Naughty and Nice Half Marathon

Last weekend I was searching for the internet for a run race to do, and fortunately I stumbled upon this one.  The start line was at Crescent Bay Park, at the corner of Ocean and Bay, pretty close to the Santa Monica Pier.  It was VERY informal.  The three runs (10-mile, half marathon, and full marathon) started at 6:30.  The Race Director arrived less than 30 minutes before the race, we received a bib, and we had a brief overview of the course.  The event was capped at 75 runners, so it was nice and small.  It only cost $31 to enter the half marathon.

I met up with my friend Liz, who I swam with in high school, and we hadn't seen each other in over 10 years.  It was really fun to catch up, and the run just flew by.  The scenery was great too.  We headed out 2.6 miles to Venice Beach and back to the start line and then ran the other way (past the Pier) and back.  The whole run was on the path along the beach (woohoo... no hills!).    

Results:
Liz and I tied for 11th out of 42 folks in the half marathon with an official time of 2:00:15.  I had predicted a 2-hour finish time (not really knowing what to expect after running a full marathon two weeks prior), and I was spot on.  My Soleus watch read 13.22 miles and 2:00:17, but then I deleted the saved data when I was trying to write down my mile splits.  It felt like a nice, comfortable pace though.  I'm assuming the mile splits were pretty consistent, and there were two brief stops for water.

Rocket Racing Productions also posts their photos on Facebook and lets you download them for free (I just had to search through them all and try to find the photos where I looked less hunchbacky).  What a bargain!

Pre-race photo:

Approaching the water stop:

Nearing the ambiguous finish line: