- June 21st, 2015
- Mammoth Lakes, California
- Mammoth Half Marathon
- Sharon: 2:37:23
- Tim: 2:47:04
47 down only 5 to go.
Only a month of races left! I know Tim is looking forward to not driving hundreds of miles every weekend. Besides the Auburn race (FOURmidable) this is the furthest we have traveled for a race since we moved to San Diego. I love the Mammoth Lakes area and wish we could have spent more time there. We stayed at the race hotel, The Village Lodge. It was one of the nicest rooms we have stayed at and I highly recommend it if you do this race, or are just visiting Mammoth. That said, even with the race discount, it was quite pricey.
Saturday night we ate at a Hawaiian themed restaurant whose name I can’t remember [Lakanuki – Tim]. I had the strongest Mai Tai I have ever had. So even though I planned on only having one drink, I’m pretty sure I had 3 or 4 in that one glass. I had Tim try it because he gave me the look he gives me when he thinks I am being too dramatic, and he said “Whoa!”, with raised eyebrows of agreement. In the past I have made the clear connection between eating fried food the night before a race and being nauseous during a race. I saw coconut shrimp on the menu. How does someone just forget that deep battered coconut shrimp is a fried food? I paid for it race morning.
The food was wonderful but it was the crazy surf art I really loved.
- Look – her hair is the same color as mine
- I love the new Hawaii 5-0 TV show
Except for packet pickup, which was a little chaotic, this race was extremely well organized. It was also incredibly beautiful with desert, lake, and forest views. Unfortunately, as we feared, the altitude set off Tim’s a-fib. It acted up even before he started running. We both woke up feeling headachey, tired, and nauseous. The problem with staying in a hotel with the most comfy bed ever is that we did not want to get up. Even though we were able to sleep in until 5am it was a hard bed to leave.
We caught the bus to the start almost right outside our door. It was really chilly Sunday morning. This race was handing out Mylar blankets before the race. Even though it was a fairly small race they had a drop bag option. Well done.
I both loved and hated this race. I hated it because it was hard to breath and run at altitude for the first half. Also, running 13.1 miles on the verge of puking (thanks fried shrimp and monster Mai Tai) is not fun. I loved everything else about this race. If I had been feeling better I think this would have been my favorite road race. The scenery was beyond incredible. I was grateful that this race was so well organized because I was in no mood for nonsense.
I chatted with a couple who convinced me that the Las Vegas marathon would not be a good first marathon. Our next project is training for a marathon so if anyone has a suggestion for a good first marathon please leave it in the comments.
I started to walk much sooner than usual during this race. I was surprised that I had breathing/elevation problems because I used to run at 8000 feet on Mt Lemmon and wasn’t affected. In fact, I liked the thin crisp air.
A nice thing about beating Tim is that I get to take a picture of him sprinting to the finish.
Yay, they had chocolate milk and watermelon after the race. That race director must be a runner. We couldn’t stay for the after race party because we had to get back to our room so we could shower and check out of the room before hitting the road.
Cons
- Packet pickup was confusing and choatic
- Trolly information gave us wrong directions
Pros
- Very well organized with attention to details
- Mylar blanket at the start
- Plenty of port-o-pots at the start and along the course
- Awesome scenery
- Wonderful volunteers and plenty of aid stations
- A couple of aid stations had pretzels and cool wipes!
- Signs at the aid stations with mileage to next aid station
- Fire truck sprinkler to run through
- Chocolate milk and watermelon (as well as other food)
- Nice long sleeve tech shirt
- Huge cool medals with moving parts
Unless you have a major altitude problem, I would recommend this race for everyone. This has everythng I look for in a race. It was well organized with friendly volunteers. The course was beautiful and had a net downhill. The shirt is wearable. If you are into medals, there is a special medal (with moving parts) for runners who did both the San Diego and the Mammoth HM. Both medals are impressive. Even with his afib problem and upset tummy Tim liked this race almost as well as I did. We even talked about doing it next year.
Short post this week because we didn’t get back from San Francisco until Wednesday night.
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