Catalina Marathon Race Report

The Catalina Marathon was held on St. Patrick's Day this year, and the luck of the Irish was with the runners as the day dawned cool & foggy. This was helped in part by the shift in Daylight Savings Time, as the race started just minutes after the 7:01 AM sunrise. As the dark began to lift, I spotted what would turn out to be the only buffalo along the course all day. I snapped a few pictures before the race started, but it really began much sooner than that.

[Check out the newly posted 2008 Catalina Marathon race report. Updated 3/17/2009 to add the 2009 Catalina Marathon race report.]

[Update: Photos from the race are now available at Action Sports International. The winner of the race has blogged his experience on My Space, and an age group winner has as well. SoCalRunning has a bunch of posts, most notably this account of the race and the runnumentary that just put me to shame.]


(For future reference, here are shortcut links for the race itself, the pre- & post-race activities, other shots from the weekend, and a smaller best-of collection. Enjoy!)

One defining feature of Catalina Marathon are the boats. The first boat is to get to the island. This left from Long Beach around noon on Friday, and from there we cruised passed the Queen Mary & a more modern cruise ship next to it. After a short 1 hour ride, we arrived in quaint Avalon. At least it was quaint early on a Friday afternoon. I snapped a few pictures while killing time before registration.

I had set up my marathon gear several days before as seen below. And I got it all set again in the evening. And, after some encouragement, I decided to take a before picture of my feet. Geeze, they looked bad before the race! My pre-race meal was almost a disaster. One local shop had a "runner's special" on the menu. The offered Fettuccine Alfredo, Fettuccine Chicken or Fettuccine Primavera. Since runners want carbs, not fat, I opted for the primavera. Turns out, what they meant was Fettucine Alfredo Primavera. Not good. I took one bite and it was really tasty, but it would have been a disaster if I ate it. I actually had to send it back and ask for another plate, without the cream sauce. The noddles were a little buttery for me, but it was fine. 'course, it didn't taste as good!

After I downed that Corona and got a decent night's sleep, I awoke at 4 AM, before any of my 4 alarms had gone off. Twenty minutes later, I was eating my traditional breakfast of Gatorade & bananas and heading for the Catalina Flyer. This boat would take the runners to Two Harbors, about 45 minutes. We arrived at around 6 AM and soon the runners were wandering toward the start of the race, and talking excitedly.

So the race itself! First of all, it's an absolutely killer course. You can see the route on Google Maps, but that's not the half of it. I like this image, with 3x vertical exaggeration, showing the hills along the route. But to really appreciate it, the best view is the race profile. At a quick glance, you might think there are 2 monster hills. But that's only partly true. There's an opening 800 foot hill, a 300 descent and a 300 foot climb. Then there's a 250 foot climb & descent and shortly a 350 foot climb & descent. I'm ignoring the "little" hills, some of which are as tough as the famous Heartbreak Hill from Boston Marathon. Then there's a 500 foot climb to finish off... the first half! It got a little easier after that after that, but not by much. The flattest segment of the course was a 300 foot climb over 3 miles, followed by a brutal 300 foot climb in only a half mile, with another 200 foot climb atop that. After a few mini ups & downs, it was time to descend. Big time, since we were at 1500 feet only 3 miles from the finish!

I had a plan for the race, and the first part was making sure I didn't use up all my strength on the opening climb. You can check out my splits & more over at MotionBased, and you can see I stuck to my plan! Any dreams of running the race of my life were tempered by the first 4 miles, where I averaged about 11:30/mile. Not that speed was my main goal, as evidenced by the camera rig I carried along with me. Due to the fog, the pictures didn't all come out great, but after it cleared up I got some great shots. I even decided to Geotag the photos using GPSPhotolinker so you can see them on this map from Flickr. Soon enough, I hit my stride and my average pace was slowly decreasing. I knew that if I could hang on to 23, that I would fly down to the finish thanks to the training I did on Palos Verdes. It seemed that for the first 13 miles, there were always plenty of folks nearby, but the course suddenly cleared up near the half-marathon mark, which I hit in about 2 hours, 17 minutes. My knee started to bother me, and doubts crept in a little bit around here.

Soon thereafter, I realized I was getting dehydrated and began to drink a lot more Gatorade. Also at this time, the sun finally revealed itself, and the ruggedness of the course became a lot more apparent! Despite the low fog, we were above the clouds and could spot some of the mainland mountains, and maybe even Palos Verdes. Not long after, we came upon that brutal ascent, where volunteers had placed signs of encouragement. Soon, I reached the top of that hill, although there were several more miles of ups & downs. Of course, after a stunning 13-minute mile, I was way behind pace to run even a 4:30 marathon, which was a goal of mine. At this point, I was passing about 5-10 runners per mile and I could barely remember being passed, when a group of 4 passed me on the climb. I tended to run the downhills faster and be more efficient going through the water stops, so we leap-frogged each other for 5+ miles. I was actually feeling better now, and decided to push harder on the last couple hills since I had the long descent at the end.

Of course, I wasn't the only to take photos. On occasion, I'd ask a volunteer to take a quick picture with my camera. Here's the last one I have from the race, where a fellow runner volunteered to snap a picture near the top of the highest hill. Those shirts looked practically brand new before the race, but were completely dirty by this point. So here we are, 3:54 into the race and 4.2 miles left, I was averaging about 10:38/mile, on pace for a 4:38 marathon. Not bad, but I had more than that! Catching site of Avalon below me, I knew what I had to do. I was going to run full-throttle, as fast as my feet would carry me! I ripped off the next 4 miles in 9:27, 7:51, 7:54 and 8:44. Yup, I covered the last 4+ miles in about 34 minutes, about 10 minutes faster than my pace to that point, and finished in just over 4:28. Passed over a dozen runners, including that pack of 4 whom I blew away by 4 minutes. It helped that I ran through the last water stop and just asked for a volunteer to dump some water into my hat. I placed 213 out of about 723 runners and another 75 walkers. Well done!

After that, I hung around the finish and took some more pictures of the race activities, including some great shots of runners completing the marathon. I like the shot below where I framed the finish banner. Oh, and if you're still interested, here's the after shot of my feet.