Canceled San Diego Half Marathon 2020

Saturday 3/14

Although the actual race was canceled, I still planned to take the trip down to San Diego. It would be one of the few times where I've taken a trip for something besides running a race. Per the usual, I drove down to the Irvine Transportation Center to catch the 7:08 am Amtrak train down to the Santa Fe Depot in Downtown San Diego. The first thing that I noticed when the train pulled into the station was that it was not the usual double-decker cars. Also there were very few passengers.

The train pulled into the Santa Fe Depot just a few minutes past 9 am. From there I walked over to the Hilton San Diego in the Gaslamp Quarter to pick up my race packet. The walk took about 22 minutes. The weather was a bit gloomy and drizzly, just the way I like it.

It was actually a little bit of a bummer to attend the race expo knowing that there won't be a race tomorrow. Per the usual, their packet pick-up process was well organized. In addition to the usual race shirt and bib, we were given a nice baseball cap and bag full of what would've been the post race snacks. One of the volunteers distributing the finisher medals wanted to place the medal around my neck. I politely declined.

Baseball cap

Tote bag

Goodies

Race shirt

Finisher medal

After leaving the race expo, I walked over to the nearby Gaslamp Quarter Station to catch the green line out to the Westfield Mission Valley mall. Prior to boarding the trolley, I purchased a day pass on the MTS Cloud Compass mobile app.

Gaslamp Quarter

Once I had arrived at the Mission Valley Center Station, I headed over to the mall across the street. I used my AMC A-List membership to watch Onward. While it was an entertaining Disney movie with lots of humor all throughout, I found that the story was quite predictable. I'm also not a fan of Tom Holland's acting even if it's just his voice. The majority of Marvel fans love him as the current Spider-man, but I am not one of them. He is however still better than Tobey Maguire for that role.

After the movie, I headed back over to the Mission Valley Center Station to catch a quick ride over to the nearby Fashion Valley Transit Center. From there I waited for the #20 bus to take me over to my timeshare rental for the weekend. I got off of the bus at the corner of 10th Ave and C St. I arrived at the WorldMark San Diego - Balboa Park property at about 1:30 pm. My room was ready for me to check-in. During the check-in process, the guy at the front desk was spraying down and cleaning the counter more so than I've seen in the past.

After getting checked-in and getting my room key, I had to make a quick stop at the concierge desk for a welcome package which consisted a bag full of snacks. I was also enticed to attend another owner update in exchange for a $85 American Express gift card. Since I didn't have a race or anything else planned for this trip, how could I say no to $85? I agreed to the owner update for tomorrow morning. I had planned to limit my potential exposure to the coronavirus and just veg out in my room for the entirety of the weekend. This would only be the one exception.

Welcome bag

After I got settled in, I went across the street to pick up a late lunch at McDonald's. The best deal that I could find on the mobile app was: buy a Filet-O-Fish, get a small or medium fries and an apple pie for free. I took the food back to my room to enjoy.

Onward Happy Meal toys

I went back out to McDonald's later that evening to pick up dinner. This time, the best deal that I could find on the mobile app was: buy one Big Mac or Quarter Pounder with Cheese, get one for $0.25. Once again, I took it back to my room to enjoy.

Sunday 3/15

The owner update was scheduled for 10 am. Per the usual, I went down to the lobby a bit earlier to wait for my Uber ride over to the WorldMark San Diego - Mission Valley property. It was the standard owner update followed by their "no pressure" sales pitch. However one thing was different. People were starting to employ COVID-19 safety protocols. Handshakes were replaced with elbow bumps. Inside of a buffet style complimentary breakfast, the meal was a prewrapped breakfast burrito. Once I endured the sales pitches and rejected all of their offers to purchase more credits, I received my $85 American Express gift card and waited for my Uber ride back to my hotel.

I stuck to my plan and vegged out in my room for the rest of my trip only going out across the street to McDonald's for food. For lunch, I used the same deal as I had used yesterday: buy a Filet-O-Fish, get a small or medium fries and an apple pie for free.

For dinner I used this deal on the mobile app: buy a Big Mac, QPC, or 10pc Chicken McNuggets, get small or medium fries for free. I went with the Big Mac. In addition to the deal, I ordered a large unsweetened iced tea for $1.

Later that evening, I started packing for my early train ride back to Irvine for work. While packing, I decided to take the spare roll of toilet paper that was under the bathroom sink. That could come useful as people have been hoarding toilet paper with the impending pandemic lockdown looming in the horizon.

Spare roll of TP

Monday 3/16

I woke up super early, got ready, and dropped my keys off at the front desk before taking my walk over to the Santa Fe Depot train station to catch the 4:00 am train. This time the cars were the usual double-decker ones. When I arrived at the Irvine Transportation Center, there looked to be the usual large crowd of people headed to work.

