This was my second time running Surf City and as shocking as it was (wasn’t really expecting it) it was by *far* the best half marathon performance I have ever had. I didn’t PR (final time was 2:28 my current PR is 2:20) but I know that I definitely would have had my friend and I not stopped during the race to chat for 5 minutes to one of our supporters who drove from LA to Huntington Beach with some awesome signage for all the twitter runners out in the crowd (thanks Lori!) This was also my first time live tweeting during a race (I got to temporarily take over the kspacetv account to tweet pictures and observations so I am sure that slowed me down a bit as well.

Course was great (we ran along PCH), weather was perfect, the crowd was amazing and to top it all off I got to meet up with a ton of great runners from all over. I am not always a big fan of huge race events (long lines for *everything* from water to rest stops to bottlenecks on the course) but the 20,000 folks who ran Surf City were just too awesome to not have a great time during the whole race.

Also, after everything was said and done, I felt like I could have ran another 5-6 miles without wanting to shoot myself in the head… these are all great signs of where I am endurance wise in addition to making me dread the LA Marathon a little less now.

I’m now racking my brain over what happened differently or what I changed to make this race go so well. It usually helps to look back on training pre-race and things leading up to race day to be able to figure out what helped/hurt performance. As far as I can tell, I would have to attribute A LOT to a very simple training tip I got from my friend Glenn: crank up your mileage – doesn’t matter how slow you’re going… So I’ve been averaging 3-4 miles more per run. (Now I’ll have to average more for marathon training.) I also ate more than I usually do for breakfast (half bagel w/ peanut butter and toast with breakfast sausage). I didn’t carbo load but I had a decent dinner.

Another thing I learned from race day – TAKE YOUR OWN HYDRATION. One of my friends was rushed to the ER due to a severe allergic reaction to an electrolyte mix used on the course. I’ll be sure to carry a hand held water bottle from now on.

If you missed the live tweeting during the race here are all the pix I posted to the kspace twitter account.

Next up: Chinatown Firecracker 10K