I first ran with A Better World Running last year around the Fourth of July. It was at their 3rd of July Marathon race that I inexplicably pulled *something* in my shoulder. I didn’t fall, I didn’t do anything weird. But that’s the race where something went haywire. To be clear, it wasn’t anything other than one of those things that then lingered (and still kinda lingers even today).
I was however a fan of the organization. Michelle and Mark are the operators and they have a “usual suspects” gallery of volunteers, supporters, and photographers that help make the thing feel like a family. It’s a low-frills event on open courses, usually on shared bike paths at area parks or in today’s case along the Santa Monica Boardwalk.
For the Summer Sensation Event, they were offering various distances, the longest being a Half Marathon. I don’t know if they’ve stopped doing 26.2 mile events or if it’s just too darn hot to be out running that distance. Nonetheless, I thought it would be fun to go and run along the beach and revisit that course that waylaid me 12 some months ago.
It was great to see Michelle again and she recognized me as I walked up to pick up my bib. In fact, she surprised me by giving me souvenir swag of A Better World Running shirt, hoodie, and compression sleeves. It was quite a thing and a reminder of how nice these folks are, especially to us “out-of-towner” runners!
The course itself for the half marathon was three extended loops out from the Santa Monica Pier to the Montana Trail turnaround and back. Morning mist/haze hung in the sky along the shoreline so it was pleasantly overcast for a run. This was also the first event that I was using my new to me but used Garmin Vivoactive GPS watch. As I mentioned yesterday, I’m still working out the kinks of the thing. To my great joy however, outside with a clear view of the sky it picked up a GPS signal within moments of powering on, a marked improvement from my previous, bare-bones Garmin watch.
I’m not sure if I’m using it wrong or if some setting is screwy but I had a hard time feeling/hearing the loop BEEP that happens at each mile. I stared at the screen as I got closer and closer to a mile marker and it did BEEP and notify me on the screen so maybe I mucked up the notification length this morning as I was pushing buttons. It didn’t seem to keep a pretty accurate mileage count if A Better World Running’s markers were any indication. Like many a “smart” fitness tracker a la FitBit or Nike Fuel, the Vivoactive has a “walking goal” thing that I can’t figure out how to reset. Right now it’s set for a perfectly reasonable number of daily steps for normal activity… but when covering 13.1 miles at a clip, I kept getting notifications that I had reached “2x goal!” or “3x goal!” levels. I get the “game”-ification of exercise and I strongly support anything that gets people excited about getting up off the couch and going outside and moving about. But I need to figure out how to shut off the step counter or alter the parameters of the notifications. THOSE beeps and vibrations I felt… I just wish I could tell when I clicked past a mile… ya know when there aren’t race placards along the way telling me what mile I’m at. Because of the open loop nature of the course, there wasn’t signage of that ilk… but sometimes that’s better too. It made today’s distance then be “three loops” instead of “13.1 miles” and psychologically sometimes that’s a nice thing — just keep pounding the pavement or in this case Boardwalk until you loop back, forgetting about “miles” or “kilometers” and instead just counting down from 3…2…1…FINISH.
A nice little moment along the course had a woman on a bike come up from behind me, ring her bell to let me know she was passing on the left, and as she did so she asked me, “Are you Kevin?” I was rocking my Club 7+7<4 shirt that features the website logo on the back and when I said I was indeed Kevin, the woman cheered, “Run Kevin Run!” I think the branding is really starting to take hold!
Two quick shots from along the course:
I’d say it took me two loops before I realized this place was actually called “Back on the Beach Cafe” and NOT “Back On Cafe: The Beach!” as if there were several locations for “Back On Cafes” and this one just happened to be at The Beach. I blame terrible logo layout… and the fact that I’m still a little jetlagged.
And here I am passing Hot Dog Stick. I imagine they didn’t want to get into a copyright infringement fight with Hot Dog On A Stick but part of me hopes they went so far as to just remove the wooden stick and instead make a hot dog on a stick made out of other hot dogs.
I posted the following on Facebook while I waited to grab brunch with Brent and Tamela who were good enough to once again come out and meet me at the finish. I think it’s a nice final note capper to this post and it sums up morning, the run, and the people fairly succinctly (rare for me, I know!):
Just ran the Summer Sensation Half with A Better World Running. Their name is so very true — they reminded me that for all the dark, bad, evil moments there are exponentially more good, decent, positive people making the world a better place every day. Thanks Michelle and Mark and all the volunteers. You made my day better.