Los Angeles Marathon 2020

Saturday 3/7
Per the usual for the LA Marathon Expo, I would drive about halfway to Pasadena to take the Metro light rail into Downtown LA. It's a nice way to avoid having to deal with Downtown traffic and those insanely high parking fees ($20-30). I still can remember the good ol' days when you could find parking for $5 a block away from the Convention Center. It's normally a smooth easy ride at $1.75 one way. However today, they were doing maintenance work on the tracks. So once the train reached Fillmore Station, we had to get off and board a bus which took us over to Southwest Museum Station. This inconvenience added about 45 minutes to the trip. However during this bus ride, I got to see The Greyhound Bar & Grill. I've been wanting to wake up early one weekend and come here to watch a Spurs match with my fellow supporters. They're also a Dodgers bar, so that's a double-win for me!

The Greyhound Bar & Grill

After arriving at Union Station, I headed over to the other Metro platform to wait for the first Red or Purple line train. I took that over to 7th St/Metro Center Station. Finally from there I waited for a Blue or Expo line train to take me over to Pico Station. I arrived at the LA Convention Center at about 10:15 am. Upon entering I saw a huge line of people waiting to get into the expo. The organizers were smart to control the inflow of people into the convention hall as it could get quite crowded inside. While waiting in that long line, there was a lot of murmuring about whether or not the race would take place due to the coronavirus. Despite the murmuring, I don't think I saw a single person wearing a face mask.

Expo

Long line to get in

As I entered the convention hall, I received a race program. Then it was time to pick up my bib, race shirt, and gear bag. I liked this year's race shirt, but the neck hole was kind of tiny or my head had grown too big! :)

Race program

Bib Pick Up

Race shirt

After I got that necessary part out of the way, it was time to hit all of the vendor booths. It was pretty cool to see both Carrie Tollefson and Deena Kastor. I had just seen Carrie last weekend in Atlanta. They are both very nice down-to-Earth people.

Carrie Tollefson and Deena Kastor

After checking a few things out, I made my way over to the LA Loyal area as I had heard that LA Loyal runners were supposed to receive a special 35th anniversary medal just for being a loyal runner. At first I got in the wrong line which was for 5th and 10th year runners. After a fellow runner pointed out the correct line, I hopped into that one.

LA Loyal 35th anniversary medal

I was kind of done with the expo by this point as it was pretty dang crowded. The Volvo electric pace car was pretty cool. They were letting people sign the car. I found it kind of funny to see a Volvo pace car as I've always associated Honda with the LA Marathon.

On my way out I decided to register for next year's race. The price of registration at the expo was $165. Plus the usual Active.com fees, it came out to be $180.68. I thought I'd get that out of the way instead of hoping for a good deal later in the year.

Registration for next year

I then saw a few of my friends up on the stage being interviewed by Carrie. They were showcasing female runners and their amazing running goals and accomplishments. I feel privileged to know all but two of them.

Expo freebies

Just before leaving the convention center, I made a quick pit stop at the restroom. That was a smart move as the trip back to my car took a bit longer, about 20 minutes longer. Most of the extra time was spent waiting at the station for the next train and enduring traffic on the freeway.

Later that evening, the news on TV had LA mayor Eric Garcetti saying that the race would definitely go on as there were only 5 known coronavirus cases in the area. Since the race was a definite go, it was time to lay out my flat runner and to make sure that I had everything for tomorrow's race. I went with one of my Spurs jerseys. #COYS

Flat runner

Sunday 3/8
I left the house at about 3:40 am to start heading over to Union Station to catch a free bus ride over to Dodger Stadium. Once again I drove out to Pasadena to take the Metro light rail. Thankfully, unlike yesterday, there was no track maintenance or any out of the usual delays. I arrived at Union Station about 10 minutes before 5 am which was perfect timing. I caught one of the first buses heading out. Coincidentally, I bumped into a few of my friends on the bus! I'm not exactly sure why, but the ride over took longer than it should have. We were stuck in a lot of traffic. I think we ended up going in via Golden State Gate. After we were dropped off, my friends and I wished each other a good race and we went our separate ways.

Bus ride to Dodger Stadium with my friends

I walked around a bit and checked out the starting line as well as Dodger Stadium. Unfortunately, this year they were not letting anyone inside the stadium due to all of the construction to build a new entrance into the stadium in preparation to host the All Star Game. They're making it so that you can access any section of the stadium regardless of your ticket. It used to be that they kept you in your section based on the ticket you've purchased.

