Today I was supposed to be in San Diego for the Avocado Half Marathon. Unfortunately the race organizers lost their permit and had to cancel/reschedule for a time in September when I can’t do it. After a bit of credit card rigmarole, I *think* I’ve finally gotten my registration fee refunded. A shame, as I was looking forward to that event.
But as I was already out in Southern California, I found a small race in Long Beach, CA, for today called Rock the Marina. Put on by Charlie Alewine Racing (a small LLC spearheaded by none other than Charlie Alewine), the race offered various distances today — a 5K, 10K, half marathon, and full marathon. To achieve that, it was a figure 8 loop course enabling folks to run part of a loop for the shorter distances, and 6 loops if one were doing the full marathon.
There were a number of people running the shorter distances, as one would expect, and I *think* the field for the marathon was something like 11 people. As I said, a small race.
During the bib pickup this morning, a woman turned up looking to run the half marathon but she asked if they had pacers. It was a strange question for a race being run around a marina and park but, hey, there could’ve been pacers I suppose. When the race team said there weren’t any, the woman walked off deciding she didn’t want to participate if there weren’t pacers. She had gotten up, put on her running gear, made it to the start area at 6:15 AM on Memorial Day Weekend and she opts NOT to run? It was a strange thing to see as honestly she had done everything BUT run at that point. Maybe I’m weird for thinking she should have just run — or done a 5K or 10K if she didn’t want to worry about her pace. It just felt so… odd to me.
In any case, I looped around the 6 times through the marina parking lots and around the Colorado Lagoon of Long Beach, which is adjacent to some golf course (presumably the Colorado Lagoon Long Beach Country Club but I can’t be too sure of that and didn’t bother to google it).
I did pass the Model Boat pavilion as well as the much smaller Long Beach Lifeguard Museum building. One can only assume the Malibu Lifeguard Museum is larger and offers an entire wing devoted to Mitch Buchannon and the legacy of Baywatch.
On the plus side, I didn’t trip which was a concern yesterday due to overthinking. Instead, I did two loops and then donned my headphones to listen to some iTunes for the remaining 4 loops.
During that time I snapped a few pics of signs, including this one that I think should have been called “Killjoy Beach,” which is apparently right next to “BuzzKill Beach.”
I’m not sure as I lost track of who was running the half marathon and who was running the full but I was certainly in the top 11 finishers. I just don’t quite know WHERE I placed. It was a 3:31:29 day for me.
Now I’m packing up and headed to Idaho for tomorrow.
Charlie Alewine and his fellow race team members thought I was nuts… but in a good way. I think that’s probably a fair assessment.
Bonus points awarded to Long Beach for their Dunkin’ Donuts sign that mocks the Randy’s Donuts in Inglewood by evoking the classic Simpsons’ donut design.
