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Beach to Bay




Beach to Bay is a relay marathon that takes place every year on armed forces appreciation day in Corpus Christi.  Just as the name states, the races starts on the beach, with the first leg being roughly 3.5 miles in the sand.  I actually ran this leg in 2014 and 2015 and it's... good and bad.  The bad part is how early you have to get up.  The race starts at 7 am but... to get bused to the start line, you've got to be in place before 5.  So... very little sleep.  The tradeoff is the running the sun up on the beach.  How can you beat that?  The course curls back on itself so you can also see who's in the lead and how far back you are.
Starting Line 2014
I learned a lesson my first year though.  The race is gun timed, not chip timed, so you have to make sure to move to the front at the start of the race so as to not spend most of your first leg picking through other runners and walkers.
I don't honestly know much about legs 2-4 except the 3rd leg goes over the JFK Causeway, which ends up being a giant hill.  However, I do have one of Cristina's pics from this past year:
As you can see, the views on this race are beautiful.  This past year, Mila and I ran leg 5 together and I finished with leg 6. 

 What's great about those legs is that they're not only along the beach, but along Ocean Blvd, which includes many cool looking houses.  The town of Corpus Christi really gets involved in the race, including musicians and people handing out water and snacks in their driveways.  Also, this little dude was out there hi fiving everyone in the sweltering heat and humidity:

The last mile or so of the race you can actually see the finish line.  It's one of those things that can be discouraging and motivating at the same time.  Here's my teammate from 2014 "sprinting" to the finish (he puked immediately afterward)

I'll be honest, I struggled through the 6th leg.  My goal had been to finish in 40 minutes, I ended up finishing in about 47.  I'm not too bummed about it though, my training had only started 2 weeks prior and it WAS super hot.  Our team finished in 4:49, I'd imagined that it would take us over 5 hours.   We came in 709th place out of 1750ish, so better than most! The 3 girls on the team had never run over 4 miles at a time and one of them had never actually run a race before.  Plus, another one of them injured her knee halfway through the leg.  I'm very proud of my team and the hard work they put in!

One thing that I've learned about Beach to Bay is that things will never go as planned.  There will always be some sort of logistical problem, so making a hard and fast time goal is just silly.  In 2014, our 3rd leg's bus crashed on the way to drop him off so he was 5 minutes late getting to the exchange point.  After that, the 5th and 6th legs didn't recognize each other for a few minutes.  In 2015, our 2nd leg fell asleep on the sand dunes while waiting for the race start.  I ended up waking him up with a phone call after running around looking for him for 5ish minutes.  He quickly ran his leg, decided to run the 3rd as a cooldown, went to a grocery store, missed the bus back to his car, and ended up having to run the rest of the race.
This year's logistical problem didn't happen during the race, exactly.  My wife was left at her exchange point and ended up walking an extra 3 miles until I found her.  
What Beach to Bay really is about is the team.  It's about getting a group of friends together to hang out on the beach for the weekend.  It's about seeing other running friends on the course.  It's about the pre-race team dinner.  It's about figuring out a creative team name.
Beach to Bay reminds me in that way of some of the karate tournaments I used to compete in.  We would cheer each other on during the day (like Mila and I did Saturday when we saw Jesse, Stacie, and Rachel), at the same time competing against each other, (Mila and I DID try and catch Val for a bit) and then all getting together afterward to have a great time.


This year, we had a beach BBQ, thanks to Ronnie for cooking and Tracy for helping provide the beach.  It was a fantastic weekend.  We enjoyed seeing friends that we haven't been able to see in a month as well as being able to race.

2014 team:
We didn't get a team pic in 2015, but here's a gem from the night before the race of Gaige and his short shorts:
And, here's most of the 2016 team looking sexy at the post-race beach party: (Ryan left shortly after the race)



  For those of you that have run beach to bay before, tell me about it in the comments!


Here's the homepage for the relay.  Take a look for next year: http://www.beachtobayrelay.com/
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