Los Angeles Marathon

After a bone chilling 3 hour wait at the start line, I finally warmed up around mile 4.  It was kind of crazy because the shuttle was at 3:30am. My hotel was just a 10 minute walk from the shuttle pickup place. So I figured I would get up at 2:30 so I could eat breakfast, and walk over there.  First I set my phone alarm for 2:30 and also asked my hotel for a wake up call.  Later it dawned on me that since daylight savings comes in at 2am, my phone would automatically jump to 3 when it reached 2am. So there would not be a 2:30am at all this morning.  I changed my phone alarm to 1:30am and woke up on time.  The hotel staff didn't figure it out though so I, as well as others, never got a wake up call.

It was pretty cold, around 50 in the morning, and the race didn't start until 7am.  I hung onto my jacket as long as I could then finally had to check it at the gear check.  I huddled under my plastic poncho for another hour, shivering uncontrollably until the race finally started.  It warmed up to the low 60's and was quite pleasant without getting too hot.

I did this one back in 2016 and really enjoyed it.  Once again, I really enjoyed it.  The course is mostly gentle hills, and I gained some speed on every downhill.  But I was still too slow to meet my goal of beating 6 hours.  My final time was 6:23:18.  Not as bad as some, but still not good enough for Big Sur Marathon next month with its 6 hour time limit.  I hope the snow lets up at home so I can get in some good speed training before that.  I did register for the Green Day Gallop on March 22, which is a local Palmer marathon.  If this current continual weather system of daily deep snow continues, that will be a very challenging marathon.

The medal for today is gorgeous. One of the nicest ones I have.

We encountered some interesting cheerleaders in Chinatown