We went down to San Diego this weekend to run the AFC (America’s Finest City) Half Marathon. We’ve run it before, but this year was special, in a couple of less than great ways.

First there was the traffic down there. Who knew that the entire population of California was going down to San Diego this past weeeknd, and that they were all taking Interstate 5? Jeez oh man, it took us over three hours to inch our way down to America’s Finest City, in what used to take about an hour and a half. Then there was the fact that at the last moment, they moved race packet pick-up away from the host hotel (where we had booked a room) to the Convention Center, four miles as the crow flies, but about half an hour as the traffic did NOT fly, from the host hotel. Grrrr. Okay, but we did get our packets, and did get checked in to the hotel (but didn’t get our room, as they had some huge group leave that day so they had late checkout so no rooms had been cleaned by 4:30 that afternoon). We had a very nice dinner at my friend Cheryl’s – that was the high point of the day by far, but when poor Cheryl tried to drive us back to the hotel, we found ourselves trapped in more horrible traffic as all of the roads from downtown to Haqrbor Island were closed or diverted for the race the following morning (and a bike ride that night called Midnight Madness). She lives about four miles from Harbor Island, but the drive took almost thirty minutes! Sheesh!

The second less than great thing was the weather on race day. We woke at 5:30am to skies that were already clearing – no marine layer for us! The good news was that we enjoyed a beautiful sunrise at Point Loma, where the race started. The bad news was that this was going to be a HOT day – and to add insult to injury, it was also humid (now folks on the East Coast may read that and laugh, but I’m telling you, when you live in So Cal and never experience humidity, it’s real ass-kicker when it DOES occur!). By the time the race started at 7am, the sun was shining and it was WARM. By mile one, both Chuck and I were sweating. By mile six, it was getting downright hot and some aid stations were running out of cups. I got a nice, juicy blister on my instep around mile eight from my sock rubbing that kept my mind nicely off the heat. Chuck had nothing to do but think about how hot he was. We must have consumed a liter or more of water at all of the aid stations, but probably lost that much and more in perspiration. We finished in 2:44 which wasn’t a great time, but according to my painintheassometer, we actually ran more like 20 miles, which makes our times much more impressive. Chuck didn’t stop sweating until he finally took a shower an hour or so after the race. We both were able to wring quantities of water out of our running shorts and tops for some time after we were done running, and small animals everywhere mistook us for large salt licks.

All in all, the jury is way, way out on whether we’ll run this race again. Heat, crowds, traffic. Blech!