To Live and Die in LA

No, this is not a review of one my favorite 80's movies about a Secret Service agent breaking all of the rules to bring down a counterfeiting operation (with a wonderful sound track from Wang Chung) but if it was it would be just about as timely as my recap from the LA marathon.  I think I wrote this blog post in my head fifty times over while running the LA marathon last month but failed to actually get my thoughts down on paper.  Maybe I just wanted to forget the whole thing but like any challenging race a few weeks go by and you forget all of the bad things and find yourself remembering all of the good and why you enter and race in these events.

The race recap in a nutshell, I was not prepared for the warm temps after all of the training in cold weather and struggled the last 10 miles of the race to finish in 4:21 and some change.  My slowest marathon ever and way off my goal time of 3:45.  One glimmer of positive news out of the debacle was my overall place relative to other finishers, 4,298 out of 21,504 overall.  This just seems bizarre to me that I would finish in the top 20% of the field after running that slow so maybe the heat had an impact on all of the participants.  Lesson learned, training for a marathon in 20 degree weather and running a marathon in 80 degree weather is not a good idea.  I should have reset my pace expectations due to the warm weather and started off with a slower pace.  I don't recall ever feeling so bad at the end of any race in my life and as soon as we made it back to the room I found an open space on the floor and crashed.  After sucking down some water and advil I started to come back to life like a wilted flower and actually felt pretty good.  At least good enough to enjoy some champagne we picked up the day before as a post race celebration.

Enough about the silly race, regardless of the result I still received a finisher medal to add to the collection in the rec room and we had a great time enjoying the weather and restaurants in Santa Monica.  Jen and I stayed at a beautiful hotel called Shutters on the Beach near the pier in Santa Monica.  Along with being right on the beach it was walking distance to the finish of the race.  Jen and I made good use of the pool and

The best part of our trip came the day after the race when we rented cruiser bikes and rode along the beach to Manhattan Beach. 

Mandatory selfie

 
We stopped for some chili cheese tots as a post race reward at North End Bar along with a couple of beers.  It felt so good just to be out on bikes enjoying weather and not worrying about training and the weather could not have been better (good for cruising, not good for marathon running).  Being a Monday, even most of the folks in LA were at work so the beaches were empty except for a few surfers.  Like I told Jen, the day after the marathon riding the bikes along the beach under the beautiful blue skies was one of the best days of my life.  It was certainly worth any struggle I went through the day before to be able to enjoy the day with Jen.

Beach from a cruiser saddle

The other highlight of our trip was the great food, we really did not have a bad meal while we were in Santa Monica and all of the place were within walking distance of our hotel.  I am not certain I could pick a favorite between the sushi, steak, and Mexican restaurant but the margaritas at Blue Plate may tip in the scale in their favor along with fresh, creative Mexican dishes.  If you like sushi you can't go wrong at Sushi Roku or for steak their sister restaurant Boa. 

Would I do the LA marathon again?  No, but I do think it is a good race and I am glad we did it, looking forward to our next adventure.