Trail Running Blog

Rock ‘n’ Roll Los Angeles Half Marathon Race Report

The last couple of weeks prior to this race have been pretty hectic. I ran with my coworker for her first 20-miler in preparation for her 1^st marathon last week (which she successfully completed). Then a bunch of traveling: 1.5 days in Des Moines, IA followed by a week in New York and then another 1.5 days in San Francisco the following week. And as much as I wanted to run while traveling, I have to say it was it was pretty difficult. Last week was a full week of running and biking although considering it was my race week, it may not have even made a difference. That being said, I came into the race wanting to see what I was like to experience an inaugural race. I’m still pleased with the results: 1:35:18, 38/569 AG, 250/9641 Overall. Not too shabby if you ask me.

Notes

Even for a race at 7:30AM, I was afraid of hitting LA traffic so I made sure to get there even earlier than usual. The expected finish time I put when signing up (1:30 too optimistic?) put me in corral one, which was a little nerve-racking. But what was cool about being so close to the front was that we got a front row view of the announcer. Jennifer Love Hewitt was running the race also (3:09) and was paced by none other than Deena Kastor who is currently 5 months pregnant!

The Race

Although I rarely notice sights and scenes during a race, I would have liked this one to be more scenic. I know the LA Marathon takes you through a lot of the popular areas of the city. The Rock ‘n’ Roll Half starts at the LA Zoo and takes you downtown to LA Live (apparently called the Times Square of LA). The course itself didn’t seem too bad, quite a few downhills and about 2.5 areas of uphills. For some reason I was beginning to think that 13.1 miles was getting to be an easy distance to run; boy was I wrong. But I’ll get into that in a second.

The Run

I made same mistake when I ran my first half marathon (and many other races before and after that). I underestimated my current fitness level and tried to go faster than my body was prepared to run for 13.1 miles. Miles 1-5 were 6:40-7:00, miles 6-9 were 7:15-7:20, then 2 miles just under 8, mile 12 at ~7:30, then picked things up at mile 13 at ~7:00. I think it was around mile 11 or 12 where I told myself that I am definitely going to start off slower for my next half. Even if I don’t pick it up, I should feel 10x better than I did in this race.

Post-Race

It’s weird, immediately after my race my calves were already super sore, like hurt to walk sore. I took a few naps, which was nice but after waking up, my quads were sore while my calves felt fine.. Now I’m wondering what part of my body is going to hurt in the next couple of days!

Next Race

My next race is another half marathon in about 3 weeks. It is actually the first half marathon that I ran last year, so that should be fun. I’m hoping today’s half marathon will have been a good ‘training run’ for that and like I said, I am definitely going to pull back the first couple of miles and see how I feel then. I’m thinking it’ll make a world of difference.