Surfside Beach Marathon 2012

Surfside Beach Marathon 2012 yesterday is supposedly the only marathon that is run entirely on the beach.

The marathon course in Surfside Beach, Texas, is a flattened loop stretching 13.1 miles from turnaround to turnaround, with the start/finish line about 2.5 miles from one of the turnarounds.

The weather yesterday morning made it feel as if we could have been running a U.S. Navy SEALs marathon.

Neither Rain Nor Wind Nor Lightning Nor …

We had to contend with a nearly constant downpour of rain. Southeast Texas had already gotten a lot of rain Friday. It persisted into Saturday morning, stopped long enough for us to have a dry start at 7 a.m., began again by 7:20 a.m., and persisted until after 1 p.m. Except for a few moments of light showers, the rain was HEAVY.

We had to contend with a lot of wind. Although the Fahrenheit temperature was in the 60s, the wind plus the rain made it feel as if it were in the 50s. The wind was so strong at times that I could not always look straight ahead. At one point a gust almost blew my sunglasses off my cap, which I had snugged against my head to keep blowing rain out of my eyes. I often caught myself looking down instead of straight ahead, not only to avoid tripping on any debris in the sand but also because of that driving rain.

We had lightning and thunder throughout the morning. This was not gentle, in-the-distance, flash lightning with a soft crackle of thunder. No, these were bright lightning bolts on land and sea, quickly followed by loud cracks of thunder that disturbed the cadences of many of us.

To comfort myself, I often counted how long it took to hear thunder after seeing a lightning bolt yesterday. Sometimes it took five to seven seconds, but one time — for a bolt on land — it took only two seconds. The distance formula that I remembered was incorrect. When I counted two seconds for the closest bolt, I mistakenly calculated — to my comfort — that the bolt was two miles away.

I just looked up the formula, which says that it takes five seconds for the sound from a lightning strike to travel one mile to an observer after the observer sees the bolt. This means that the closest lightning bolt was only four-tenths of a mile away from us!

We had to contend with running on sand. If we ran too close to the shoreline, then our shoes would get flooded by the waves from the Gulf of Mexico. If we strayed too far inland from the shoreline, then the surface was too soft.

Worse, because of the constant downpour, the rain created in the sand a lot of rivulets of rain water gushing into the Gulf. So, even if a runner managed to avoid all incoming waves, he or she had to step into shoe-deep water while fording the rivulets, some of which were eight to ten feet across.

So, nobody’s shoes stayed dry, what with the rain, the waves, and the rivulets. Some participants got so disgusted that they carried their shoes in their hands and ran barefoot, which was not perfectly safe, given the lurking shells and other beach debris.

Gloriously Crazy

All of this sounds gloriously crazy. I mean, there we were, out in the open, with rain and wind crushing down on us, with water often flooding our shoes (or bare feet), and with lightning storms dancing on the land and sea around us.

Volunteers many times drove their cars beside us on the beach, rolling down their windows to shout through the rain that we could take shelter in their cars should the weather become too unbearable.

Yet, as far as I know, all we participants trudged along and did not quit.

The volunteers were just as steadfast as the participants. For example, the two young women standing in the cold, windy rain at the far turnaround point dutifully wrote down my bib number after asking me to show my bib, which was tucked under the rain-drenched, long-sleeve technical shirt that was keeping me only slightly warm by that point.

The young volunteers standing in the rain at each aid station huddled together for warmth until one of us would walk or run up to their table. Just as in a “dry” marathon, these volunteers would then rush to their table, grab some cups, and ask us whether we wanted water or Gatorade.

I made volunteers laugh by mock-complaining, “Hey, there’s rain water in my water!” And I told nearly all of the volunteers that they were crazy to be out in that weather before thanking them for being there.

Crazily Glorious

Still, “crazily glorious” would be how I would describe this marathon.

The air was fresh — not only from being at the beach but also, now that I think about, from the lightning strikes all around us.

The mood was upbeat. We all knew that we were doing something memorable — not only because of the all-beach marathon but also because of the stormy weather. So, many of us exchanged waves, nods, smiles, and thumbs-up gestures as we passed each other along that flattened, 13.1-mile loop.

