Endurance Turtle A journey through this turtles triathlon adventures

I know you have been just waiting for this report, so I figured I would go ahead and write it (you can stop biting your nails now).

So bright and early after dinner, George and I headed over to the USC area and met up with a few people at a wine bar. The wine bar is called Bacaro Wine Bar, everything looked amazing! But George and I wanted to eat earlier than 9 so our bellies were already full. We also held off on the wine and just shared a (really good) beer because we were running later. George and I will definitely be going back there, the food looked and smelled amazing and we are always up for a good glass of wine.

We left there and drove closer to the start. We parked on a side street and decided to walk to the start line. Once we got to the main area it was PACKED, there were so many people…this was the first (and probably last) year of doing it and I could tell he wasn’t a happy camper. He much rather be in a huge group facing an ocean wearing a wet suit.

George and I were in the 11+ min pace area (because we don’t plant our selves in run paces we don’t belong in!). Here is a picture of all the people who were in front of us:

And here is a picture of George and I before we started running:

They kept playing music and had people talking, I really just wanted to start the run…at midnight the gun went off and we were…walking :-/ We basically shuffled until we got to the starting line…once we passed it everyone started jogging then it quickly stopped when we made the first left turn and everyone was acting STUPID! It was so ridiculous I can’t even begin to go into my frustrations. Since it was an out and back course, they had the other side blocked off for the returning runners. Well, everyone thought one side was for the 5k and the other side was for the 10k. So when the return runners started to come the police escorts had to practically run down the crowd!

The running was pretty slow and George and I weren’t sure if we would do the 5k or the 10k. Originally we were thinking the 5k but when we got to the turn around point for the 5k we just sort of kept on running. The race went up Figueroa, turned around, had a little arm on Washington, turned around and then there was even a smaller little turn around on Greek row. Now, George and I both spent some time at USC. He went there his freshman year of college and I went to the college 2 blocks north of USC.  So we both spent some quality time on Greek row and I thought it was cool that we would get to run down it. Well, turns out…we ran on Greek row for 2.5 seconds and then had to turn around. I really felt like they could have made it go longer especially because the race ended up being 6.02 miles and not 6.2. We made our way back to the finish and I sprinted through (Norman said I got up to 11 mph…cool). George tried to sprint, but he started cramping so I just stopped and waited for him at the finish. Once we were all done we walked through the finishing chute looking for water…we looked and looked and looked….we passed up the table with the medals because it was so crowded and we were still thirsty…then we came to the realization…there was no water Thanks Nike..

Overall this is a poorly run race. The website is miserable to navigate, there are SO many people…I like the shirt but it is a tad annoying that everyone is ultimately wearing the same thing and no water at the finish? That is a HUGE fail in my book! On the way back to the car we stopped at a gas station and got some water. By the time I got home I was so cold from my sweaty shirt and I cranked up the heater and snuggled into my bed by 2:30AM.

I think next year I will pass on this event….too big and it is not run well.