I ran the 2024 Long Beach Half Marathon

Making it the 2nd half marathon I ran this year.

Oct 11, 2024

I ran again.

I ran the 2024 Long Beach Half Marathon with a 2:07 total time, beating out my 2024 Orange County Half Marathon of 2:17. Given that my goal was “survive & finish”, I’m going to consider this a huge success. Not a bad for a guy who was out of commission on training for a good 6 weeks there.

What I liked about running this time.

While running seems like functional individual sport, running a massive event with others you know and sharing in the same challenges, weather, obstacles, and finish line, creates the same sports condition of team sports. You are rooting for each other, and you’ll be celebrating together. You don’t need to keep the same pace, but hopefully you share in the same joy at the end with a beer.

I did it with friends, and by the sound of it, next year will have more friends!

I also deeply appreciated the friends (and my wife!) cheer-section at mile ~10. I enjoyed the SHRC cheer-section at ~8 & ~11, and all the people quite literally cheering every mile - yes even the guys offering fireball. I also could be biased, it is Long beach and it was a place I called home for 7 years.

After running this half marathon, I have an aspirational goal of doing a full marathon.

Unfortunately for my wallet, the conditions for doing a full marathon are “Destination Marathons” which means I want to run random scenic places that I’ve never been to, or experience in. Sorry Los Angeles, I won’t do a marathon here unless its on my couch. Going to look at these marathons…if I get lucky!

I’m not going to set any records.

I don’t have a desire to “run a marathon as fast as I can”. I don’t think that’s a healthy relationship for running for me. I just look forward to being present and being there, wherever there is. I may want to train to get to a pace that allows me to qualify for that desired marathon, but that’s unlikely.

Run forward, friends!