Doll Piccotto's Staging Area

The scenery on this course is by FAR the best of the three Beach Cities races. It’s beautiful!! Only two hills and they were manageable. Great production. I’d love to come back next year!

I guess the past two years I’ve run this there were record low temps in Davis. NOT THIS YEAR. It was nearly 100 degrees when we started and by mile 4 I started getting dizzy and chills. I had to walk a lot of the course, but finished. But I was disappointed because one of the water stops started closing up early and believe me, we NEEDED them. They also ran out of shirts and the medals seemed less quality this year. Still a great course, but I was disappointed after my last couple of years loving this race.

This is one of the nicest races I have ever run. The course is lovely, the people are wonderful! It does get a little spooky near the end when it gets dark, so if you’re a slower runner (like me) bright a light because the trail gets bumpy at times.

This was a truly magical weekend. As with all Disney races, there were a few snags (MAJOR bottlenecks on the course), but if you’re coming here to PR, in my opinion, you’re running here for the wrong reasons. The opportunity to run through Disneyland in the peaceful morning with thousands of other like-minded Disney freaks is JUST. SO. EPIC. The support system is amazing. The scenery and encouragement is magic. There were 700 red hat ladies between miles 8 and 9 making direct eye contact with everyone they could and telling YOU PERSONALLY that you were amazing and could totally do it. I got a little teary. My grandmother was a crazy red hat lady and I miss her. It’s a bit expensive, but Disney treats you RIGHT.

This poor race had problems the minute it started to rain. First of all, I want to say that I HAD SO MUCH FUN IN THIS RACE. The gentleman who handed me my bib told me that my number was a PR number….that I would run my personal best. And you know what? HE WAS RIGHT!! We hardly ever get rain in Los Gatos, but on this day it didn’t stop for all 13.1 miles! The race started nearly 15 minutes late and by the time I started running I was already drenched. Regardless, I had a great time! The main problems were that the aid stations were barely manned because they were run by teenage volunteers who didn’t want to be in the rain. So for slower runners, there were a couple of stops where I had to pour my own water because the aid station was abandoned. TONS of runners changed their distance mid-race too. Whatever. I stuck it out and was still met with a few happy, cheering folks at the finish line.

This was not an interesting course. Not very much scenery. But they really went out of their way to make it festive. It was kid friendly, but I have to say, I wasn’t ready for how DRY it was. Had some trouble breathing, but my nephews helped run me in at the end. That was pretty great. It was my little brother’s first half and we had a great time!