Pier to Plunge Race Report, Monday 1/1/2018

I don't normally race on New Years Day, but I decided to run a race this New Years because I could do a polar plunge after.  I don't know why I wanted to do a polar plunge.  I, normally, won't put my big toe in the ocean without a shortie on, but I got this polar plunge thing in my head.

Prepping for the race, before bed at about one in the morning, I plugged in my garmin and it fell apart in my hand!  There is a crack in the plastic where the band attaches.  I have a Garmin Forerunner 310XT.  Garmin used to fix watches for $99, so I'll see if I can send it to them.  I hope that the price hasn't gone up too much.  Luckily, my husband has a Garmin too, so I used his for the race.

The wake-up was tough.  I didn't feel great after staying up late and indulging in champagne, but a bagel and coffee evened me out.  A friend picked me up, and we carpooled to the event.  When we got to the pier to check in, we were greeted with a pretty long, slow moving line.  If we hadn't actually pre-registered, we could have been in and out in a couple of minutes.  I don't know how long we waited in line, but it was long enough for my friend to go to the bathroom and return and for me to get chummy with the people around us.  We finally did check in and got a raffle ticket to put in a bucket for one of several great prizes.  There was a short wait in the t-shirt line, but the smallest shirt was an XL.  The shirt was signed by Jordan Hasay, however, who was there MCing the event.

My friend and I posed for a free pic which I thought was such a nice perk.  By the time we got down to the beach, the 5k should have just been getting ready to start.  It didn't start though.  There was music, and the atmosphere was generally entertaining.  After about 20 minutes, they held the kids race.  I'm not sure when the 5K actually started, but it was pretty late.

The weather was perfect. There was full sun, but it wasn't hot or cold, and the wind was still.The race began in the deep sand.  Runners sped past me.  I couldn't figure out the technique for moving quickly and I was in shock as to how difficult it was to run.  Runners veered immediately to the wet stuff.  Again, runners weaved pass me.  The sand was very wet, so it was sucked at your feet.  I was shocked and was moving very slowly. The race was difficult from start to finish.  During a hilly race, you can wrap you head around the ebb and flow of harder and easier running.  This was all hard.  We ran on loose sand and wet sand.  There was even much hard packed sand.  At some point I decided that there was nothing to do but run, so I had better get to it.  I settled down and tried to get into a rhythm.  I started passing people at this point.  I spotted a couple of gals running close together.  I assumed that they were friends, but as I got closer, I could see they were racing each other.  I thought that I could keep up with them, but when I reached them, they both began to surge.  I didn't have the heart to go chasing those two, so I set my sights on a pair of young girls.  The seemed in great spirits, but I was slowly gaining on them.  Just as I caught up to them, they stopped and started talking.  Young people are so funny.  After passing those two young gals, there were no more females to chase.  Since it was a loop, I could see who was ahead of me.  There was one or two women that might have been in my age group ahead of me.  I couldn't be sure, but there was nothing I could do about it anyway.  As I was just processing my position and probably slowing down, I noticed two guys racing me on both flanks. One died off, but the one on my left was sticking with me.  I held him off for a while, but he got me with about 1/4 mile to go.  If I had my head in the game, I probably could have stayed with him, but I was really distracted feeling sorry for myself.  We had to get back in the fluffy sand to go through the shoot.  I couldn't actually believe how slow I was going.  I honestly was just glad that it was over.  We were given a coin at the finish which was quite nice. (I forgot to stop my watch which would come back to bite me.)

I was pretty concerned with the plunge, so I decided to get it over with and do what I came to do.  The water was cold, but bearable.  I thought that I would freeze waiting for my friend, but in the full sun, it wasn't very cold. By the time I caught up to my friend, she had already plunged as well.  We wanted to do it together, so we went in again.

At some point, I inquired about my time.  The person who I asked told me that there was a problem and that there were no times at all.  He offered me a small bear to make the news a little easier to hear.  I told him no worries.  I got my plunge beanie, and that was what mattered to me. I didn't turn off my watch after the race, so I have absolutely no idea what my time was.  We waited a little while for raffle announcements and headed out.

Without a doubt, there were problems related to organization and execution.  For this particular event, I really didn't care about my time but, under different circumstances, I would have probably been pretty heated about that. Despite the problems, I would give Pier to Plunge an A+ for effort, and I would run it again.