Happy Friday! Jesse and I are currently in San Diego for the inaugural USA Half Marathon This race aims to be a Boston Marathon for half marathons. Current qualifying times are 1:54 for women and 1:44 for men; after PRing at Mountains 2 Beach this year, I figured I would seize the opportunity to run in San Diego before the qualifying times become more stringent.
Jesse and I are both in recovery mode of sorts. His epic finish at the Rio Del Lago 100 Miler was seriously inspiring – not only because of his athletic achievement but because of his attitude before, during, and after the race. As corny as it sounds, running with him during RDL was inspiring. After seeing him crushed from the three-month lay up after breaking his foot only to come back and PR in the half ironman and marathon AND finish a 100 miles is a true testament to his tenacity and grit. It feels incredibly silly saying this, but Jesse wasn’t the only one completely spent after the weekend of the 100. I didn’t really sleep that weekend and worried about Jesse the whole time (especially during the period when I thought he had made a wrong turn), and I suspect this weakened my immune system, which is why I’m now wrangling with a cold. Jesse’s not feeling 100% either; he’s still a little fatigued and achey (especially in his feet).
Tomorrow’s event will be less of a race and more of a delightful trot around beautiful, 80-degree San Diego. I’ve ran parts of the course before (I did the Hot Chocolate 15K a couple of years ago), and San Diego is one of my favorite places in California. I’m hoping this race will help invigorate my love of running. Since returning home from Europe, I’ve only ran a handful of times. With North Face Endurance Challenge two weeks away, I hope to in a run happy mindset before tackling an ultramarathon.
From the expo today.
Hope everyone has a lovely weekend!
Single-tracked Mind 
Those are some interesting times to make for a qualifying race, but I guess for an inaugural year, it’s probably best until it picks up in popularity. I hope the race takes off; it’d be fun to have a “BQ” of halves!
Hey Taylor, glad everything is going well for you guys. Please tell Jesse I said yo.
Have fun and good luck! I envy that nice weather!
Good luck and have fun!! It would be really cool to have a half marathon with qualifying times.
I saw this, and I do have a qualifying time that would allow me to run it. If it were local, I likely would. But this seems like a gimmick. A race becomes popular first then the RD needs to limit entries which eventually leads to qualifying times. There was a marathon near Boston that tried this (no charity spots, no lottery, just a qualifying time 5 minutes tougher then Boston…it doesn’t exist anymore). HITS triathlon has a championship race that is by qualification only but they wave the qualifying time for the first 500 registrants in each distance. Of course, they have never had more then 500 registrants so it is completely irrelevant (they don’t even bother posting what those qualifying times are). If this race was a formal running body (USATF for example), then they might pull it off. I suspect that this race will not be around in 5 years, or that qualifying times will no longer be required. The HM market is oversaturated and there is no HM race that is that popular (a few warrant lotteries…like my home state of MN has lotteries for the TC 10 miler and Grandmas HM…and if demand becomes great enough, they could implement a qualifying time to bypass the lottery). Just seems like a gimmick and bad marketing. That said, it should be a fun race…
This sounds so fun. I’ve been enjoying reading reports from people about this. Definitely might have to consider this some day!