After working a half day from home and eating lunch, I hopped in the car for my drive down to San Diego for this race. Originally, I was going to drive down and right back up just to pick up my race packet, then drive back down for the race the next morning. That felt quite tiring just thinking about it. So a couple of days ago, I decided to book a one night stay at a cheap hotel in the San Diego hotel circle area. The drive over to the Road Runner Sports took just a little over 2 hours. Per the usual, the whole process was really quick. I really liked the color scheme for the race hoodie. This might be a keeper!
Race packet pick-up at Road Runner Sports
Pacing assignments
Flyer and coupon
Race info
Long sleeve race hoodie
Back of long sleeve race hoodie
After picking up my race packet and using their restroom, I hopped back in the car and drove down to Formoosa to eat an early dinner. My friend had bought me food from here when I was sick with COVID during a work conference back in 2022. It was time for a do-over with healthy taste buds. The parking lot was ridiculously packed even at 4 pm. I drove about a block and a half away before I found street parking on Ruffner St. As to be expected, the place was pretty empty inside at that hour of the day. I ordered their heavily hyped beef noodle soup. I got it with wavy noodles as it seemed to be their thing. I also ordered their popcorn chicken as the waiter said that it was happy hour, making it $9 vs. $13.50. For the restaurant being rather empty, it took a long time for the food to come out. Food preference is subjective, but traditional foods are quite established. Right off the bat, the broth was too sweet. Their noodles were a poor substitute for knife-cut noodles. For some reason, they included a soft boiled egg, but didn't have any pickled mustard greens (酸菜). Unfortunately, for Taiwanese food, this was pretty terrible, best described as ABC food. I supposed if you were new to this food, it would be fine and you might actually like it. Just don't call it Taiwanese food. The popcorn chicken was also not very good. They really do not deserve to have such a high rating on Yelp. This was clearly an unauthentic Taiwanese restaurant getting artificial rave reviews from unknowledgeable customers and social media influencers. With the extremely limited parking, there will definitely not be a return visit for me.
Dinner at Formoosa
Popcorn chicken
"Taiwanese" beef noodle soup with wavy noodles
The fog was quite thick and there was a ton of traffic as I headed down to the hotel circle area via surface streets. There were even homeless people walking or wandering in the street as I neared the motel. It was as if they were asking to be run over. My one-nighter was at the Howard Johnson. I checked in and was given room #218. The guy at the front desk was pretty friendly, but didn't seem to understand English too well. While I found everything in the room to be pretty clean, there were a lot of unprofessional patchwork done. A couple of the stuff I noticed was that the power outlet wasn't aligned properly and the shower head wasn't even screwed on all the way.
Howard Johnson at the Hotel Circle
After settling into my room, I went through the race packet and laid out my flat runner for tomorrow's race. I caught some of my favorite episodes of Two and a Half Men before taking a shower and calling it a night.
Flat runner
Two and a Half Men: Santa's Village of the Damned
Saturday 12/20
I got ready and checked out of my room just before 5 am. Originally, I was planning to charge the car at the Tesla Supercharger station at the Scripps Ranch Marketplace at a cheaper rate. However, during the drive over, I noticed that the station was showing on the screen as closed. Also unlike Arizona, not all of the charging stations had off peak charging rates. With that info, I decided to just drive over to Starbucks and get my pre-race routine started early. Per the usual, I parked at my preferred spot next to the Geek Squad vans. On the mobile app, I ordered my usual blonde vanilla latte. Since I was cashing in some of my stars, I got it in Venti size. I drank it with my CLIF bar.
Venti blonde vanilla latte
Normally, I would meet up with my friends coming down from Escondido. However, they were running late, so I ended up heading over to the start on my own. As I arrived at the starting area, I saw that the race organizers were having a difficult time keeping the start line arch upright! Not before long, I starting finding my friends. I tried to get as many selfies as I could with each of them. One of their friends even gave me a homemade Christmas bracelet! Way to spread the holiday cheer! We certainly need more of that in this world!
Tracy
Amador and Rose
Fellow runner gave me a Christmas bracelet
Brent and Rachel
Ginny
Willie
Paul
Dan and Karen
The race started at 7:30 am. I ended up starting out near the back of wave 1. I didn't want to position myself too close to the front and impede any of the speedsters. For the most part, the course remained the same. However, the race organizer had notified us via email that they had changed the course. They moved the finish line out of the Torrey Pines parking lot over onto Sorrento Valley Road in order to alleviate traffic congestion between buses, cars, and runners near the finish line. Also the course would remain primarily on the bike path.
Course map
1: 8:06
2: 8:09
3: 8:23
4: 7:37
5: 8:06
6: 7:49
7: 8:03
8: 7:58
9: 7:55
10: 8:04
11: 8:06
12: 8:05
13: 8:05
Finish: 1:44:35
Click here for my Garmin data.
My goal coming into this race was to run about a 1:45. Near the end with a few miles to go, I knew that I was on the bubble. I thought that I was slightly slower and was going to miss it by less than a minute as I just couldn't keep each mile at 8 minutes flat. However, the finish line came a bit sooner than I had expected as my GPS watch had measured it short by about a tenth of a mile. Either way, I liked this new course and how my legs responded to all of the hilly hikes around the neighborhood. For once, the legs felt strong during those closing miles.
After receiving my finisher medal, I was chatting with someone about how the 1:45 pacers went out too fast. Well, one of the pacers overheard my comment and took offense. She started defending their pacing. She even told me that I needed to warm up so I don't get left behind on that early big climb. I wasn't going to have a debate with her. The numbers don't lie. I finished at 1:44:35 and they had crossed the finish line minutes ahead of me. To me, that counts as poor pacing.
Finisher medal
Post race goodies
After getting some post races goodies and waiting for some of my friends, I looked to get out of the congested finisher area and go catch a bus ride back to my car. Unfortunately, there was no signage for the bus pick-up location for a ride back to the start. The website was also useless. The only sign that I saw was the pre-race pick up for the 5k that was blocks away. It would turn out that the pick-up spot was pretty much right across the street from the finish line.
After getting dropped off, everyone started what seemed to be a mad dash back to our cars. I went back to my car to put on my jacket before heading inside Starbucks for brunch. I first used the restroom before placing my order on the mobile app for a grande salted caramel cream cold brew, a bacon, sausage & egg wrap, and a ham & swiss on baguette. I had to order at least $15 before taxes to earn some bonus stars. While I was eating my food, there was a bunch of commotion outside. It would turn out that someone had run into the fire hydrant. It unleashed quite the geyser! Eventually, the police and fire department came by and shut off the water to that hydrant.
Finisher medal and brunch at Starbucks
Ham & Swiss on baguette
Someone hit a fire hydrant
Once I was finished, I hopped in the car to start my drive home. On the way home, I made a quick pitstop at the Outlets in San Clemente to charge the car at the Tesla Supercharger station. I wasn't there that long as I only needed just enough juice to get home where I would finish charging the car to 100%.
Tesla Supercharger, San Clemente Outlets
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