The Virginia Beach Rock N Roll Half Marathon
September 7th, 2010Dan and I went to Virginia Beach over Labor Day weekend for a nice little retreat together, and we ran the half marathon - 13.1 miles - our first.
The traffic going down was very light. We were surprised.
We had an awesome time! We stayed at the Days Inn on the Atlantic. All the rooms have a beach view, which is beautiful especially in the gorgeous weather we enjoyed thanks to hurricane Earl avoiding the area.
When we checked in, we went for a three mile run down the boardwalk and then ate dinner at Shogun. It’s an old favorite where the food- Japanese - is cooked in front of you, with flaming volcanic onions, spinning eggs, and corny jokes.
The food is always delicious.
Saturday we bought Dan a beach cruiser - we brought mine - and we rode to the convention center to check in for the race and walked around the expo. We got some new running apparel and our free goodies. We rode back and rode around the beach some, then decided to go down to the water. When we went to get our boogey boards and chairs out of the back of the truck, we discovered they’d been stolen. We went down to the beach anyway, and Dan had just finished saying “we’ll never see them again with so many people out here” when we saw them. A group of people had both the chairs and the one boogey board, and a guy had the other boogey board right in front of them in the water. Dan walked over and picked the stuff up and said “thanks for bringing the stuff down for us” and walked off. LOL I was just happy to get it back. Later in the day we ate at Bella’s pizza (very yummy!!) and then strolled the boardwalk, enjoying the concerts.
Sunday was the big day. We were up at 4:50 and walked about a mile to the start line, drinking cytomax on the way. We stretched, visited the portopotties, and got in our corral (a ‘holding area’ based on your stated running time). We were in corral 21. Corral one began at 7am, and each corral afterwards began about a minute or so later. We ended up starting a little past 7:30. So, all the warming up and stretching didn’t really help a lot, and we started out with our muscles feeling pretty cold.
Dan and I stuck together, and we ran and ran and ran and ran … for over three hours.
It was hot and I’m thankful for all the people who lived in the houses we passed who put out their garden sprinklers for us to run under! That really helped. And the one volunteer who sprayed us down as we ran past her. And all the volunteers passing out water, cytomax, and cleaning up. Hot, hard work!
We ran past Dan’s mom’s old house, and a house that he used to live in too. He was surprised by that, and it was kind of fun to see and talk about. The last few miles really hurt, and we were glad once we were done. We ended up running it in 3 hours and 11 minutes. Not fast, but it was our first and due to me hurting my hip a couple weeks ago, we weren’t able to train the past two weeks. So, I’m just glad I was healed enough to do it. I’m sure it will be our first of others to come.
After the marathon, we had to walk back to our room, which was about two miles. And then we went and enjoyed Capt George’s seafood buffet. We had a friendly, talkative waitress and the food was good. It is another long time favorite, but it wasn’t quite as exceptional as we remembered. After lunch, we went down and slept on the beach. Or tried to, except for being woken up by various moms yelling at their kids!
In the evening, we rode our bikes to 5th street, for the Pat Benatar and REO Speedwagon concert on the beach. It was fun, but there was an insane amount of people, and we were exhausted. Being stepped over and on, is not so fun. A fireworks display after the concert was a great way to end the day!
Monday we had to check out. As we were packing, we saw dolphins playing along the shore. The staff said it was fine to leave the car there, even though we had checked out, so we biked around the rest of the day. We had breakfast at Pocahontas Pancakes, where the waitress was great, and the food was amazing. We biked up and down the boardwalk, watched some men pull some flounder out of Rudee Inlet, and talked to some local guy whose kid was playing on the new playground about how we missed living there.
We went down on the pier, and again saw dolphins. This time closer up, and it appeared to be at least 8 of them. Such amazing creatures! We went shopping, got some shark teeth, beach towels, and a hermit crab for the girls.
Had dinner at Zeros and then headed home. It only took 3 1/2 hours and the traffic was minimal.
It was an amazing weekend!! Virginia really is for lovers. ![]()





















































