Victorious

Southern California has been hit with a freakish heat wave these past couple of days. Record temps have been in the 3 digits. Everyone is hitting the cooler spots: the mall or movies. I on the other hand committed to running the IRON GIRL in Del Mar!



I had 1 taker - my cousin Melissa agreed to join me on this venture. It was an early start, we headed down to Del Mar Fairgrounds which is about 20 miles from San Diego. We were running a little late, so Chuck was driving like an indy race car driver. The park entrance was chaos, everyone was panic mode trying to figure out where to park. Mel and I made the executive decision to jump out of the truck and start running towards to entrance. Race coordinators should have informed everyone that the registration tables would (about 1 mile) from the entrance gate. Speaking for myself, I felt like the race had begun.







We made it to the registration tables, got ourselves pinned and chipped. I was very excited when I realized that we'd be starting out from the actual race track. Figured if the track was good enough for horses, it was good enough for me. At first it felt really soft underneath my feet, so I assumed that it wouldn't be too bad to run on it. The race announcer mentioned that there were over 3,000 participates present and the race course had been modified (I soon found out what that meant).

Running on a horse track was misleading, my feet felt heavy and it was hard to keep my balance. I later found this article - The Del mar race track will have a $9 million Polytrack on the main Del mar race track. The top layer of the Polytrack Del mar race track surface is 7 inches thick and is a mixture of sand, carpet fibers, ground-up rubber and spandex, all coated in wax. The material of the Del mar race track doesn't stick to the horses' hooves and it also helps the environment. At least my shoes weren't dirty!

After running 1/2 of the track, they led us onto the street portion of the course. It was all uphill, my legs carried me as far as they could but I did have to stop to catch my breath. I unintentionally hit a lady, she kinda ran into me - I felt her bounce off and she just kept going. Mel passed me at this time, she did great (even though she had a minor injury). When I finally reached the half way point, there was a water station. I decided to by pass all the congestion and grab water from the furthest point. A girl was walking towards me with two cups of water and I grabbed one and thanked her. Little did I know, she too was wearing a bib, (she was a fellow competitor) that had grabbed a water for her slower friend and unintentionally I jacked her. By then I was embarrassed and stepped up my run to hide from her.

Mel finished in 35 minutes. I ran in 4 minutes later. I'm glad I participated, I'm sure I'll do it again. But next time, I'll train by running on sand and up hills, and I'll pay attention to where I pick up water :D