Q's Adventures: Q’s Adventures: Big Sur Half Marathon on Monterey Bay

Now that the Thanksgiving Nine is done (and was hopefully entertaining…despite the lack of feedback), and before I jump into my Christmas Themed posts, I wanted to get my latest Q’s Adventures up! Last weekend (on November 18^th) I ran my first half marathon!

First, some stats: I finished in 1 hour, 45 minutes, and 19 seconds…good for an 8:02 per mile pace. This was good for 604^th place overall (out of 6912), 438^th place among male runners (out of 2501 men who finished), and 80^th place in my gender age group (out of 321 men aged 25-29)…so, not too bad overall. Top 25% in my age group is decent…top 17.5% among men…top 9% overall when you add in everyone. The average finishing time for men for this race was 2:10:05…so I beat that by about 25 minutes…which is nice. It’s nice to not be simply average!

Now, on to the race itself. It rained overnight, and the forecast had said we could very well see a rainy race day…not fun! However, the storm cleared out overnight…and the morning was GORGEOUS! The clouds cleared out, there was no wind to speak of, the sun was out, it was in the low to mid 50s…just perfect. Couple that with a course that runs right along the bay for most of it, with big waves churned up by the storms out there crashing on the rocks, the music along the course to keep us entertained…it was just a really, really awesome experience overall. 13.1 miles flew by!

Anyways, as I crossed the finish line, and this may sound super corny and clichéd, I had this weird sense of accomplishment come over me. Now, I’ve been running for about a year or so now, and as part of training, I had already run over 13 miles. So its not like I didn’t know if I could do this or not. I knew I could…easily. But, I mean, come on…last Thanksgiving I weighed 250 pounds…and that was 70 pounds down from my biggest just 6 months before that. If you had told me then that, a year and 3 months later, I’d be a fit 190 pounds and running a half marathon…and not just running the half marathon, but to be in the top 25% of finishers among men my age at a big international event…I’d have laughed at you (and then probably gone to get some Five Guys burgers and a half quart of Sherbet for dessert). I dunno, I guess I just saw this as some sort of culmination and validation of everything I’ve been doing over the past 16 months.

So, for the first time since I started this whole weight loss and exercise thing, I finally felt like I had accomplished something noteworthy. Losing 130 pounds? Easy. Running a 5K? Meh, in my sleep. Training for and successfully completing a half marathon…and to be a decently top end finisher (you know, I didn’t embarrass myself)…that’s really something. I hate tooting my own horn, but it was a really, really amazing feeling.

And at this point, I feel like I should thank my dad. He was there running the half marathon as well, despite a pretty painful achilles injury, because I wanted to run it! He finished…this being his 5^th Big Sur Half Marathon. He’s run the full marathon. He’s run in other half and full marathons as well. He was the pioneer for Quinn men to lose weight and get into long endurance races. As I trained for the 5K, and then the Marathon Relay, and finally this half marathon, he was the inspiration. What he did back in his 40s to get back in shape and take charge of his health is simply incredible. He’s 56 and finishing half marathons still! And riding long bike rides. He is amazing. Without that example to live up to, I would not have made it to where I am. BQ, you are the man!

Anyways, enough sappy crap…here’s some pictures! Note: I just screen grabbed these from the website of the photographers from the run. Thus, the watermarks. I'm just not about to pay 70 bones just to download the 21 pictures they have of me. I would have paid 30...70 is way, way past the breaking point for me.

First, here's BQ and I before the race began!