Santa to the Sea Half Marathon

On Sunday I ran the Santa to the Sea half marathon in Ventura with Monica and my friend Reese.

Originally I had planned to run a trail 50k race on Saturday and the half on Sunday, but then I came down with the Black Plague of Death cold that I’m still dealing with nearly two weeks later.

So I skipped the 50k and decided to take the half easy since I wasn’t feeling like a superstar. more like a death star. (As we were walking out the door my friend asked if I had had breakfast. My reply, “Yeah, Sudafed.”)

We met Monica at the start and all froze to death. The end.

It was 38* and with the windchill Californian factor, it felt like –17. I wore my PRO Compression arm sleeves and this is the only race I’ve done where I wore them the whole time and didn’t pull them down.

We all started together with a 9:01 mile and then Monica and I settled into 8:30 min/miles which we pretty much maintained for the whole race. She had run 13 miles the day before and I was just trying to survive without blowing too much snot on her.

Neither of us really checked our watches and we talked the whole time and crossed in 1:52:04 together holding hands crying tears of joys. Yeah right, immediately after we finished we ignored each other and acted like we were strangers.

Reese set another new PR with a 2:00:36. She is so close to breaking two hours! By the way, doesn’t she look fab?! She’s been dropping a couple pounds, doing barre classes, getting super fit and a lot faster. (You can followe her on IG)

This was a really fun race for me – I wasn’t sure how I was going to feel physically but being able to run with a friend and talk the whole time made the race fly by. When we hit mile 12, I thought we were on 11.

And it’s always fun to dress up and run by Santa Claus and Mrs. Claus too. and be all matchy matchy with your friends. You can gag now.

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