San Diego Half Marathon at Petco Park Race Review

The San Diego Half at Petco Park is AWESOME! The start is right outside Pecto Park and it runs through downtown San Diego. The course is almost all flat except at mile 8 where there is “a growth opportunity” that lasted about 3/4s of a mile and then the last three miles is all down hill so you can have an ‘epic’ finish, as the race director said.

Mile 1-4 were probably the worst miles of the entire half which is strange because its when you normally don’t feel pain. Right when I passed the start line I took off like a gazelle running for my life and made sure to get right in front of the people taking pictures just in case they were good :). At about mile two I had severe side cramps and I was forced to do kind of a run/walk so I would run for about five minutes then walk for about ten seconds. As I run/walked past the fourth mile marker I noticed a bunch of guys working on building a ship and as I ran by I wanted to stop just to sniff the cedar wood mhhh!

At mile 5 my cramp was gone but I had random pains springing up from no where and I slowed down because there was someone with an iPhone playing music and it kind of helped me ignore my pain and keep moving. At mile eight the so called “growth opportunity” came along and I could hear people moaning “oh no.....” But I was ready and I wasn’t going to give up on my goal and for some reason I started going faster then before.

Woot woot I finished the hill! Now the rest of the race is all down hill which wasn’t too good. The thing about going down hill is that you're tempted to go super fast down and when you do that, you burn your quads and your feet feel like their being torched. Now the finish line is in sight and I can hear Rudy Novotny yelling “you’re all about to finish in one hour and fifty minutes!” As I came down to the tunnel to get into Petco Park and to finish I started to get a little bit emotional because I just beat my dad’s half marathon personal record! I finished in one hour fifty-two minutes and fourteen seconds, I beat my dad’s record by six seconds! My dad said I am officially the fastest one in the house.


After the race I cheered at mile 13 for a while until mom came to take me away from Ed the Jester who was cheering too so I could meet Meb (he won first place in America’s Olympic trials marathon). Meb told the audience in Petco Park that you should never let anyone look down on you and say you can’t do this you or can’t do that and that you should always follow your heart and chase your dreams. After Meb’s speech he came down and my dad yelled his name and he came over to us! He asked me if I did the race today and asked how fast I did it and Rudy told him that he better watch out for me :) Meb said "you're going to be fast when you're older!" It made me ecstatic. The San Diego Half at Petco Park really made my day.