For some odd reason, the left ankle felt weird and achy for the rest of the day when I got home from the race yesterday. I was also dreading the idea of waking up early again for another race. The thought of taking a DNS had crossed my mind. Still I managed to get up, get ready, and head on out to Century City for the race. The venue for this race had been at The Grove since it first started back in 2016. This year, they moved it to the Westfield Century City shopping mall. I exited the 10 freeway off of Overland Ave. I took that up to Olympic Blvd where I took a right turn. Then I turned left on Century Park with the entrance to the parking structure on the right hand side. The parking instructions said to set up Smart Parking on the Westfield app prior to arrival which I did. Once I pulled up to the gate, the cameras scanned my license plate and let me in. I found a spot that was located really close to the exit to Santa Monica Blvd. I was parked just a little past 4:30 am.
Parking
Packet pick-up wasn't scheduled to open until 5 am, so I waited a bit in my car while eating my usual Nature's Bakery fig bars. I then took a slow walk over to the packet pick-up tables located on Avenue of the Stars just across from Macy's. It was kind of nice to see these streets shut down and quiet, devoid of cars.
Packet pick-up
Once the volunteers had been instructed on their tasks and ready to distribute bibs, us group of early birds that had shown up were able to get into any available line as participants were not pre-assigned a bib number. Once again, I'm glad that more and more races have adopted this method of bib distribution. After getting my bib, I went to the next table to get my race shirt. I always love their race shirts as the design has always been nice and they're made out of cotton. I really dislike polyester race shirts.
Bib
Race shirt
After that I went over to the legacy runners tent to pick up my legacy items. However there was a bit of a wait as they were still waiting for a legacy list to be printed out. Once they had verified our legacy status, we were given a legacy bib and another shirt identical to the race shirt. The only difference with this shirt was that they had printed the legacy bib on the backside of the shirt.
Legacy runners tent
Legacy bib
The race was scheduled to start at 6:30 am, so I went back to my car to wait. Fortunately there was a restroom located right next to where I was parked so I didn't have to take care of my morning business in one of the portapotties.
Start line
The starting corral was much more spacious at this venue. There was plenty of elbow space. I had looked at the course map prior to the race, but I didn't find an elevation profile. Although it turned out to be a pretty hilly course, it was a pretty similar course to years prior over at The Grove. Still it was an easier course than yesterday's half marathon, so I was able to finish in just under 2 hrs.
Course map
Very crowded at the finish line!
Finish: 1:58:27
Click here for my Garmin data.
The finish line area was a complete clusterf*ck. This really wasn't the fault of the cadets that were marching in very large groups for the 10k. They swamped the volunteers that were passing out finisher medals. I remembered this being an issue as well at the old venue. They really need to make room in the finisher chute to accommodate more finishers! They should also place the medal distribution farther back, so the finishers aren't backing up into the finish line. It was just terrible organization as the finishers in the half marathon barely had any room to cross the finish line.Relive 'Run to Remember LA Half Marathon'
After I got my finisher medal, the crowding was exacerbated by the distribution of the commemorative coins that would go inside the finisher medal. They were also completely swamped as not everyone was lining up to get their coins. It took a while to get through that mess, but when I worked my way up there, I got a County of Los Angeles Fire Department coin. In the other two years that they've given out coins, I had gotten the LAPD and LAFD coins. They probably should go back to giving these coins out during packet pick-up.
Sweet finisher medal!
Commemorative coin
After I got the usual post race banana and drinks, I was pretty keen on getting out of the crowded finisher area sooner rather than later. On the way out of the parking structure, there was a long line for the exits. It would seem that almost no one set up Smart Parking. The instructions said that parking would be free if you set up Smart Parking. However when I used the express exit, the gate arm was raised as soon as it scanned my license plate. However the screen displayed that $10 was charged to my account. There was an attendant helping the other line. I asked her why it charged me when the instructions said that it was supposed to be free. However I don't think she understood English very well as she appeared really confused and just keep telling me to go.
Oh well.
When I got home, I checked my credit card account. There was definitely a $10 charge. After messaging the 'Run to Remember LA' Facebook page, I was given an email to contact to have that corrected. A few days later I checked again and saw a $10 refund.
No comments:
Post a Comment