Trail Running Blog

2015 LA Chinatown Firecracker 10K Race Report

At 5 years in a row, the LA Chinatown Firecracker 10K is now the longest I’ve ran the same race every year. Of course, it helps that it has been a tradition to run this race with my siblings and more recently, nephews and even better my mom this year! It’s a great reason to visit my family in LA for the weekend, run a race together with them and then eat together afterwards to celebrate. There have really only been a few years where I have been fully prepared to compete in this race, unfortunately, this year was not one of them. I didn’t do too bad, but definitely not my best performances (actually, I ran 1 second slower than last year!) Results: 42:54 (6:54 min/mile), 8/189 AG, 37/2473 overall. What used to be a very competitive race against my, my brother and his friends, is now just a fun run that only a few people that I know participate in. Hopefully, my family continues to participate and maybe some of those others that missed this year.

This race usually takes place around the Chinese New Year holiday, the timing worked out for it to be the weekend immediately following it, which was great. They always light up a bunch of fireworks prior to the start of the race and have dragon dances and drummers along the course. It’s a great event that benefits many schools and organizations in the community. The course itself is actually one of the harder road races I’ve ran as you’ll see in the elevation chart below. I almost never train for hill running so it was actually quite painful to run the first part of this race (which tired me out for the rest of the race!)

Like I said before, the first time I ran this race, I was racing against my brother and a bunch of his friends that were really into running at the time. I think one of the races, my brothers friend beat me by just a few seconds, which really bothered me. But I think I’ve beaten him ever since. He was one of the few remaining runners in this year’s race along with maybe 3 or 4 others.

One of the best parts of this race is actually after the 5K and 10K, during the kiddie run! It is a 1K run at the start/finish line area. My nephew ran it for the first time 2 years ago and loved it! He did have to walk some of it, but the parts where he ran was so fun to watch. He even stopped right before the finish line because he saw his mom and others cheering him on. Last year, he ran a lot more of the course, almost all of it. Unfortunately, his little brother was not into it and his dad had to carry him for most of the race. This year though, both of my nephews ran the race and had a lot of fun doing it. It’s just so great to see them having so much fun running, hopefully they will continue to have that same love of it as they grow up.

Check out the gallery of photos from the race!!