Surfside Beach Marathon

A funny thing happened on the way to the marathon. As I was driving down I-45 between Willis and Conroe yesterday, I saw the Sheriff pull over a big motorhome for speeding. I guess they were running late for an AARP meeting. I picked up my Surfside Beach Marathon packet at the big tent on the beach. The normal race headquarters building was badly damaged by Hurricane Ike. This morning, I left the hotel to drive to the race. It was dark and foggy. I took what I thought was a cutover from the road to the beach. It ended up being a driveway and I got stuck in deep sand. I was about a mile from the race. I walked back out to the road and a lady gave me a ride to the race. They had a much larger crowd for the race this year, 700 total for the marathon and half marathon. We started and headed south with a tail wind. At the 2.5 mile point, we turned around and headed north. We were at 5 miles when we got back to the starting line. We ran into a strong headwind all the way to the 15.5 mile turnaround point. Then, at 12 miles it started raining. With the strong wind and rain in my face, I really questioned my sanity for running the race in the first place. Compared to previous years, the beach was much more difficult to run on. Water erosion left gullies in the sand. The heavy rain eventually let up and we had a nice tailwind to the finish line. However, my shoes and socks were soaking wet and I ended up with a two black toe nails, including my right big toe. Other than that, I felt good after the race. I finished in 6:04:39, which is a Surfside Beach Marathon PR by about a minute. A couple of nice high school race volunteers helped me recover my truck. One had a large pickup with a wench, which did the trick. With all the rain during the race, getting it unstuck was more difficult that I expected. This was my fourth straight Surfside Beach Marathon and everyone has been a different experience. The race is all about the weather. Wind is always going to be a factor, but one year it was freezing cold, last year it was a very heavy fog for most of the race and this year it was heavy rain. Surfside is the 2nd leg of the Texas Marathon Triple. The 3rd leg is the Seabrook Marathon on March 15.