2008 Carrabba's Summer Beach Run Report

Yes, yes, it has once again been a bloody long time since writing, but I've actually been stocking up on things to say. Hopefully, in this way, reading this will be slightly more exciting than reading "I got up. I ran. It was good." But that is neither here nor there right now. The item of immediate importance is last night's race. You might have been able to guess, but it was the 2008 Carrabba's Summer Beach Run.

The Summer Beach Run bills itself as "Florida's Oldest Footrace", and given that this was the 44th running (meaning that it started in 1964, if you're arithmetically challenged), I'm not going to argue with that. So they've had a lot of time to get it right. And they're pretty good at it. I'm sure this came in handy this year, as the run was postponed two weeks because of our unwelcome visitor (Fay). Luckily, Hanna left us alone, so we were able to run last night without a hitch.

The run itself is pretty simple. Get out on the beach, run 2.5 miles south, turn around, and run back. Of course, there are a few reasons why this is not quite so easy as it might sound:

• We have great sand for running on the beach here, but we're still running on sand. Hard packed sand don't quite work as well as pavement.
  
• It's a beach. It's not exactly what one would call "level". Again, it's probably some of the best for running, but it definitely slopes.
  
• Some of our beach seems to have disappeared thanks to Fay. It was a little tight at the beginning (there were 1163 finishers)
• Oh, my God, was it hot. Low 90's during the day. Probably got all the way down to the high-mid 80's by race time. Oy.
  

So there we were. Lana and I went "early" so that we could get a parking space, and we got to the beach about an hour before the race started. For some reason, though, we never even thought that on a really nice day, crazy people would want to go out to the beach for any reason other than a run. Jacksonville, however, appears to be just chock full o' crazy people -- and they were, indeed, all at the beach. Parking was rough. But after driving around for a little while, we actually found a good spot (right on A1A) and proceeded to wait for our good buddy Dreama. There's just not enough room in this blog (or even the entire internet) to explain Dreama, so we'll just leave that completely alone.

We got our chips (well, I did... Lana has gone ahead and made the purchase of a personal ChampionChip), and headed over to the starting area. There was still 15 minutes before the race started, so we got to warming up. Before we knew it, they were starting to give directions. Now, if you've ever been to a 1st Place Sports race, they are consistently wrong when they give directions. It's really interesting. Every time... they say that you run out, turn to your right, and run back. And every time, you run out, turn to your left, and run back. We really don't even listen to them anymore.

And that means that I'm sure the next race is actually going to be different and I'm going to get lost. I'll end up in Fernandina with no idea where the course is. That's my luck.

After the directions, the announcer led a tribute to John TenBroeck, a founding member and longtime leader of JTC Running, a member of the race management team for 1st Place Sports, and one heck of a nice guy. On Friday, he lost his battle against cancer. John was one of the pace leaders for the Jacksonville Galloway Training Group, and you could always count on his terrible, terrible jokes to completely distract you from total pain. He was also the voice that you would hear at the finish of the races, and (from what I hear) he would do the award presentation also. He was a wonderful man who gave a lot to running, and he will be missed.

After a minute of silence, the cannon started, and the race was on! We were led (once again) by a group of our military men and women running in formation -- if you've followed me for a while, you'll know that my picture of this group was a picture of the week last year. Well, about 40 seconds after the gun sounded, I crossed the start line and got on my way.

Now, to go back a couple days, on Wednesday night, I went on a training run. I had The Perfect Run. The one we love. The "Even the Russian Judge Likes It Run". I was flying, and everything was great. It was cooler than usual, my shoes felt right, the traffic was light, and it seemed like every part of the run was downhill. I felt so good that I added another half mile to the run. I ended up finishing four miles in 34:36. Yeah, FIGJAM.

So, going into the race, I was thinking that I should be able to run it pretty dang quickly. But with the heat, I figured I would push for a little slower than the other day. I figured that about a 9:00/mile pace would be right. So that's what I went for.

Now, here we are, we've just started running this five mile run up and down the beach. And there's really not much else to say about it. Except that I cannot figure out why people/tourists are still standing on the beach *IN THE MIDDLE OF THE CROWD*. Seriously. There's 1000 people running at you, and you're just hanging out in the middle of where they're running. And making them run around you. Or you're letting your kid dig holes in the beach right where people are running.

Sometimes, I really don't like people. But I love gatherings.

In any case, there really wasn't much to report, except that I couldn't get my water at mile 1. The rest of it was pretty uneventful... focusing 100% on that spot 15 feet ahead of me so that I didn't run into a hole that some kid had dug in the beach. Oh, and looking for Lana.

But that 9:00 mile that I was shooting for? According to the Garmin, I ran 5.08 miles. And I did it in 45:03. Not half bad. Of course, the *official* results are a little different, since there's no chip time. But let's compare and contrast with last year, shall we?

2007:

ID #	PLACE	CLASS PLACE	NAME	AGE	TIME	PACE
258	455	61	Bill Carlson	35	54:10	10:50

2008:

ID #	PLACE	CLASS PLACE	NAME	AGE	TIME	PACE
251	274	38	Bill Carlson	36	45:34	9:07

In a nutshell:

• I lost almost 10 full minutes. Oh, yeah... that's a PR.
  
• I improved 23 spots in my age group
• I improved 181 spots overall (for men).
  
• I'm older
• And apparently, I registered at just about the same time each year.
  

Dang. I'm good.

Coming up next? More training. After that? The Expedition Everest Challenge at Disney. And that's when my race season really starts going.

Wish me luck!