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@DaveB
Pasadena, CA Raving since 2018 Active 9 months agoAbout Me
My Races
Organize, track & review your races and personal bests here.
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Future Races
Personal Bests (4)
| Race | Distance | Location | Date | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Coastal Delaware Running Festival | Marathon | Rehoboth Beach, DE | Nov 13, 2021 | 3:10:00 |
| Rock ‘n’ Roll San Francisco 1/2 Marathon | Half Marathon | San Francisco, CA | Apr 8, 2018 | 1:40:00 |
| Wrigley River Run & Tadpole Trot | 10 Miler | Long Beach, CA | Jun 11, 2022 | 1:08:42 |
| LA Dodgers Foundation Sunset Run | 10K | Los Angeles, CA | Sep 30, 2023 | 38:35 |
Future Races (0)
| Race | Distance | Location | Date | Paid |
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Past Races (5)
| Race | Distance | Location | Date | Result | My Raves | My Performance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| LA Dodgers Foundation Sunset Run | 10K | Los Angeles, CA | Sep 30, 2023 | 38:35 |
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| Wrigley River Run & Tadpole Trot | 10 Miler | Long Beach, CA | Jun 11, 2022 | 1:08:42 |
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| Coastal Delaware Running Festival | Marathon | Rehoboth Beach, DE | Nov 13, 2021 | 3:10:00 |
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| Zeigler Kalamazoo Marathon | Half Marathon | Kalamazoo, MI | May 6, 2018 | 1:41:43 |
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| Rock ‘n’ Roll San Francisco 1/2 Marathon | Half Marathon | San Francisco, CA | Apr 8, 2018 | 1:40:00 |
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LA Dodgers Foundation Sunset Run
Really well put-together race
LA Dodgers Foundation Sunset Run
Really great race. The 10K route takes you around Dodger Stadium, down the hill aways, and then back up, then further up, then down. Approximately 450 feet of elevation gain … MORE
Really great race. The 10K route takes you around Dodger Stadium, down the hill aways, and then back up, then further up, then down. Approximately 450 feet of elevation gain and loss in 10K is no joke, but I think that’s part of the charm of the race. The start of the race was actually just after sunset, but they do a really good job of placing floodlights around the route to light things up. I used a headlamp just in case, but I don’t feel like I needed it much.
I picked up my packet approximately 2 hours and 15 minutes prior to the start of the race. There was also the option to come to Dodger Stadium and pick up your packet the day before the race. Packet pickup was for the most part really well organized. There was a bottleneck for the 5K packet pickup that made it a bit difficult to exit the packet pickup area, but I think having pickup outdoors would have caused further problems since it was such a windy day.
The finisher medal was really cool…a model of a Dodger Stadium seat. They also give you a really nice shirt, a Clayton Kershaw bobblehead, and a huge bag of protein powder. I wasn’t a big fan of the fruit punch flavored beer at the beer garden after the race, but it was a free perk, and that is just my personal taste.
Overall, I feel like this is a really good local race, and that it’s well worth it to sign up and run.
Wrigley River Run & Tadpole Trot
OK Local Race with Course Marking Issues
Wrigley River Run & Tadpole Trot
Pluses: Super nice, helpful, honest-to-goodness people running the race. A gear check...there for you if you need it. Pizza, tasty performance bars, watermelon, orange slices, and bananas at the finish...a … MORE
Pluses: Super nice, helpful, honest-to-goodness people running the race. A gear check…there for you if you need it. Pizza, tasty performance bars, watermelon, orange slices, and bananas at the finish…a great selection of post race eats. Good volunteers. Scheduling allows you to do both the 10 miler and the 5K if you are so inclined. Nicely designed finishers medals and additional medals available if you do both the 10 miler and the 5K. Beer glasses for age group champions…good awards for top finishers, including an awards ceremony.
Negatives: There were several forks in the road in the 10 mile course that were unmarked and unmanned. If you were unfamiliar with the course, you were left guessing which direction to go. When I brought this up with one of the organizers, she said that there were complaints about the lack of course markings during previous years. When I asked why something hadn’t been done about this, she didn’t really have a good answer for me. She wasn’t the head person in charge, so I don’t necessarily think this was her purview. Regardless, that’s not a great sign of a race that’s responsive to feedback. The issues with course markings aren’t anything that need a great deal of money to fix. More cones, more signs, and having the RD bike the course hours ahead to make sure that all forks are clearly marked is all that’s needed. Hopefully they will fix this, because I’m not sure I would necessarily recommend this race to my running friends unless I were to see a clear commitment to fix this issue. Runners should not have to memorize a course prior to running it. Markings should be clear enough so that all they have to do is run.
