Beautiful Day For the 5th Annual Malibu Marathon Today That I Didn't Run

Today was a perfect day for running a marathon, or any race or a run of any type today. Yet another sunny, yet not overly hot November day in Southern California.

While I wasn't at today's Malibu Marathon as I was last year, photographer Suzy Demeter was and she captured this colorful wave of half marathoners running on PCH between 8:30 a.m. and 9 a.m.

Today a course record was set by 34 year old George Kitonga in 2:35:10. A web search for Kitonga turns up he is originally from Kenya and has a marathon best time of 2:21:23 in winning the 2006 Memphis Marathon. The top 3 was rounded out by Ricardo Ramirez-Pacheco (age 42) in 2:37:01 and Shaun Maguire (age 27) in 2:37:50.

Jessica Stern (age 24) topped the women's field in 3:02:03, followed by Tammara Francis (age 31) in 3:11:00 and Stephanie Wurtz (age 31) in 3:12:29.

As for me, I've been battling a head cold that finally migrated to my chest, just in time for today's Calabasas Classic 5K that I signed up for like 10 months ago. While I actually feel fine, there's stuff in my chest that told me to back off 1 mile into the race. I was struggling to breathe so it just wasn't worth pushing through.

However, I didn't mind, as my son was running his 3rd 5K and I backed off my pace to see him run the final mile at a blistering pace to win his age group and set a personal best. My best race in the last 10 years!