Race Report: Space Coast Marathon Cocoa, FL
The day I had been eagerly anticipating and training for for 4 years came and went today. The final marathon in the 4 year big bang series starting in 2018. Each year of the series was themed after a different NASA space program (Mercury, Gemini, Apollo and Space Shuttle), with completing 3 years or all 4 years of the series warranting an additional challenge medal. As a cap, this year was the 50th year the race was run.
I signed up for the first year in the series back in the spring of 2018 after a disastrous first marathon at Disney that January with one thought "I can do better." The 2nd thought being, "that 4 year challenge medal is gorgeous and I could use it as a melee weapon against burglars, I'll do the marathon the 1st year, and the halfs the years after to earn it."
Well, year after year, I ended up signing up for the marathons always keeping in the back of my head that I could drop down to the half day of if something went wrong. Fortunately, I never needed to use that out.
As a change of policy as a result of Covid, medal pick-up was actually the day before the race and I got my hands on that much coveted medal a day early. After that, it was just time to earn it the next day.
View attachment 626697
This race weekend was probably the coolest temperature wise of any of the Space Coast races I participated in. (A real treat after how hot it was the previous 2 years!) Lows were in the 50s at the start and it rose to the low 60s by the time I finished. Set-up was as good as always, with tons of parking and port-o-potties at the start and a fun countdown where they used CO2 cannons to simulate shuttle boosters going off at the start.
The first mile was pretty packed, but everyone seemed to get into their pace around the 1.5 mile mark. Running along the water was nice as always, and the Vehicular Assembly Bay off in the distance was a treat but I have to admit that I was primarily focused on my running for the race and didn't take in the environment too much. It did feel like there was less course support than usual, but I was also more focused than normal so it could've just been my oversight.
There was one negative to the race that really hit home this year that I never noticed in previous years. The way the race is set up, 3,000 half marathoners complete the north loop section of the course, 3,000 half marathoners complete the south loop section of the course and 1,000 marathoners run the North then South loops. In all the previous years I ran, there were always walking half marathoners on the South loop that I lapped, but I passed a lot more this year and they were not observing proper course etiquette of not walking 5 abreast and taking up the whole area you're supposed to be running in. Not what you want to deal with when you're at mile 24 of a race and I admittedly probably deserved the glares I got for yelling at a lot of them "walkers keep right."
But the positive was, I PR'ed my marathon time by almost 46 minutes! And my previous PR was set at this same race last year! I finished with a time of 3:36. According to my Garmin, I also PR'ed my half marathon time during the race with 1:42. I'm still shocked and ecstatic, as I went into the race just hoping for a sub-4 hour.
Truly grateful to end this wonderful series on a high note. I now plan to move on to other fall marathons, but I'm so happy to have taken this journey with the race over the past 4 years.
To leave with the paraphrased quote from JFK on the back of the challenge medal "We do these things not because they are easy, but because they are hard."
