Daytona Easter Beach Run Report

Alright, the day finally came and I officially have my first race behind me! Last week, I had no intention of running this race but I'm glad I ended up just going for it to see what happened! 

Goal Pace - 7:30 mins/mile average.

I arrived at 7am and was greeted by a beautiful sunrise over the Daytona Beach Pier.

After drinking water, stretching, and getting my chip, 8am was almost here. I downed a Gu packet before start and took my place under the pier and waited for go time. They had a pretty good turnout. I'd guess around 500-600 runners. 

8am rolls around and the Forrest Gump impersonator tells us to RUN!!! I was so glad because I was ridiculously hyper and amped to go, so I took off and kept up with the front of the pack for a while. The course is a 2 mile run North on the beach, then a turnaround and back to the start.

The first mile flew by and I checked my Garmin and I did a 6:57. 
"Woa there buddy, you better slow the eff down if you wanna make it all 4 miles!" I thought to myself. So, I slowed up a little bit and ran mile 2 at 7:10.
At this point, the sun was starting to get really hot so I grabbed some water from the station at the mile 2 turnaround and dumped it on myself. Much better!


During mile 3, the adrenaline from the start was starting to wear off and I was starting to feel the consequences of running at a fast clip for the first two miles. I pushed through and did a 7:30 for this mile. 

"I really wish this was a 5K at this point!" I thought to myself as I started on the final mile, and passed over the 5K distance threshold. I really don't remember much else from the last mile, as I completely concentrated on keeping my pace at 7:30 until the end; head up and shoulders back and focused on the finish line getting closer and closer. 

I would like to give a big FAIL to the event organizers for putting the finish line up in the soft sand, requiring tired legs to trudge through a few hundred feet of soft sand and preventing a strong finish sprint. I saw a few people actually fall in the soft sand. I was careful and crossed the line without incident and I averaged 7:38 for the last mile of hell.

Final numbers: 28:47.4 and a 7:18 avg pace/mile.

I was out of my mind stoked that I did quite a bit better than my goal pace, and promptly texted my good friend RedheadRunning (who has dubbed herself my running momma) to inform her of my finish. Shortly after, the results were posted and I got 5th out of 15 people in my age group which was enough to get a medal. Not bad for my first time out!

The finish area under the pier:

Race summary and route from my Garmin:

Oh and I learned the hard way that it is NOT a good idea to do a fast run with your car key in your pocket smacking your leg the whole time. This happens....LOL:

Note that I waited until Tuesday to post this because I was waiting for official race pics to be released to include in this post. They are STILL not available, so I'm posting this now. I'll probably do a followup post with some more pictures.