Jeez, I’ve been swamped lately.

What, me sweat?

My inbox has overwhelmed my outbox, leaving me not nearly as much time as I’d like to visit here and wax poetic.

Feels like I barely have enough time to run, let alone write about it. Hopefully, I can find some time to catch up on things in the not too distant future. I’ve got a list of fun topics to write about. Just need to carve out some time for it.

So this past weekend I ran the Long Beach Half Marathon, my 11th race o’ the year and my 30th half marathon overall (fitting as the Long Beach Marathon was celebrating its 30th anniversary).

Bib and bling.

I hit the expo on Friday and planned to post a bunch of photos, except the battery on my iPhone 4S died just as I walked through the front door of the convention center.

So I’m only left with those mental images… what are they called? Oh yes, I remember now… memories.

I had a good time at the expo, running into some friends and familiar vendors. I picked up a few items and did my best to mask my utter disappointment at the race’s tech shirt (it was white, plain and pretty darn awful).

Onto race day, I showed up at Long Beach at “ass o’clock” in the morning. You need to get down to Long Beach uber-early for the race lest you spend eternity entombed in traffic on the 710 and surface streets. Oh, and the freeway closures Saturday night promised to make things extra icky for race morning, so I erred on being cautious even further. It just meant that I had plenty of time to wander about and get in the proper head space for my race.

The down and dirty.

My head space was good, but apparently the rest of me wasn’t (the sore back didn’t help either) as I didn’t put forth one of my better race efforts.

While I started okay, fatigue set in earlier than I expected and I had to take my foot way off the gas in the last few miles.

It made for a mildly disappointing finish time, but I was already approaching this race as a glorified training run so I’m not too broken up about it.

Besides, I don’t have too long to linger on this race as I’ve got the Santa Monica RunFEST 10K next Sunday and LA Rock ‘n’ Roll Half Marathon the week after that.

So, on to the next race (and now I must dive back into my inbox before my desk collapses under the weight).

I’ll get my formal review of the Long Beach Half Marathon up later this week.

Have a good day and… Run on!