I woke up early to catch the Aston Villa v. Arsenal match at 4:30 am. Villa players showed up to play against the league leaders. In the first half they played well enough to take a 2-1 lead. However, those Gooners were relentless with their offensive pressure in the second half. Zinchenko scored an unlikely goal to equalize. It was his first since joining Arsenal. Now, the go ahead goal was a lucky ass shot by Jorginho. It hit the cross bar which bounced back and hit Emi Martinez's head which then ended up in the net, resulting in an own goal. The 4th goal was an empty netter as they brought Martinez up for a failed set piece. If Arsenal does end up winning the league cup, it will be because of sheer luck.
Next, there were 6 matches all starting at 7 am. I kept an eye on the Everton v. Leeds match while I focused on watching the Forest v. Man City match. To be honest, this match should've and could've been easily 6 nil City, instead it somehow ended in a 1-1 draw. As soon as the match was over, I hopped in the car and started heading out for Chinatown to go pick up my race packet.
I don't enjoy driving around the Downtown LA area, so I drove out to the Sierra Madre Villa Metro rail station to take the light rail. Prior to driving out, I had downloaded the TAP app to try and use up my balance on a couple of cards. Once I got on the train, I kind of regretted my decision to take the Metro. The last time I took the rail, it was right around when COVID hit. It seemed to have gotten worse since then. The cars were filthier with homeless people in each of the cars. The city makes no attempt at securing the fare gates, so people pay based on the honor system. Unfortunately, there is very little honor among the general public these days. The homeless guy that was in the same car as me was constantly having trouble securing his cart from rolling away even though it was missing a wheel. Eventually, he took off his shoes and laid on top of it to stop it from rolling off. When he was finished drinking from his gallon container and the train came to a stop at a station, he tossed the empty container out onto the platform. Nice.
I arrived at the Chinatown Metro rail station at a little after 10 am and not soon enough. It definitely wasn't a pleasant experience. The timing of my arrival was excellent as the packet pick up was scheduled to start at 10 am. It seemed a little strange that Broadway wasn't shut off to traffic. I thought about maybe doing the bike ride one year, but not if the course is not closed to traffic! There are too many idiot drivers out there!
Chinatown Metro rail station
Year of the rabbit
After picking up my race bib, shirt, and goodie bag, I headed over to the Carbo-load area to pick up the usual takeout box of noodles. This year they had Boon chili sauce. It added a nice kick to the somewhat bland noodles. In prior years, I think they only had soy sauce. I was kind of baffled with the "fortune" that I got from my cookie. It read, "work on improving your exercise routine." That sounded more like an advice than a fortune.
Race schedule
Bib and carbo-load
"Fortune" cookie
I was pretty disappointed with the shirt this year. The shirt was pretty much the primary reason why I continued to run this poorly organized race. It would appear that they didn't hold an art contest this year for the t-shirt design. It was just a tiny medal logo on the left chest. The contents of the goodie bag was a sample of Liquid IV electrolyte mix, a keychain, a rabbit sticker, a deck of cards, a fan, and a couple of flyers.
Race shirt
Goodie bag
Fan
Before heading back to the Metro rail station, I did a quick loop of the Chinatown Central Plaza to check out the various vendor booths. Most of the booths were fundraisers this year. I didn't come across any vendors giving out samples. Per the usual, I made sure to take a quick selfie with Bruce Lee. Thankfully, the ride back to my car wasn't as bad as it was getting into Chinatown.
Bruce Lee
Chinatown merchandise much cheaper than EPCOT
Sunday 2/19
I woke up pretty early to get ready to head to the race. I was dragging a bit as I would much rather stay home and catch the 2 EPL matches today. I wasn't looking forward to riding the Metro rail to the race. I had thought about driving to Chinatown and hoping that there were street parking. However, I wasn't sure if I had to still feed the meter on Sundays. I ended up sticking to the original plan and drove out to Sierra Madre Villa Metro station to take the rail. It was a chilly morning, but I knew to stand next to the elevator to avoid the cold breeze. Once again, there was the homeless issue, but it felt much safer once the cars started picking up more race participants at each stop.
