Santa Monica 5000/10000

Sun. Oct. 21, 2007

So nothing is sweeter then waking up at 5:15 am the day after racing to drive up to Santa Monica to watch Libby run is 5k debut for VSA. The 5k started at 7:30am up in Santa Monica, and the team was meeting at about 6:30 at the starting line, so I made sure we got there on time. It was still dark when we got there, the crazy thing was that there was this red glow coming out of Malibu, which is like 5 miles or so away. So apparantly we saw the fire that had just started like 30 minutes before hand up in the mountains. It was very luminous, a nice red glow coming from the mountains; it was my first wildfire.

So we met up with Skip and the others running the race today, and before we warmed up we decided to go to the bathroom. There is nothing like taking a dump in an open stall while staring directly across at a bum. Him and I must have lock eyes for most of the duration of my stay in the Ritz crapper. Very weird. Then Eric and I warmed up with Roz and Jen. These girls are very good runners too. Roz is a 2:05 800 runner, and Jen has run 15:50 for 5k. Since I raced yesterday, I was just getting my miles in today. So I warmed up with them, then jogged some more while they stretched, and then took some pics/ran next to them while they were racing, and then cooled down with them. Good 9 miles I believe. Eric ran a PR of 16:46, while the leader ran 14:04....pretty close. The leaders were haulin ass, it was a great race to watch. Eric was the first VS finisher which was kinda cool. Jen and Roz were the 3rd and 4th women, and came in together.

Afterwards, Eric and I grabbed some food at the Omelette Parlor, a pretty dam good restaurant near the start and then headed home. Took a nap today, that was pretty dam sweet. After the nap, Eric and I had to paint a little bit in the house for Brendan, which took a nice 2 hrs. Then for me it was study time, cause I have my second Mid-Term coming up, awesome.

Santa Monica 5000/10000

Pictures of the Race

9 miles today