The scenery was spectacular. It’s rare for most of us to spend hours outside in pouring, wind-driven rain, with lightning and thunderstorms all around, while at a shoreline with rolling clouds on the horizon. The experience gave me a very visceral appreciation for the mighty forces of nature.

My Worst Marathon

This was my twelfth marathon, and my third this year, with the other two occurring on January 1 and January 15, 2012.

From a chip-time perspective, this was the worst not only of the three so far this year but also of all twelve to date.

I crossed the finish line 5:51 after I crossed the start line of Surfside Beach Marathon yesterday. This was a minute longer than my chip-time in the 2009 San Antonio Rock ‘n’ Roll Marathon, which had been my slowest marathon until yesterday. This was also thirty-three minutes slower than my chip-time in the 2012 Chevron Houston Marathon last month.

But, I have to believe that both the surface conditions and the bad weather played parts in giving me my new “PW” (Personal Worst).

My Best Marathon

This was also my best marathon to date.

I was grateful in many ways: for all the organizers, sponsors, and volunteers; for the opportunity to run a marathon entirely on a beach; and, for witnessing forces of nature that I probably would never otherwise witness.

I developed a new mental trick. The pouring rain killed my interval timer part-way into the marathon yesterday. In spite of all the times that I had dropped it while training or racing, this interval timer had been my trusty companion for micro-level pacing for the past three years. I was using it yesterday for the 5:1 method — running for five minutes, and then walking for one minute. When I realized that the rain had killed it, I was about seven miles into the marathon. So, I decided to run as far as felt natural and then walk for a while before running again. I also used the “landmark” trick repeatedly until I got to the 13.1-mile mark, where I looked at my GPS wrist unit and saw that I was already 2:56 into the race. Quick arithmetic told me that I could finish in under six hours if only I could maintain my average pace. So, at around mile 15 I came up with a trick that I had not put in Mental Tricks for Endurance Runners and Walkers.

The trick? I ran 100 steps. I walked seventy steps. I ran 100 steps. I walked sixty-nine steps. I ran 100 steps. I walked sixty-eight steps. I repeated this count-down approach until I walked fifty steps. I then decided that walking fewer than fifty steps at a time would not give me enough recovery time before my next 100-step run. So I changed to a count-up approach — running 100 steps, walking fifty-one steps, running 100 steps, walking fifty-two steps, and so on, until I got back to taking seventy steps in a walking interval. I then stayed with the run-100 / walk-seventy approach for the remainder of the marathon because, well, I was too tired by that point to shorten my walk breaks again.

This new mental trick helped me in a couple of way that were immediately obvious to me:

1. It distracted me from the weather conditions and the pain in my body — because I had to count both the running steps and the walking steps, and because I had to remember how many steps I had taken in my previous walking interval so that I could decrement or increment that walking-step counter correctly for the next walking interval.
2. It boosted my confidence — because it gave me a slow-but-methodical way to overtake people ahead of me between mile 15 and the finish line.

But the trick also helped me in a way that was not obvious until I finished…

I enjoyed my first negative-split marathon! Yes, Surfside Beach Marathon 2012 was my first marathon in which I (finally!) ran a negative split — with a 2:56 in the first half and a 2:55 in the second half. A big part of this came from holding back in the first half. It was an honor to enjoy the company of Ed Campos, one of the reviewers of my book Gratitude Power for Runners and Walkers, and his dear wife Margot for the first eight miles. Ed and Margot had already finished this marathon several times, and I relied on them to teach me the “ways of the sand” and what to expect along the way. Plus, because they finish marathons together in a little more than six hours, I knew that I was holding myself back in those first eight miles.

Here is a snapshot from my pedometer software for yesterday morning. As you can see, I took fewer steps in the second three-hour period of the marathon than in the first three-hour period of the marathon:

Given that fewer steps to cover the same distance equates to a longer stride, this pedometer graph helps to show that I had a faster pace in the second half of the race.

Put simply, there is a lot of joy and pride in the marathon finisher medal that I earned yesterday morning.

How About You?

Did you run Surfside Beach Marathon yesterday or in one or more previous years? Have you ever run a marathon in similar conditions? What was your experience? My readers and I would love to learn from your experience, so please post a comment below. Thank you!