Sierra Madre Villa Metro rail station
The train pulled into the Chinatown station just shortly after 7:30 am. That was the starting time for the opening ceremony, so I walked briskly over to the start line area. I wanted to get to the other side of the start line to get a video of the 5k race start, but there was caution tape blocking off access via the sidewalk. I backtracked to find an opening to cross to the other side of the street. Along the way, I bumped into my friend who was running with the Pasadena Pacers. They're a great group of people.
Willie!
Prior to the start of the 5k race, they had the lion dancers perform followed by the lighting of the firecrackers. It looked like this year, they had the firecrackers lit mechanically instead of having some distinguished guests light them by hand. That's a good change and much safer! Thankfully, there wasn't a breeze this year, so the smoke from the firecrackers went straight up instead of being blown into people's faces.
Pace car
Lion dancers
Firecrackers
5k ready to start
5k run start
Once the 5k runners had passed through, I headed over to College St to use one of the portapotties. I then walked over to Phoenix Bakery to wait for the 1st runner to arrive at the finish line. The 1st male finish in 16:22. Not bad! I stuck around to catch the 2nd and 3rd place male finishers. I was only able to catch the 1st and 2nd place female runners, as I needed to start heading over to the start corral for the 10k race. My Fotmob app notified me that Man United had defeated Leicester by a score of 3 nil. Man United, especially Marcus Rashford, has been on fire as of late! They play so much better as a team without that has-been CR7!
Phoenix Bakery
5k 1st male
5k 2nd male
5k 3rd male
5k 1st female
5k 2nd female
After the 5k walkers went through shortly after 8:30 am, I headed into the corral for the start of the 10k race. The scheduled start time for the 10k was for 8:40 am, but it would seem that each race had been pushed back by 10 minutes. We were released at about 8:50 am.
This was my 5th time running this race, so I was very familiar with the course. I knew to take it easy during the opening mile as the first half of the race was pretty much a steady climb. Even so, I quickly realized that I wasn't in shape yet to handle such sustained climbing. Besides the general feeling of being out of shape, I felt some tightness in my left hamstring, so I decided to take walk breaks here and there. For this race, I just wanted to get in a good workout with some substantial hills and not hurt myself for the upcoming LA Marathon. I made up some time during the downhill sections, but I didn't feel as strong as I would have liked.
10k start line
Finish: 55:11
Click here for my Garmin data.
After crossing the finish line, I received my finisher medal and a volunteer marked my bib to signify that I had received my medal. I then continued down the finisher chute where I got a bottle of water, an apple, an orange, and a banana. I always liked that they gave out healthy post race snacks. During that walk through the chute, I ended up talking to a lady that I had leapfrogged during the race. I had narrowly beaten her to the finish line. I was only faster by 6 seconds. It would turn out that she would be running in the upcoming Tokyo Marathon. I told her that I was training for the upcoming LA Marathon. Both her and I only need the Boston Marathon to complete all 6 World Marathon Majors. We wished each other well in our upcoming marathons before going our separate ways.
Finish line
Finisher medal side 1
Finisher medal side 2
Post race water and fruit
This was my slowest finishing time for this race. The 4 other times that I had run this race, I had finished in just under or around 50 minutes. Without any current knocks, niggles, or any injuries to speak of, I hope to get back into better shape soon.
After turning off airplane mode on my cellphone, I was happy to see that my Spurs had beaten West Ham by a score of 2 nil. I bumped into my friend just after getting out of the finisher chute. I headed with him over to the line for the beer garden. I skipped the line to see if I could find his wife and some of my other friends that had run the 5k. Unfortunately, the music inside the beer garden was a bit too loud for my friends to hear my text messages. After waiting around one of the exits for about 10 minutes, I decided to bail and head home.
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