2008 Surf City Marathon, Huntington Beach, CA, USA

In USA, first week of Feb. is a big event day, SUPER BALL SUNDAY but I enjoyed helf marathon on same day in the country ;)

My first visiting to southern CA started with nice and relatively warm weather...the area has 90% guarantee of blue sky. Huntington Beach is nice and pretty city, which is a famous city among surfers. The city is very clean, safe and well-organised city for outdoor sports.

However, I had bad luck in such city...miserably windy and rainy condition during the marathon...>:'(

I had very nice & trustable supporter, Donald & his wife and my running mate, Mori-san (who now lives Washington D.C.) so that I wasn't dissapointed such condition. It was better than the Tokyo Marathon or Ohtawara Marathon (my DFN, excused marathon) in 2007.

The course has comfortable & gentle up and down. The half marathon starts from commercial area, runnig up through residential area, down to coast line on West Coast Highway and turn back to the commercial area. If it were fine day, how nice it would be..., though, big & strong cheering encouraged me and made me think "this race is soooooo nice" in all the way at the race

Well, my time was 1:38'35'' and I was placed at 377th out of 8413 runners, 60 th out of 4898 women and 9th in my age category. The result is 5min slower than my current PB but "SO FAR SO GOOD!" :)

Apart from the race, I had good holiday, traveled around L.A. with Donald & Maria (spelling is correct??) and Mori-san after the race, watched Superball at a pub (yahoo!! that's exciting but sorry for the result to New England), had nice & short conversation with a taxi driver (who is a black guy and supports Ohbama), had comfortable (?) & easy flight by domestic airline between SF and Orange County airport.

Last of all, I couldn't enjoy this trip without support by Donald and his wife. It is always good to have nice freinds around, in my life ;)

By the way, if you are interested in the Surf City Marathon, click

http://www.runsurfcity.com/Surf_City_Marathon.htm