After eating an earlier than usual lunch, I got dropped off at the Fullerton train station to catch the Amtrak down to San Diego. Turns out that I didn't need to rush as the train was about 20 minutes late. The train was pretty packed, but fortunately I was able to find an empty seat. I'm used to taking the train on a Saturday where it's normally pretty empty. It would appear that ridership has started to increase and go back to normal.
Once the train reached the Santa Fe Depot, I walked over to the WorldMark San Diego Balboa Park to get checked-in. I was assigned unit #205. During check-in, I had every intention to not go to yet another owner update. However, the concierge told me that it was just to sign me up for my account on their new Panorama reservation website. He reassured me that there wouldn't be a sales presentation. The reward for my one hour time commitment was a $100 Tango gift card. He took the usual deposit and scheduled me for 10 am tomorrow for my owner update over at the WorldMark Mission Valley property.
VIP owners
Check-in goodies
Pumpkin decoration contest
After I dropped off my bags in my room and got settled in, I headed back out to go get dinner. I took the blue line light rail from the nearby City College Station down to the 24th St Station in National City to eat at Chick-fil-A.
Cobb salad with grilled nuggets, mac & cheese, and Sunjoy
After I was done, I took the light rail back up to Downtown San Diego. Since I still had time to make the race expo, I got off of the train at the 12th and Imperial Station. Once I got to the Convention Center, it was still a long walk to the other end since the expo was in Hall B. It was a pretty empty expo for such a big hall. The first thing they did was check for vaccination status. Honestly, that process was a joke. The person barely glanced at my vaccination card and ID before stamping my hand for entry into the expo.
Race expo
COVID vaccination check
I picked up my bib and race shirt for both myself and my friend. The volunteer and I had a good chuckle when she pulled my friend's bib as he had listed God as his emergency contact. She highly recommended that my friend update that information with an actual contact.
Bib pick-up
Friend's emergency contact
Race shirt
There wasn't much to see at the expo. In the official race merchandise area, I found my name on the participant name shirt that they were selling. Then over at the Rock n' Roll Series area, I signed up for next year's race for $75 plus $14.99 for Active.com fees. I got a free t-shirt for doing so. Even with the pretty outrageous fees, $89.99 is still relatively cheap for a really decent race! Before leaving, I sampled the potatoes that they would passing out on the course on Sunday.
Official merchandise
Shirt with male marathon participants
Found my name
Potato samples
Potato power
Free shirt for early registration
Good luck!
On my way back to my place, I walked through the Gaslamp Quarter Sign and up 5th Ave. They had closed down a nice stretch of this street for the restaurants to have outdoor seating. There were a lot of restaurants that I would want to try!
Gaslamp Quarter
5th Ave restaurants
Back at my room, I watched some WWE Friday Night SmackDown before calling it a night.
Roman Reigns... your tribal chief, head of the table
Saturday 10/23
I walked over to the City College Station to take the blue line light rail back down to National City to eat breakfast at Chick-fil-A. I ordered the usual hash brown scramble bowl meal with grilled filet. I got the meal with a Greek yogurt parfait with granola and a coffee. After I was finished with my meal, I hopped back on the blue line trolley.
Hash brown scramble bowl meal
UCSD blue line trolley
I hung out in my room until about 9:45 am before I went down to the lobby to wait for my Uber ride over to the WorldMark Mission Valley property. Since becoming an owner, this had to be one of the more disappointing experiences. When I checked-in, I was promised that I would be only learning about Panorama and setting up my account without any pressure to buy any more credits. It turned out that I don't even have it as part of my ownership! Once again, they spent the remainder of the time trying to convince me to purchase more credits. They really need to stop wasting my time. Once that was over, I received my deposit back and waited for my Uber ride back.
Waiting for my Uber ride
Owner update
For lunch, I headed back down to Chick-fil-A. I'm getting pretty close to achieving the next Signature status on the mobile app. For this meal, I got the usual cobb salad with grilled nuggets, medium mac & cheese, and a medium Sunjoy.
Cobb salad with grilled nuggets, mac & cheese, and Sunjoy
After finishing lunch, I headed back to my room to hang out for pretty much the rest of the day. I caught an episode of Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Cat Noir. It's one of the better cartoons out these days and it's set in Paris, France. I took the time to lay out my flat runner for tomorrow's marathon. I followed that with Thor: Ragnarok which is always a fun movie to watch even though I've seen it a million times.
Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Cat Noir
Shadow Moth
Flat runner
Thor: Ragnarok
After that it was on to the main event for the evening, game #6 of the NLCS. It's win or go home for the Dodgers. The Braves scored first in the bottom of the 1st inning and with the Dodgers offense being non-existent, I decided to go across the street to pick up dinner at McDonald's. I used the buy one, get one free deal to get 2 Quarter Pounders with cheese. I added in a Happy Meal as well.
NLCS game #6
The Dodgers tied it up in the top of the 4th inning, but then gave up 3 runs in the bottom of that same inning. They would get another run in the top of the 7th, but that was it. The Dodgers lose the game and the series with a score of 4-2. With all of the setbacks this season and fluke injuries, the Dodgers tried their best to spend their way to the World Series, but came up short. Honestly, I thought they would've had a better shot to get past the Braves if Muncy had not gotten injured in the final game of the regular season. It also did not help that Mookie Betts and Trea Turner did next to nothing in terms of offense. Oh well, there's always next year!
