The gun went off, my wife, daughter and I did the start shuffle. At the start line, I took off, like my daughter was right behind me. As it turned out, this was a good thing.

The 2-3 miles are all about finding a good path through the crowd. There are a LOT of people crowding a 3 lane road. At mile 1, the race started to go through the park, which is always exciting. The park part of the race last for about 3 miles, weaving through California Adventure and Disney Land.

At mile 4, the course leaves the park, and goes into Anaheim. Managed to keep my pace right between 8 and 8:30. It's a little difficult to keep a good pace up in Anaheim, simply because it's flat and straight, and not that exciting, but I was checking my Garmin every half mile or so.

The course was crowded with spectators, cheerleaders and bands, which is always awesome. The only issue was the Mariachi band which seemed to be playing funeral dirges.

At mile 10 I discovered that we weren't going through Angel Stadium. That was disappointing, but it made sense.

Mile 12 was where I blew up. I had been keeping up the 8:15s, but just ran out of speed. Walked a bit, and then really slowed down for the last mile. I simply didn't have anything left for a real kick at the end.

Still got a pretty good time, for a non-A race. Got to the finish line and waited for my daughter and wife.

My daughter came in about 6 minutes behind me. This is when I discovered it was a GTEAT thing that I was running like she was behind me, because Evelyn was STEP BY STEP behind me for the first 5 miles. Of course, she didn't bother to tell me she was there, and I make it a point of not looking back. So... she was back there hoping I was going to slow down, and I in front of her, worried that she was right behind me. Actually, I was kind of hopeing that she was right behind me, because if she had been, she would have placed in her AG. As it was, she came in 9th, not bad for a swimmer.

Anyway, we both popped our times by 20 minutes from last year. Part of that was because of the heat, and part of that was because we were much better prepared.

Does going to Disneyland for 10 hours after a race count as a warm down?


Hee hee. Um... let's see -
Not volunteer for 12 hours the day before?
Find a place to get pasta the night before, instead of eating a burger?
Not wake up at 3 or 4AM 2 days in a row to volunteer?
Eat my normal pre-race breakfast of Oatmeal?
Make this into an A race?

Anyway, it's just a fun race. I didn't expect to get a PR, even though it is a pretty fast course.


Fun fun fun race. The race through the park is exciting with the characters cheering the runners on. BTW... WHY would serious racers who were going for a 1:30 or so STOP in the middle of a race to get pics with characters? The race out of the park is also a lot of fun wiht lots of cheerleaders, bands and dancers. It keeps it all exciting.

No fireworks this year, but they did start us off under a flaming start line which was EXTREMELY cool.

Thank goodness the temperatures were so much cooler this year than last.