And BAM, just like that, the Big Sur 21 miler has been conquered. :) I had a wonderful experience running Big Sur and despite my legs hating me oh so much right now, I'm sure they'll get over it and I can start running again soon. :)

Without further ado, my race report:

The Health and Fitness Expo: I flew into San Jose Saturday morning and rented a car to drive down into Monterey Bay. There was plenty of parking and as long as you could get out of the expo in one hour, there were no issues. :) I made my usual rounds. There were plenty of photo opportunities.

I found my name on a HUGE Big Sur poster and took an awesome expo photo in front of this ginormous sign. 

Thinking about it now, I should have known. Everything was so big. That should have tipped me off that the hills would have been the same. I stopped by the Motigo booth, where I talked to one of the Co-founders Dan. He was super cool and told me to open the app prior to the race to make sure all of my cheers were downloaded. I refreshed the app like a mad woman that day. Seeing more cheers being sent my way made me happy. :)

After grabbing my race swag and visiting the vendor booths, I quickly made it outside to sight see a bit. Then a massive headache came about and basically spoiled the rest of the night. Luckily, I passed out around 8 pm to get ready for my early wake-up call at 3:45 am.

Morning of: I was pretty worried the morning of the race. I had been experiencing stomach cramps for the past few days and was worried they'd make an appearance during the race. I was too scared to eat, but managed to gulp down some gatorade and had half a bagel with cream cheese right before the race. Everyone met at a pick-up location and was shuttled to the start line for our respective races. Since my race was 5 miles shorter than the marathoners, we started further along the course at mile 5.

RACE! The start of the race was actually a little anticlimatic. LOL. The reason being that the start line banner doesn't actually indicate the start. The timing mats were located 0.2 miles up a hill and that's where we officially started. So as we crossed the banner, most of us slowly stretched our legs up the hill. I even overheard a Pennsylvanian say that "Californians were really chill." When we hit that timing mat, we were off. I started my Motigo app, my Garmin (because if there's no data, did you really run it?), and was off. I started off pretty quickly.

The scenery was extremely pretty. I took a lot of videos and pictures and was just in awe from the hills and the greenery. :) We were running along the coast and I got these gorgeous views of the waves crashing against the rocks of the cliffs.

The course was marked for the marathoners and just the marathoners so we all laughed when we started running and already saw the 5 mile marker. :P Hooray! 5 miles done, 16 to go, right? The first few miles were a breeze.

I heard a few cheers and then later found out that the app had unfortunately crashed due to really really poor reception in the area. Seriously. Plan ahead to meet your loved ones at the finish line. There is barely any reception in the area and I'm pretty sure I ran 19 miles of it without any cell service. I ended up listening to my cheers at the finish line, which was still pretty awesome. :)

At my mile 5 (10 for the marathoners), we began our ascent (into madness, jk, only sort of kidding) up the massive hill. We ran up maybe 600 feet over the course of 2 miles? It was this intense trek up and honestly, I had no idea when it would end because the course kept winding and so I couldn't see the top. You'd turn and then see another hill. Seriously, I can't believe I complained about the La Jolla Half. That race was nothing compared to this one. Also, once you got higher up, the wind got stronger. LOL

At mile 7, we started heading down towards Bixby Bridge, where we got to see this awesome piano player! He was playing lullabies when I ran by. LOL. I took about a million photos of the area and continued the trek. Around mile 10, the first place male marathoner passed me by. LOL. They were fast. At mile 15, it started to sprinkle, which was actually kind of fun. I kept leap frogging with another runner for a few miles, but at the 2 last miles, she passed me. At mile 17, I started feeling pretty tired. I liked to think that running down hill was my strongest skill, but at mile 17, that was not the case. My knees started feeling the the impact from pounding on pavement up and down. My stomach felt very empty at mile 17 and I worried that I had not fueled enough and I'd hit the wall. Luckily, it didn't happen. and I managed to make it to 20.5. Mentally, I was done. I started walking, but soon after, another runner touched my back as he passed by to encourage me to keep going so I did.

I crossed the finish line with a time of 3:25:56 and a big smile on my face. :) I had conquered the hills of Big Sur. And I placed 80th/1010 overall. I had a blast and I'm sure once my legs recover, I'll be back for the marathon.