A Case of the Runs

EVENT:  Los Angeles Chinatown Firecracker 5K DATE: Sunday, February 17, 2019 LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA RACE BEGAN: 08:00 am  FINISH TIME: 0:29:45 This is my first race report in two years.  This was not intentional. In March 2017, I was supposed to run a half-marathon, which had been a postponement of a 2016 race.  I guess it wasn't meant to be.  In 2018, the day of the Firecracker run, I had my second child right on the morning of the race.  Leading up to that, I was willing to participate if I had been able to, but alas, the Year of the Dog medal will allude me until she's 12. I registered for this race late because I wasn't 100% sure I was going to attempt to make a comeback, but somehow I pulled the trigger.  The kids would have normally come with us, but with an unusually cold (by Southern California standards... mid-30s) winter, we decided to drop them off instead.  We grabbed our bibs, and I walked over to the start line just as t...

EVENT: Los Angeles Chinatown Firecracker 5K DATE: Sunday, February 21, 2016 LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA RACE BEGAN: 08:00 am FINISH TIME: 0:25:08 For the fifth year in a row, I participated in the LA Chinatown Firecracker Run.  It has become a yearly tradition/goal for me to participate in this event.  You can see all of my previous medals in last year's recap .  Since there are 12 animals in the zodiac, I guess I still have seven of these races to do, but luckily, it's always a good time. Speaking of good times, I did pretty well in this particular 5k.  This race kind of snuck up on me, as I've totally fallen out of the groove of racing.  Since I had Baby Tuesday, I walked this 5k last year and ran one in July  that took nearly 28 minutes, which I was already happy about. Between November and mid-January, I barely ran at all.  I was burnt out from running quite a bit in August and September... though by quite a bit I mean up to 5 miles at...

EVENT: Rosemead 5K DATE: Saturday, July 4, 2015 LOCATION: Rosemead, CA RACE BEGAN: 7:00 am  FINISH TIME: 27:55 It had been well over a year since I really kind of run a race.  I did a couple of others last year, but they were surrounding my pregnancy , so there was a lot of run/walking going on. So when I realized I was really going to be doing this 5k, I made sure to condition myself to be able to run without stopping.  In the past, that was not notable, but I literally sat on my behind for three months after months of not running. I ran 5k distances whenever I could -- a couple of times during my maternity leave around my house, and finally, last month when I joined the gym, I tried to do it at least once a week on the treadmill.  Surprisingly, I was able to push myself on this fairly quickly, so by race day, I was confident I could do it. That morning, I was kicking myself because I reallllly did not want to get out of bed early.  After all these...

EVENT: Los Angeles Chinatown Firecracker 5K DATE: Sunday, March 1, 2015 LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA RACE BEGAN: 08:00 am FINISH TIME: 1:03:50 This was nearly a DNS/DNF (did not start/did not finish) for me, which would have been a first! As I've mentioned in a previous post, I am trying to collect all 12 of the Chinese zodiac medals from this race.  So far, I have: - the horse (2013) - the snake (2012) - the dragon (2011) And now... ... the ram (the medal doubled in size this year, but darn my photography for not capturing that well)! So that means "only" 8 more. I registered for this race a couple of months before Baby Tuesday was born, planning to either wear him in a carrier or use a stroller.  Well, we haven't quite gotten the hang out babywearing, so the stroller it was.  The decision to actually show up to this race was a last-minute one.  It was predicted to be a rainy weekend, and I had been running a low-grade fever...

EVENT : Big Sur International Marathon (21-Miler) DATE : Sunday, April 27, 2014 LOCATION : Big Sur to Carmel, CA RACE BEGAN : 6:30 am FINISH TIME : 05:34:56 As I am scrambling to catch up with life after taking a three-day weekend to do this race and feeling under the weather now, I decided to throw something up here as soon as I could. (Extra delay due to me dumbly upgrading the software on my iPhone, which has pretty much kind of broken it.) We made our way to Monterey, CA the day before the race.  We woke up at 4 AM and started our trek, stopping around the Buellton area at Ellen's Danish Pancake House .  I had never had Danish pancakes, which were pretty much very thin regular pancakes.  Although I didn't want to get anything else, "The Ukrainian" demanded that I at least get an egg, so I decided to raise him a cinnamon bun. We got the expo around noon and were kind of disappointed about a couple of things.  First, parking -- there wasn't much of...

EVENT: Los Angeles Chinatown Firecracker 10K DATE: Sunday, February 23, 2014 LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA RACE BEGAN: 08:35 am FINISH TIME: 1:10:29 When I first ran this event in 2012, it was the Year of the Dragon, and somehow it was decided that we'd keep collecting these firecracker run zodiac animal medals until we got all 12. With this one done, we only have 9 more... I decided to wear this pair of Thirty 48 running socks for this, as my feet have been hurting a bit lately during my runs -- bunion and blister pain have been coming up more often, more likely because I haven't been running as often as before.  Also, I guess a lot of my socks are kind of running thin, so these felt so good on!  The socks were thick, but not to the point that they crowded my shoe.  I felt a good amount of support, too.  My feet were comfy and dry throughout the sweaty run and afterward walking around Chinatown and taking the train home. Ru Running Series socks: ·...

EVENT:  Surf City USA Half-Marathon DATE: Sunday, February 2, 2014 LOCATION: Huntington Beach, CA RACE BEGAN: 7:45 am (wave start) FINISH TIME: 01:55:36 Earlier in my running career, I was a lot more "hardcore" and "crazy" than now.  Since antics like doing a few half-marathons every other weekend, a 5K the day before a marathon , or a 10K mud run before a marathon , or running a 5K and 10K the same morning , I've been on the lay-low, especially given that I no longer put in nearly the same mileage as before.   So for this race, I tried to ignore the fact that Carlsbad Marathon had just been two weeks ago.  During the gap, I think I went out to run 4.5 miles one day (slowly) and did relatively tame workout videos.  Oh, and I really did try to eat well -- for example, this half-eaten dinner: "The Ukrainian" was worse -- he ran the full marathon at Surf City, and -- spoiler -- finished in 3:29 (3:34 two weeks ago). Anyway, the weekend ...