{"id":38889,"date":"2021-10-31T15:27:12","date_gmt":"2021-10-31T19:27:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.runkevinrun.com\/?p=38889"},"modified":"2021-10-31T15:27:12","modified_gmt":"2021-10-31T19:27:12","slug":"the-final-i-dream-of-jeannie-cocoa-beach-half-marathon-now-a-10k","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/?p=38889","title":{"rendered":"The FINAL “I Dream of Jeannie” Cocoa Beach Half-Marathon… Now A 10K"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Seven years ago, I was signed up to run the inaugural Cocoa Beach Half Marathon.\u00a0 It had an I Dream of Jeannie theme and Barbara Eden was going to be there.\u00a0 I was really looking forward to it\u2026 but me being me, I had double booked events that weekend.\u00a0 I ran the Petrified Forest Marathon in Sedona, Arizona, on Saturday morning and had a flight back to Orlando that afternoon \u2013 everything worked on paper.\u00a0 And then flights got delayed and canceled out of the teeny-tiny Sedona airport and there was no way for me to get back in time.\u00a0 I tried begging, borrowing, and stealing, going so far as to investigate re-renting a car and driving it to Phoenix to try and catch a flight\u2026 but it was too late to make that happen either.\u00a0 I was able to get a flight to Los Angeles and then a red-eye back to Orlando\u2026 but delays out of LAX had me touching down at 6:59 AM\u2026 and the race in Cocoa Beach some 40 miles away was starting at 7 AM.<\/p>\r\n

Last year amidst the pandemic, the Cocoa Beach Half Marathon changed to a 10K to avoid having people crowded onto buses to get to the start line 13.1 miles away.\u00a0 In doing so, they announced a virtual option, including an attempt to clean out old medal stock.\u00a0 You could run a virtual event for all prior years and collect all the various Jeannie bottles from the series, including Jeannie\u2019s evil twin sister\u2019s bottle.<\/p>\r\n

This year, for the final “I Dream of Jeannie” themed weekend, they announced a Major Nelson Saturn V Rocket Medal for all-series participants, including those of us who ran the virtual events.<\/p>\r\n

And so it was after seven long years, I finally ran at least part of the Cocoa Beach Half Marathon course.<\/p>\r\n

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And while running on the packed sand at low tide as the sun climbed over the water was fun, I\u2019m not sure this whole thing was worth my time and effort.<\/p>\r\n

It\u2019s an hour and seven minutes from my house to the event\u2019s parking lot\u2026 one that turned out to be the WRONG parking lot.\u00a0 Despite doing this for seven years, they had the wrong information on their website and in the participant packet, directing race-day pickup to a hotel half a mile from where they had set up.\u00a0 Given my roundabout failure in 2014, this snafu seemed oddly fitting.<\/p>\r\n

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Nonetheless, I persisted, to co-op a meme.<\/p>\r\n

\"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\" <\/a>\"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a><\/p>\r\n

I\u2019m looking a little street-rat Aladdin-y with my fez and an oh-so-annoying stubble.\u00a0 The former was part of a murder mystery party I threw, the latter is part of an attempt to see how grey I\u2019ve gone.\u00a0 The hairs on my chinny-chinny-chin are all white and I thought I should see if I\u2019m salt-and-peppery or more a polar bear in a snowstorm.\u00a0 But man does it itch.\u00a0 I really hate it.\u00a0 Plus, it makes me look bloated and fat\u2026 albeit that could be the Halloween candy I\u2019ve stolen from any potential trick or treaters tonight.\u00a0 It\u2019s Halloween, don\u2019t you know?<\/p>\r\n

Speaking of Halloween and its fancy dress, each year the race has a \u201cJeannie\u201d division where folks run in their best costumed attire\u2026 albeit I was disappointed that folks displayed their belly buttons given that Barbara Eden wasn\u2019t allowed to show hers.<\/p>\r\n

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Anyhoo, I mentioned the drive time, right?\u00a0 Well, because of race day pickup and the organizer\u2019s insistence that there was a hard close at 6:15 AM (though other places in the same packet said 6:30 or 6:45), I opted to arrive early\u2026 and good thing too as I was lost in finding the locale thanks to the aforementioned inaccurate map.\u00a0 But this effort also meant I was stuck hanging around a lot longer for the race to start \u2013 they had pushed the start time back to 7:30 to allow for sunrise and low-tide.\u00a0 All in, I spent about 3 hours from my house to the start\u2026 and then ran 45 minutes before driving home for another hour.<\/p>\r\n

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This time imbalance is precisely why I generally prefer running a marathon as opposed to shorter distances.\u00a0 If I\u2019m going to get up this early, if I\u2019m going to have to stand around for that amount of time, I\u2019d rather run a longer distance.\u00a0 The sunk costs are the same; the run pay-out is what changes between a 10K and a half-marathon\u2026 or a 5K and a marathon\u2026 or any combination of short versus long.<\/p>\r\n

And yet, I\u2019m tired.\u00a0 I\u2019m slower than I used to be too.\u00a0 I\u2019m a little nervous about the next batch of marathons in the coming weeks.\u00a0 They\u2019ll be here in the blink of an eye\u2026 or a blink and head-bob of a Jeannie as the case may be.<\/p>\r\n

\"\" <\/a>\"\"<\/a><\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Seven years ago, I was signed up to run the inaugural Cocoa Beach Half Marathon.\u00a0 It had an I Dream of Jeannie theme and Barbara Eden was going to be there.\u00a0 I was really looking forward to it\u2026 but me being me, I had double booked events that weekend.\u00a0 I ran the Petrified Forest Marathon […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38889","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38889","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38889"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38889\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38892,"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38889\/revisions\/38892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}