Now let’s talk about you. If you are reading this and are in the Southern California area go ahead and mark MARCH 21 on your calendar now. I want to see all the friends and family I can cheering me on along the course.  Check out the course and pick out a spot (or spots)

Start planning now: Click Here and print out the course map. Let me know where you plan to be along the course and I’ll let you know what time I expect to get to that point!

Its gonna be an awesome day and very exciting to see 25,000 runners hitting the streets of LA. I can’t wait to see each of you along the way!

-Timmy

PS: I’m totally serious about this! hit me up if you need more information to plan your LA Marathon day!

What does dissappoint me is that this race is going to be a reunion of many of my friends from all walks of life.  I am looking forward to seeing my regular running partners: Susana, Marcela, Keisha and Nancy. (if they are all running this.) Also i will get to see high school friend Suzi and former co-worker friends Danielle, and Deborah. So while I won’t be racing alongside them I will be there in support.

So to continue my LA Marathon training and to make-up for missing out on Surf City, today I registered for 2 half marathons. First up is the Pasadena Marathon (Half Marathon).  This is going to be February 21, 2001 and looks to be a very picturesque run though one of the most beautiful parts of the greater Los Angeles area. There’s a reason their associated with roses!  While this will be my first running of the Pasadena half, Susana has run it in the past. This race is plagued with natural hurdles including an inagural delay due to California wildfires, and down-pouring of rain on the make-up race day. Fingers crossed for better weather on race day 2010!

Returning for my 3rd “magical” run, I am very much looking forward to the Disneyland Half Marathon in September 2010! This is easily my favorite race of them all. It combines running through my ol’ Disneyland stomping grounds, with a tour of my home town of Anaheim.  I find it to be pretty well organized (it is Disney afterall,) and the medals are true Disney collector’s items!

Both Pasadena and Disneyland remain open for registration, If you find yourself in the Southern California area during these times won’t you join me for an easy 13 mile run?

Sunday I finally ran my first Half-Marathon! While I don’t have any other Half-Marathons to base my comparison, but this is so far my favorite race I’ve done.

The day before this race, we were spending some time in Disneyland and Disney’s California Adventure park just enjoying rides as well as picking up our bib and packets. By the late afternoon I was limping! My left hip was hurting on every step. So we took the rest of the day at an easy lazy pace and rested. Just before bed was when all the nervousness and panic started to set in for us. We pinned our bibs to the shirts, packed our gels and filled our water bottles. Checked and double checked all our belongings and ensured our iPod’s were charged. And we did all this at a frantic pace. I really wish we had someone just filming us because as we looked back that was as crazy as we’ve ever gotten.

The morning of the race we braved through a huge delay to enter the parking structure and finally found ourselves with the 10,000+ other runners eager to get underway. The sun was just about to rise it was about 5:30am at this point but Disney had pulled out all the stops with the music pumping and searchlights filling the skies. The race officially started at 6:00am but our corral, “G” didn’t cross until closer to 6:25am.

Susana was our official photographer and had a great vantage point above the start area and go some awesome shots of the streets filled with runners. As we passed under the bridge we were able to spot her and wave. To my surprise about 100′ later I saw my sister yelling and waving from the sidewalk! I had tried calling her the night before to no avail but she still made it in time to catch the start!

The beginning of the race took us through both Disney’s California Adventure and Disneyland. While the scenery was of course, ideal, the race course itself was quite difficult as the pack of runners was still quite large and dense and the course took us through some narrow entrances and pathways. It was somewhere in here that my iPod decided to end my Nike+ workout and I had to restart the workout for the remainder of the race, (hence the two Nike+ graphs below.)

After the parks we took to the streets of Anaheim for the remaining 9 miles. This actually went by much faster than I anticipated. It was these 9 miles which made this race one of best I’ve ever run, there were spectators and cheer’ers gathered almost the entire length of the course! High school bands and cheereleader troups; Mariachi bands and Hula Dancers were strategically placed what seemed like every mile and really helped to keep the race moving along and kept me motivated to push on through.

Coming in to the Finish line was a very surreal moment. The final leg took us through Downtown Disney, which with its tall buildings on either side rushing by made me feel like I was sprinting much faster than I know I was. And it was here, again that I was surprised by Susana, Marcela and my sister Kris cheering me on from the side! (Marcela had finished the race about 50 Minutes before me, She actually trained properly.)

Limping through the finisher’s area, I received my medal and snacks and hobbled back to my friends to cheer on Clark, the 3rd in our troop.

All in all a great race and a great day… later that same day however was the Nike Human Race 10K in Los Angeles. After some napping and stretching Marcela, Susana, and I geared back up to run that race as well. I’ll share that in the next post.

Looking for a way to spend part of your weekend getting outdoors and being healthy? Join us at the weekly Run Club at the River.
Runners/Walkers/Bikers all welcome to join us along the Santa Ana River Trail. We gather at our starting point near RiverBend in Orange, California and head out along the south bank of the river along the trail.
Currently the Club meets on Sunday evening through the end of summer, then Sunday afternoons as the sun starts setting earlier.

Email me or check out runclub.RunTimmy.com for more information.

See ya Sunday!

Tags: Training, River Run Club

So instead of running in 3 races for a total of 22.4 Miles that weekend, I’ll only be doing 2 races for a total of 19.3 miles. Still it will be a fun fun weekend!

Now back to training.