Coastal Delaware Running Festival
Scenic, Well Run Coastal Marathon
Coastal Delaware Running Festival
There were so many things to love about this race. 1. The scenery. The race started at beautiful Rehoboth Beach, went through a state park filled with fall foliage lakeside … MORE
There were so many things to love about this race.
1. The scenery. The race started at beautiful Rehoboth Beach, went through a state park filled with fall foliage lakeside and riverside views, and gave you a number of different views of the Delaware coastline as well.
2. The aid stations. Volunteers were very well trained at holding cups so that they could be picked up without spillage on runners or on the volunteers themselves (on a flat hand). The one thing I could possibly nitpick here is that the availability of gels could have used a bit more fanfare, as it was hard to see where GU gels were available because the volunteers holding them blended in with everyone else and they weren’t announced.
3. Organization. The race started like clockwork. All turns were clearly marked. The course was super easy to follow thanks to the work of the volunteers and the race organizers.
4. Post-Race. Good pizza from Grottos was served along with beers. This is my eighth marathon, and I haven’t seen better post-race offerings as far as food goes.
Alright. Now let me explain my score on the difficulty of the race. Yes, the race is absolutely pancake flat, but a couple of factors make it a bit more challenging. The first…a large percentage of the marathon takes place not on asphalt or another surface, but instead on dirt, mud, and rock trails. While these trailish sorts of surfaces can definitely be easier on the joints, these surfaces take a lot of energy away from your stride as compared to pure road surfaces. I definitely felt myself working harder to maintain pace on the trail surfaces. The second is that this is a coastal marathon. Expect the wind to be a factor…it’ll be blowing in your face for part of this race. These reasons are why I gave it two “shoes” for difficulty instead of one.
But all that aside, do this race. Just make the time and sign up. Regardless of whether you PR, you will enjoy yourself.
If you’re looking for a smaller marathon
Zeigler Kalamazoo Marathon
Great Local Race
Zeigler Kalamazoo Marathon
This race puts some of the larger races held in bigger cities to shame. Positives: Varied course that took you around local nature paths and took you on a fair … MORE
This race puts some of the larger races held in bigger cities to shame.
Positives: Varied course that took you around local nature paths and took you on a fair tour of the Kalamazoo community. Well run bib pickup system that had you in and out quickly. Plenty of water/liquid Gu Energy Drink stations throughout. Good race swag including a nice shirt that volunteers were happy to exchange at the expo to make sure you got one that fit well. Free craft beer at the finish festival…a good one too. Great finish festival including free massages and plenty of goodies to go around, not to mention lots of porta potties so there was very little waiting in line before or after the race. Dedicated volunteers and workers everywhere who all seemed to take pride in making sure every participant in every race got their money’s worth and had a great experience.
Deltas: My only issue with the race was the intersection of the 5K walk with the half marathon at the part of the course around the pond near Borgess Hospital…mile 10-11 or so. Many walkers did not understand the unwritten rule about leaving room for runners and would frequently be lined up in a phalanx that was very difficult to negotiate. This problem was nullified once there were lanes for faster movers and slower movers as the course moved up hill toward the finish, but I felt these lanes were needed much sooner on the course…that or some other way of preventing walkers from becoming difficult-to-negotiate obstacles on the half-marathon course.
All in all, a fantastic experience. I would highly recommend this race.
Rock ‘n’ Roll San Francisco 1/2 Marathon
Disappointing
Rock ‘n’ Roll San Francisco 1/2 Marathon
The course downgrades from RNR Marathon Series were absolutely shameful. Instead of paying the city of San Francisco to shut down the bridge as I they have done in the … MORE
The course downgrades from RNR Marathon Series were absolutely shameful. Instead of paying the city of San Francisco to shut down the bridge as I they have done in the past, they relegated a race of 5000+ people for which they charged some runners $125 or more to the narrow bike paths. The course path underneath the bridge featured a sharp sloping heavily downgraded narrow dirt path with extremely precarious footing. The finisher’s medal seemed cheaply designed compared to past issued RNR races. The original starting line advertised when I bought my entry (in golden gate park) had been changed so that the race was practically an out and back from Fisherman’s Wharf. Water stations were almost always worked by volunteers without gloves who had not been trained to hold the water cups safely and sanitarily for runners (dirty fingers stuck inside the lip of the cup). I’m officially done signing up for RNR races after this experience. The fast deterioration of the care and attention to detail given to their races has been shocking to me and fairly sad as well.