Someone once asked me:

"If you were famous, would rather live in NYC or LA?"

I replied: "Miami."

Now, this obviously resulted from one of those
seemingly pointless (yet totally consuming)
conversations that you have with your buddies when you
likely should be doing something else. It becomes even
more pointless in my case given the limited amount of
time I have spent in any of those locations.

I have been to LA a few times, but I wouldn't really
venture to say that I have a real feel for the scene
there. I also doubt a twelve year old fully
appreciates NYC and that was the last time I spent a
considerable amount of time there outside of JFK Intl.

And Miami? Well, funny I should choose that as the hot
spot for my future celebrity home since I went there
for the first time this past weekend. Before Saturday,
A1A was nothing more than a line from a Vanilla Ice
song.

A group of friends of mine had planned to race the
Miami Marathon (or half) so I decided to join them and
race the half. I wanted to take the oppurtunity to get
to South Beach. I got the chance to see it at 6:30 in
the morning while running Mile 5 of the race. Nothing
like two worlds colliding. Some clubs were still
rolling as the weekend warriors came strolling through
their world.

When I was in college I used to eat breakfast with my
roommate as he was ending his night and I was starting
my day. We would chat a bit, he would head to bed, I
would head out to ride, and we had lunch together when
I got back. It reminded me of that.

As far as the race is concerned... ...I did not really
have any expectations since I have had little
structure to my running since getting back to training
in December. Nevertheless, I figured I could get in a
good long run at a solid effort and get the feedback
with some mile splits.

I lined up for the race very late (as in 30 seconds to
the start) so I couldn't make my way to the front.
This forced a 6:47 first mile as I kept getting boxed
in. After that I mostly ran 6:20s into a strong
headwind through mile 5. From there I moved to a 6:15
pace and ran that into the finish with mile 13 being
the fastest around 6:00/mile or so. 1:22:50 finish.

I thought I could run 1:22 flat, but I suppose I was a
little off. It will be a good starting point as I do
more road races through the spring. I believe I am
going to head to Austin, Tx in three weeks to run the
half there while my brother and his girlfriend run the
full marathon (her first).

Everybody had good races and we headed to South Beach
for some recovery afterwards. After a long nap on the
beach we headed back to Clermont.

I didn't see a lot of Miami, but I really enjoyed what
I did see. Pretty people and a pretty place. I think
my assumptions about trumping NYC and LA were right
on.

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