she didn't even want to walk.

Can you spot us?

We stayed long enough to have a beer and chat a bit with the guy who organizes it. He gave us some swag just for coming - that was nice!

We still had to drive about 20 minutes to check into the hotel near the airport, which ended up being pretty sketchy. Had enough time to repack all our bags and drink the last of my beer. Ariel and I had to share a double bed, but I was so tired I slept pretty well. 

Stats:

• 96,025 steps
• 21.17 miles run
• 40 minutes of cardio
• 120 minutes of strength (kayaking is "strength" right?)