By Vince Mattera
Cool, foggy and windless, best describe the weather conditions for this year's Santa Barbara Half Marathon. Moist ocean air was a welcome change from the hot, dry conditions I'm accustomed to training with in Simi Valley. I unexpectedly met up with a few friends who are runners and decided to try to hang onto their pace. The first two miles are a slight uphill climb and before the gun, my friends warned me about taking off too fast at the start. The old adage, "Do as I say, not as I do" certainly seemed to apply to my friends. They took off at a sub- seven minute pace for the first two miles. I struggled to keep up and kept wondering how long they would continue to torture me. At the second mile, the course looped around and for the next two miles the downhill pace got faster. Feeling much better on the downhill, I picked up the pace and soon found myself ahead of my friends. As the course leveled out from mile 5-9 I settled into a cruising pace as the miles seemed to effortlessly pass by. It wasn't until mile 11 that I began to tire and I struggled to hold on. About 10 competitors passed me at mile 12 but my legs were getting heavy and fighting to hold their current pace. I was very satisfied to have held a 7 minute pace and finished with a time of 1:31:42 bettering my time by 6 minutes from last year's race.
