This was the one, my Boston Marathon (BQ) race. I scoured the internet and found a race with a usually high qualifying percentage that was at the right time of year when my fitness was at it's peak. I had been living in Denver, Colorado for the past 3 months prior to this race and just recently moved back to Tucson, Arizona. My lungs were prepped for altitude and a race at sea level would have me primed to fire on all cylinders. Right?
We flew from Phoenix to San Francisco and took a rental car from there a few hours north to Santa Rosa. Santa Rosa is located in the heart of wine country, with vineyards as far as the eye can see. I have never been much of a wine person, but one of my favorite beers is brewed in the city as well so that's always a plus (more on that later)! Prior to leaving I had been nursing a little bit of a sore throat and some mild muscle fatigue which I was hoping would resolve before the race in the AM. We ended up staying at a hotel about 10 minutes south of Santa Rosa in Rohnert Park.
Luckily there was a walmart and walgreens within a few minutes. I loaded up on nyquil, water and this organic sore throat relief gargle that I hoped would be the cure for a successful marathon the next day. I headed to the race expo which was out at the DeLoach VIneyard, which we would pass through the next day at around the half marathon point. The venue had a great setup and ran smoothly. Mostly on a a dirt path through parts of the vineyard and barrel room. I grabbed my bib number and swag bag and headed to get my free bottle of wine that was part of the registration. After spending about 30 minutes looking around I headed back to the hotel early, took my meds and crashed out for the night. I was dead tired and almost had no voice left from the sore throat and coughing so much.
The race had a super early start and I arrived with just enough time to use the port-a-potty, which had an absurd line with about 15 minute wait and rush off to the start line. I jumped in the corral next to the 3:03 marathon pacer. Weird to begin with because 3:03 probably wouldn't have even qualified my for Boston. Maybe go with an even 3 hour pacer next time? After a quick stretch and warmup we were off. I tucked myself right in with the pacer and he was chatting to us about what we needed to do to BQ. First mile ticked off smoothly at around 6:50 or so. Here is where the biggest disaster I have ever seen in a race happened. About 200 of us 3:03 marathon groupers took a right turn along with our pacer. After about half a mile we started seeing runners turn around a run back toward us? This was weird and had everybody wondering what was going on. There was a confused chatter amongst the entire group. "Are we on track?" "Was that the right way?" "Why are they turning around?". There were some many questions and nobody knew the answers. We ended up taking another right and seeing more runners turning around? What was going on?? We back tracked back to the main street and took another right and the saw cars coming up behind us. We now knew this must have been completely wrong because we were on a close course. We bolted back the other direction along with our pacer trying to figure out how to get back on course. We found a police officer who was directing traffic and he said we were supposed to turn left instead of right at the first intersection. We race back in the opposite direction trying to save our BQ. The pacer took off at a dead sprint never to be seen by me or our group again that day. I was already over exerting myself as I had woken up feeling 10 times worse then the day before, I knew that everything had to work out perfect for my BQ and that was already ruined at mile 1. We worked our way back on course, just in time to see the 3:45 pacer fly by. We had a lot of work to do to catch up. I kept a pace about 10-15 seconds faster per mile than I had intended trying to slowly reel in the 3:03 group.
The race left the downtown area and onto a path along the Santa Rosa Creek. This was also harder than it should have been at this point because we were now running from behind the other groups of runner on a small 2 way path. We had to dodge left and right and wait behind other runners in order to pass. We would have had this path to ourselves if we hadn't been lost. Many people were voicing there frustrations and this was their BQ shot, there was some nasty language being thrown around. I felt great coming up to our trip through the barrel room and knew this next section had a series of rolling hills. This section was way tougher than I was lead on to believe (just being real). The Santa Rosa Marathon puts itself as a sea-level downhill course. While in the long run this may be true, they make you work with a bunch of smaller uphills that keep rolling and rolling for what seems like forever. They roll on for about 6-8 miles or so and then you are back on the creek path for a push to the finish. I don't know if it was the extra 1.2 miles or the fact that I pushed to hard palying cath up, but this was the hardest section of a race since my very first marathon. I was at a near bonk level the last 4.5 miles and had to stop and walk through the aid stations downing multiple cups of water along with gels. I was riding the struggle bus and we were almost out of gas. I couldn't wait for the finish to be here. I crossed the finish line with near cramping in both legs and stumbled over to my wife waiting out side the finish line chute. She was worried because after getting lost my GPS tracking chip on my bib was no longer functioning and she was hoping I didn't bonk somewhere out on the course because I should have already finished by that time. I ended up finishing 27.3 miles in 3:24:47 and in 162nd place overall. Pretty far off my my BQ, but not bad for the circumstances. Midway through I knew a BQ wasn't in the cards, so I chalked it up to a great ultra training run. Another one in the books!! I'll put those BQ dreams on hold until next year!
Race Location: Located in the heart of California wine country. The race had it's scenic moments (Winery barrel room, some vineyard views at sunrise) but found myself kind of bored along the race course because it was a lot of the same view. 6.5/10
Swag: Tech long sleeve 1/4 zip pullover and huge double spinner medal were great. Most things at expo were other races wanting you to sign up for their race, not many interesting booths to explore. 7.5/10
Experience: Got lost on course following pacer. Race started late and didn't have course markings up. This is the third mishap in past 4 years for this race. Aid stations weren't stocked great. 5/10
Post Race: Didn't stay for the post race beer fest, instead decided on a wine tour and visit to one of my favorite breweries. My wife and I had extra days off for a little bit of a race-cation and I didn't wanna let the mishaps from the day ruin this time off. When in wine country you gotta take a wine tour right?? We stumbled across Christopher Creek Vineyard and had a great first wine tour experience. Russian River Brewery (Home of Pliny the Elder) is also located in Santa Rosa. This is one of my favorite beers and the brewery food and beer flight did not disappoint. 8/10
Overall: Not a race I will probably do again. Santa Rosa marathon really needs to clean up these issue if they hope to have a future. Many very, very disappointed runners at this race. Boston HQ said they couldn't make any exceptions for runners who got lost. Didn't matter for me, but there were many runners who added extra mileage and only
missed BQ by minutes. Overall 6.75/10
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