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!!