Posted on Sep 12, 2010 under Race |
Not calling this a report since I don’t see it being that long. This was a local 5K that I decided to run a couple of weeks ago. I didn’t have any races planned for September, so it was a nice break between training. And the race was just a couple of miles away from my place, so I didn’t have to worry about traffic (or parking since I actually biked to the start). Talk about timing: my friend asked if we wanted to hang out Friday night so, since this was a no-pressure race, I didn’t think it was a big deal. I ended up getting only 3.5 hours of sleep, definitely not recommended. I wasn’t sure if I wasn’t even going to wake up in time, but did. The week of the race I actually thought that winning the race would be a possibility. I imagined going head to head down the final stretch with another runner and outkicked them in the end. I even told a coworker about the race and how I thought I might win it. I ended up running a decent ~19:12 and placed ~5th overall, not bad for 3.5 hours of sleep. Like always, it was not paced very well: 6:08, 6:19, 6:27. I was in 2nd for a while at the start, but got passed soon after. I would have felt 10x better if I ran the opposite splits (and may have had more energy at the end too). It’s just when I see people in front of me, I feel like I should be up there with them, even though I know that I will eventually catch up. It will definitely take more time to learn how to do it properly.
Posted on Jul 20, 2010 under Race |
The title of the Playa del Run 5K is a play on the location of the race: Playa del Rey (neighbor to the better known, Marina del Rey). I couldn’t have asked for a better location for a race, literally steps away from the beach! What better way to top off running in this awesome location than a very impressive finish on said 5K. Well here you go: 19:09, 3rd AG, 8th overall! If this race had been 3 days before (my birthday), I would have won my AG instead, that’s what I get for getting older, right?
Marina del Rey is 122 miles away from San Diego. I would never drive that far just to run such a small (~250) race. I was looking for races to do before my half marathon in mid August and happened to find this one. My cousin lives just miles away from this race and I had been meaning to visit him in his new place and it was on the weekend I was already planning to visit my parents in LA for my birthday. It was literally the perfect race (with the perfect ending)! Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on Apr 13, 2010 under Race |
The Carlsbad 5000, the “World’s Fastest 5K”, celebrated its 25th anniversary this past weekend. This fast and scenic course was the perfect place to PR for my 5K. And what better place to PR in the 5K than the same city I PR’ed in the half marathon? Official results: 18:58, 6:06 min/mile; 122/1250 overall; 95th male. As happy as I was to break 19 and PR, I was not too pleased with the way I paced myself for this race: 5:47, 6:13, 6:29, :27. But overall, it was a fun experience. It was a really big turnout and some elite world class athletes running too. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on Dec 07, 2009 under Race |
I know I’m a little late with this post, but with Thanksgiving dinner, Black Friday and the first week at my a new job, it has been really hard keeping up with the blog. But I can’t put this off any longer and I am way overdue on all of my product reviews. I admit I did contact some companies, but there is a good amount of stuff where companies contacted me on their own (which I am always grateful for), and it’s too hard to say no to free stuff.
Anyways, back to running: the 5K Turkey Trot was about a week and a half after my first half marathon, the Silver Strand Half Marathon. The 13th Annual Thanksgiving Day Turkey Run was a very small race for 2K, 3K & 5K distances. It pretty much was a local race, but it was the nearest one to my LA house, and cheap enough to pay the day of the race. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on Aug 24, 2009 under Race |
I got my race photos of the America’s Finest City 5K run from last weekend (All photos). I always tell myself (before the race) to actually look at the camera and give a decent pose. But when I’m actually running in the race, smiling and posing for a camera is the LAST thing on my mind. I really don’t care about that and am focused more on how tired I am. I really need to just lighten up and just try and give a smile one time, so I’ll have a good picture to use as a profile pic or something.. I’ll have plenty more races to try and do that. There were actually more pictures of me, but these are the ‘best’ ones. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on Aug 17, 2009 under Race |
Here are my results for the America’s Finest City 5K Run: 19:53, 1st in my age division and 13th overall (out of 1,200 runners!). Official times here. I’m a little disappointed with the time because I was hoping I would run a little faster, considering all the great workouts I have been having recently. But I am even more surprised about actually winning my age division, which I have never done before. I’m not going to ignore the fact that the main race for the AFC was the half marathon, which is probably where all the other fast runners were at. But when I was looking at last year’s times for the 5K, I thought it would have been just as competitive this year. Oh well, I’m not really going to complain about winning my race! Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on Jun 22, 2009 under Race |
The Bonita 5000 5K Race is the 2nd race of my ‘season’ and I finished at 20:05 at 6:29 pace, 74th out of 387, and 9th in my age group. Looking at the finishing time, you can say that it was a pretty good run. But if you read on, you’ll see that I probably could have run a lot smarter and faster! So the last few workouts that I’ve ran before this race have not been that great. I would start off ok, but after each mile, I would just feel really tired and not be able to keep up the pace. I was afraid that I would come into this race and not run as fast as I was able to to run in the UCSD Grove Run 5K. And the fact that it was a 30 minute drive to this race would have made it even more disappointing to not run well. But I guess that didn’t really happen since I improved my time by about 15 seconds, and again, it probably could have been faster if I were a smarter runner..
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on Jun 16, 2009 under Race |
Race Pictures: UCSD Grove Run 5K
So the race pictures for the UCSD Grove Run 5K has been available online for a while now, I just didn’t have time to actually post them on the blog. These aren’t even all of them, just the ones that summarize the race and ones that I’m (sort of) in. Read the UCSD Grove Run 5K Race Report or view all the pictures from the race.
Note: I wanted the gallery to display using Lightbox (like the race banner), but I can’t get it to work. Maybe for the next race.. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on May 27, 2009 under Race |
Race Report: UCSD Grove Run 5K
Course: 5K with hills during mile 2 & 3
Time: 20:19
Splits: Mile 1: 6:06 HR: 179; Mile 2: 7:13 HR: 192; Mile 3: 6:17 HR:193
Total Calories Burned: 446
The last time I competed in an official race was during the Track & Field season of my senior year in high school…2003! That is a very long hiatus from racing if you ask me. After that last race, I ran on and off the first and second year of college, but not very often and definitely not training for any competitive races. Working out at the gym helped keep me from gaining that infamous freshman 15.
I finally started running again a couple of months ago and to keep myself from being bored running the same distance every day and alone, I decided to also compete in a race, so that I was actually training for something. So I heard about a race at UCSD, called the UCSD Grove Run 5K, which is “Socal’s First Sustainable Race”. They were trying to run the greenest race ever: by not having race bibs (just writing your race # on your hand), having appropriate recycling receptacles, and even organic fruit picked straight from local farms. They also had something called the “Greenest Athlete Award” where you get a certain number of points for doing things to help reduce your carbon footprint. For example, if you biked to the race, you would get some points. Or if you carpooled or brought your own water bottle or donated any type of running gear too. That was a pretty cool idea, too bad I did almost nothing that was green. Read the rest of this entry »