Start line

I timed my last minute preparations so that I would get to the pre-race Marathon Maniacs photo on time. I used one of the many portapotties and checked my gear bag before heading over to our designated meeting spot which was just outside the right pavilion. One of the person assigned to prevent people from approaching Dodger Stadium was nice enough to let us get a bit closer for our obligatory pre-race photo. After the photos, it was time to head into my assigned corral. This year I was assigned corral D. I feel like I'm getting a later corral each year. Pretty soon I'll have to start out of the general corral!

Marathon Maniacs

Latino Heat

Corral D Entrance

Per the usual, there was a lot of anxious and nervous energy all around me from my fellow participants as we waited for the start of the race. Once the race started a few minutes before 7 am and they started playing Randy Newman's iconic song, you knew that it was time to run a marathon from the Stadium to the Sea! See you in Santa Monica!

Corral

Between miles 4 and 5, I caught up to my buddy, Dexter, while running up Hill St near the intersection of 2nd St. Being the photographer that he is, he took a couple of obligatory photos, before I charged ahead for the climb up 1st St. My legs haven't quite fully recovered from the hilly marathon last weekend in Atlanta, so I pulled over and enjoyed the rhythmic beating of the taiko drums!

Dexter

Between miles 6 and 7, I came across a guy that was wearing this year's Tokyo Marathon race shirt. I told him that it was a bummer that he wasn't able to run it this year as it was canceled due to the coronavirus.

My friend caught up to me between miles 14 and 15 while I was going down Sunset Blvd coming up to a left turn onto San Vicente Blvd. I was already starting to take long walk breaks. I always appreciate it when my friends check up on me when I'm struggling that early in a marathon.

During my many extended walk breaks, I approached mile 17 with Rodeo Dr coming up. I was mocked by an English lady saying, "Tottenham?! I'm running better than you are!" I had to run up to her to have a little conversation with her. It would turn out that she was an Arsenal fan. There was actually quite a bit of Arsenal fans among the spectators. :) Even so, it was actually fun wearing the jersey. A couple of what I assumed to be Korean runners were also wearing Son Heung Min jerseys, came up to me to say hi.

Rodeo Drive

Prior to the race, I had thought about skipping my usual McDonald's pitstop at mile 19 if I was feeling good. As I was feeling pretty ragged, I got out my phone and placed my order for a hash brown on their mobile app. With the app, the wait was very minimal. I remembered to only order one as my stomach usually feels queasy if I try to eat more than one during a race! :)

Hash brown

Per the usual, I was having calf cramps as I was coming down the final stretch. It was a sight for sore eyes and sweet music to the ears as my race announcer friends were welcoming the runners to the finish line!

Finish line

Finish: 5:08:21
Click here for my Garmin data.

That was my 16th Los Angeles Marathon overall and my 9th consecutive time running this race. While I was hoping to have finished in under 5 hours, it's always a great feeling to just finish a marathon.

After getting my finisher medal, I continued down the long finisher chute. There were many volunteers passing out post race snacks and bottles of water. Besides the usual banana, we received small packages of Goldfish crackers, animal crackers, and a couple Clif Bars. Good thing my shorts had pockets. I then headed over to the gear check trucks to pick up my bag.

Finisher medal

Post race goodies

After getting my stuff in order, I headed down the exit chute. I took my normal exit on the left side of the chute which normally led to the beer garden at the open parking lot at the corner of Santa Monica Blvd and 2nd St. When I arrived at that lot, it was very crowded with no finish festival in sight. It looked like they finally moved the finish festival out of that tiny little spot! To where, nobody really knew. After asking around, I finally deduced that the finish festival was located on the 3rd Street Promenade. When I got there, I saw that there were many vendor booths set up. I wasn't very interested in any of that, I was just looking for some portapotties. I finally found a restroom sign next to The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf. Taking that walkway took me over to the 2nd Ct alleyway where the restrooms were located.

After emptying my bladder, I made my way over to the Metro Station located at the corner of Colorado Ave and 4th St. I was able to jump into a car just a few moments before the train was about to leave. I ended up standing as the only seats left were reserved for the elderly or disabled. After a few stations, a couple seats were freed up. A Mexican guy and I took those seats. We ended up talking for a while about marathons, work, football (aka soccer) and just about anything. As we were beginning to approach the 7th St/Metro Center, a somewhat sketchy guy sat down next to us and eventually started talking to us. He had the usual bad boy tattoos and was missing a lot of teeth. I figured that he was either a drifter and/or a drug addict. My new Mexican friend and I were both a bit on our guard. I was hoping to God that he wasn't about to clown us. He saw that we were both wearing our finisher medals. He ended up congratulating us repeatedly as if we had just won the LA Marathon. He gave us both fist bumps and eventually extended his hand out for a handshake. Now with the coronavirus being out there, I had a brief pause before I shook his hand. Taking public transportation has been an adventure in of itself. I think more people should do so, so that they can see those that are less fortunate instead of living in a bubble.