California 10/20 Race Report

Benefiting the American Cancer Society, the California 10/20 is a 10 mile run along the coast feature 20 bands throughout the course. The California 10/20 is a fairly new race series, the other one taking place in Austin, which I bet would be fun to visit. Unfortunately, when I was reading the race program the morning of the race, there was a letter from the race director saying this was the last year. I know planning and organizing a race is a lot of work, so it’s not too surprising to hear when they do not last. I was actually quite pleased with this race overall, hopefully they will be able to bring it back next year. Just as a reminder, I had ran a sub-19 5K not the previous morning and had not trained to run 10 miles (competitively), so I was pretty happy with the results: 1:10:51 (7:05 min/mile), AG 7/68, 96/2720 overall. Like I said in the race report for that 5K, I started off way too fast (5:50) and was tired for the rest of the race. I really didn’t want that to happen this time since I’d have many more miles to run this time around. Fortunately, I was pretty even paced throughout the run, which you can see in the splits below.

When I first heard about this race, it reminded me of the Rock ‘n’ Roll marathon series, which as the name says, has bands playing along the course as well. Now when they say 20 bands, there aren’t actually 20 different bands along the course, but you do get to hear music at 20 different points in the race. Because the course was out and back, we basically ran past the same bands twice. I think what is important in these races is the spacing of the bands, you don’t want to hear one band and not get to the next one for a couple of miles! There was at least one instance where I ran past one band and as I was getting farther and farther away, I slowly starting hearing the next band up ahead, it was the perfect transition! Too bad I always listen to my own music when I run, but it’s nice to have that support along the course.

The splits ranged from 6:41 to 7:17, which isn’t too bad. Even better was that from mile to mile, the pace changed about 15 seconds. Compare that to the 5K where I ran the first mile over 30 seconds faster than the 2nd mile! It would have been nice to run negative splits in this race, but I was happy with the consistent pace throughout the whole race (considering the circumstances). The course was nice too, it started at the Del Mar Fairgrounds, where they have the fair every year. I also ran a mud run here a couple of months ago, so I was familiar with the start of this race. But the highlight of the course was definitely running up and down Highway 101, along the Pacific coast. Again this area was familiar because I’ve biked up and down this road many times, but ran just a few times.

Although I never run a race for the medal, this one is probably one of my favorites, I love the design and it’s huge and shiny! I was actually quite surprised that they gave such great medals for a new/small race. I was not a fan of the race shirts though. Yes, they were tech tees, but the way the logo/design is stuck on, feels like a giant sticker on the shirt! I’m going to assume they decided to spend more on medals than the shirts, which is fine I guess, I just won’t be wearing that shirt very often.

Like I said before, I actually enjoyed this race very much. It was very organized, restrooms were not an issue and the course was awesome. I do hope they can find a way to keep this series running, or maybe expand to other states as well.