Mookie Betts didn't do much
Freddie f'n Freeman
Sunday 10/24
I woke up early to get ready for the race. At about 5 am, I went down to the lobby to meet up with my friend and to give him his race packet. My friend wanted to drop stuff off at his car, so we turned up 5th Ave to go to the parking lot where he parked. I told him that meter parking in Downtown San Diego was free on Sundays, but he was hesitant to believe me. When he was done, we started heading over to 6th Ave on Beech St where he noticed his ex-girlfriend's car. He wanted to check up on her, so I left him and went on ahead.
Nice Halloween decorations
I bumped into my friend Tracy when I stopped to take a picture of the start line. We only briefly exchanged pleasantries and a quick selfie before we went our separate ways to take care of pre-race stuff. I went on a bit further to the Inn at the Park to relax and use their restroom.
Start line
It's Tracy!
Once my friend had arrived to the race, I met up with her at the starting corrals. She was about to go get in line to use a portapotty when I told her that I had a better option. I took her back to my timeshare property to have her use the restrooms there. It's always nicer to use real flushing toilets and to be able to wash your hands afterwards. Plus, I've invested quite a bit of money into this timeshare rental... so might as well share the wealth with my friends.
Corral 4
Once we were done, we headed back to the starting corrals, where we met up with some of our marathon loving friends. My friend Tracy reprised her Wilma Flintstone costume. Her friend was once again Fred Flintstone. I first met them back in 2012 at this very race where they were wearing those same costumes.
Fred and Wilma Flintstone
Eddie
Almost time to start!
The start was a little strange. I believe they were supposed to release one row of runners at a time, sort of like the starting gate for horses. However I was planning to run with my friend, so I didn't wait for the next row to be released. I just followed her through the gate. Even though my friend was also registered for the full marathon, she was planning on running only the half marathon. I would be pacing her until the course split which was just after mile 8. She wanted to finish in under 2 hours, so we ran most of those miles at about 8:50 minutes.
Course map
My friend leaving me just after mile 8
After reaching the split between the half and full marathon, I said goodbye to my friend and took my foot off of the gas, going into jogging mode. I was just hoping that I had enough in the tank to cover the remaining 17 miles or so. My endurance just wasn't there yet for an entire marathon. Latino Heat caught me at around mile 9.5 along Georgia St. He's a much faster runner than me, but once again he was having GI issues.
Latino Heat
At about mile 13.75, the course went onto the San Diego Bikeway which ran parallel to the 8 freeway. I liked this new change to the course. By mile 17, I was beginning to struggle and I hadn't even reached the hard part yet. It was a grind just to get onto my least favorite section of the race... the dreaded 163! From the point I hopped on that freeway, the climb up to about mile 24 was about 3 miles before it crests. My legs were pretty toast at that point so I couldn't even take advantage of the downhill. Thankfully, I was able to recover enough to run it in for that final stretch on Ash St.
Finish line
Finish: 4:57:44
Click here for my Garmin data.
After crossing the finish line, I got my finisher medal and continued down the finisher chute. I picked up some drinks and a cookie. Originally I was planning to go to the post race area and check out the Heineken 0.0 in the beer garden. However when I got to the end of the finisher chute, I decided to just head back to my unit as I was feeling pretty wrecked.
Finisher medal
Post race drinks and snack
LFG!
After getting cleaned up and relaxing for a couple of hours, I walked across the street to pick up a late lunch. I used the buy one and get another for $1 deal on the mobile app to get two Quarter Pounders with cheese. I took the burgers back to my room to enjoy.
I stayed in my room for the rest of the day. I ended up watching a History Channel docudrama mini-series called, The Men Who Built America. The series focused on the lives of Cornelius Vanderbilt, John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, J. P. Morgan, and Henry Ford. It was pretty interesting to see just how much money was involved in business and competition back in the day.
That was followed up by an episode of The Engineering that Built the World, about the building of the Statue of Liberty. The episode was called, Liberty Rising. I never knew how much difficulty was encountered in the funding and building of the statue and the pedestal that the statue stands on. Prior to this, all I knew of the statue was that it was a gift from France.
Statue of Liberty
After that episode, I watched some local news and learned that a student had died after falling from a Muir College dorm window over at UC San Diego. How terribly sad to hear such news about my alma mater! :(
Death at Muir College/UC San Diego
For dinner, once again I decided to just pick up a meal at the McDonald's across the street. I used the buy 1, get 1 free deal to get two Big Macs. I usually prefer a Quarter Pounder with cheese but I thought it would be good to change things up.
Lately I've been getting into the cartoon, Bob's Burgers. At first I couldn't stand the poor animation, but the humor and storyline turned out to be pretty good... very clever. I watched the Heartbreak Hotel-oween episode before calling it a night.
Monday 10/25
I got ready, packed up my stuff, and checked out at about 6 am for the walk over to the Santa Fe Depot. It was time to take the Amtrak back home.
No comments:
Post a Comment