It's only the wind....

This weekend was another destination race in Myrtle Beach, SC.  It started with the Neon Night 5K, followed by the Dasani Half Marathon.  It had been years (like since I was in high school) since I went to Myrtle Beach, so I was excited to see what this race had to offer.

The morning dawned (well....the alarm went off...dawn was still a couple of hours away) with POURING rain.  I hate rain.  My hubby drove me from the hotel to the start, and thankfully, I remembered to borrow a trash bag from the room before we left.  (This is a decision that I would be very glad that I made.)   We got to the starting line and I begrudgingly got out of the car and donned my stylish trash bag.  I made my way to the porta potty line for my first stop of the morning.  (No lines in the rain!)  Amazingly, I met up with my BRF in all of the wet and crowded madness. We hadn't made any plan on when and where to meet.  It was running karma.  We are meant to be BRFs.  We stood and chatted for a bit and then went back to the porta potties for another stop before we moved to the corrals.  (So, it wasn't really a corral...it was pacing signs.  Everyone started at once.  I don't even think the race was chip timed.) 

Let's talk about that for a minute.  The race website said that there would be pace groups for super fast through a 2:30 finish.  The rest of us were out of luck.  I didn't think that the start corrals would END with a 2:30 finish.  Ummm....slow people paid for this race too.  How about a little recognition at the start????

Just before the gun went off, the rain stopped.  (Too bad everyone around me was SOAKED...but not me...my trash bag kept me pretty dry.)  I threw my trash bag near a trash can (I missed and didn't want to get trampled trying to pick it up.)  The first bit of the course was crowded, but not terribly so.  It was dark and wet.  After about a mile, we made our way to the main drag in Myrtle Beach.

As soon as we made the right hand turn onto the road, the wind started.  We just kept running into the wind.  It was SO hard.  I was SO tired.  

I was just looking forward to the turnaround because I knew that we would have a tailwind once we got back to the beach.  We ran through this shopping center/town center/condo place and headed back to the beach.  Because this section was so boring, the race directors put a pretty good band on the course.  Once we headed onto Ocean Drive, we finally got the tailwind that I was looking forward to, but by then I was beat up.  I didn't want to keep going...but the only way to move is forward.  Quitting is not an option.

After 4 miles or so, we turned off the beach road to head to the finish line.  As soon as we made the turn, just past mile 11, we were going back into the wind.  It was a long 2 miles to the finish.  I have never been so happy to see a finish line.  (This race ranked right up there with Divas DC and the Crawling Crab.)  Once I got to the chute, I just started scanning the crowd for my husband.  He wasn't there....he missed me finish.  It's probably best because it was the kind of race that I may have just started bawling as soon as I saw him.  The best thing I can say about this race is that I finished and checked off South Carolina.

I crossed the finish line just before the 2nd place female MARATHON finisher.  I wasn't last in the half and not too many full marathoners finished before me.

So, the good, the bad, and the ugly of the Myrtle Beach Dasani Half - 

Good:

• Pretty cool swag - awesome bag...and socks!
• Frequent water stops
• Cool flip flop medal
• Great people running with me!  I met some fellow Half Fanatics and a man going for the 50 states.  I watched a girl pick up someone's (unintentionally) dropped glove and speed up to return it.  People were chatty at this race!

Bad:

• The course was BORING!!  I saw a lot of putt-putt courses and about a million hotels.  Myrtle Beach is a lot like Virginia Beach, but without the boardwalk.  The race course was pretty much like running on Pacific and then Atlantic in Virginia Beach.  I like to see the ocean and it's hard to do that through the hotels.
• The wind.  It was brutal.  
• The shirts.  Please give shirts that fit adults.  An XL shirt should not fit one arm.  I went a size up because it was a women's cut and it still doesn't fit.
• The 5K shirt should be at least a different color than the half shirts. I don't need 2 pink shirts that don't fit.

Ugly:

• There was no course support....like none.  It was long, and windy, and lonely.  We are VERY spoiled in Virginia Beach.  Our people come out support the runners, rain or shine!
• Did I mention the wind???
• I never saw the elephant.

Official time - 3:07.  Not happy with it.   Charlotte is up next...on the speedway.  It will be better. But, in the spirit of the 2014 Winter Olympics, I just have to remember: 

.....and I didn't stop.