I’m ShokzStar Ebony Blackwell, taking over the AfterShokz blog to tell you about my experience running the Mountains 2 Beach Marathon.
The Mountains 2 Beach Marathon is a beautiful race starting in the mountains and ending near the historic downtown Ventura Pier in California. It was pretty much everything I hoped it would be. The name alone sounds dope, making me feel like I was about to go on one hell of a 42 Kilometre adventure! On my mission to run a marathon in every state, Mountains 2 Beach was not my first pick for California. I had my eyes on another marathon that is known to be full of spectacular views – The Big Sur Marathon. I’m sure that Big Sur is a spectacular race, but my soul is quite happy that my 42K through California was spent running from Ojai to Ventura.
The Decision
After a disappointing 2018 Chicago Marathon (recap on my blog around Marathon Expectations), my heart was quite broken. My initial post-Chicago reaction was to sign up for a revenge race, but I wasn’t ready to jump back into another marathon. My game plan was to train for a spring half-marathon and work on speed before transitioning back into marathon training mode for a May marathon. Mountains 2 Beach was perfectly situated in late May, giving me time to prep for a March half-marathon.
MOUNTAINS 2 BEACH EXPERIENCE
I flew into L.A. the Thursday before the race to get settled in with my group of friends that were also running the half-marathon that weekend. We booked a beautiful, inexpensive condo through Airbnb that was not too far from the beach. When I am travelling for races, I prefer to be in the comfort of home – able to rest, cook my own meals, and not feel confined to a room!
Race Day
I’d love to tell you that I was calm and ready on race morning, but that would be a front. While I went into race day with minimal expectations, I still was so nervous all morning. I was so worried that I would have a similar experience to Chicago. The long story short is that I got very sick around the half-way point of the Chicago Marathon and had the worst race.
The Pace Plan
My coach and I spent time on Saturday afternoon hashing out my plan for the race. We felt I had the potential to run something close to 4:10 (5:55/km pace), but didn’t know for sure with the rolling hills throughout the race. I planned to pace at 6:04 for the first 10K and ease into a 5:55-6:00 pace for 11K-21K. The first 10K were uphill, and we didn’t want to push too hard here and burn out early. I planned to pick up the pace for 21K through 32K by easing into a 5:45-5:59 pace. For the last 10K, the goal was to PUSH as hard as I could to the finish without worrying about the pace!
Kilometres 0-10
Most of this section was faster than my goal of 6:04, this pace felt good as a warm-up, so I stuck with it. As the race began, I put on my AfterShokz, pumped up my playlist and took off. The views started immediately. As soon as we turned the corner after about 2K, we began running alongside a ranch that had rows upon rows of orange trees. It was beautiful, and it was peaceful. It was a very serene feeling, and all of my nerves just wen