Los Gatos Creek Trail Run
Los Gatos, CA
- Marathon, Half Marathon, 10K, 5K
- Road (Paved), Trail (Unpaved)
- Official race website
All four distances of the Los Gatos Creek Trail Run will start and finish in Vasona Park in Los Gatos, CA. This a beautiful park that has all sorts of activities for your entertainment pleasure, including a train ride on the Billy Jones Wildcat Rail Road. The races will be … MORE
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“Home” Trail: Warm Day, Cool People
Organization & Production: LGCTR was my first time doing a Pacific Coast Trail Runs (PCTR) event. Most PCTR events are on-dirt hilly trail runs. The LGCTR is intended, in part, … MORE
Organization & Production: LGCTR was my first time doing a Pacific Coast Trail Runs (PCTR) event. Most PCTR events are on-dirt hilly trail runs. The LGCTR is intended, in part, to be an intro to trail running for runners who do mostly street and road events.
The LGCTR was “Register-and-Run”, with necessary info on the website and easy registration. All a runner had to worry about was getting there and back and running the race. Pre-race pick-up was at the nearby Sports Basement the evening before, and there was race day pick-up as well. I picked up pre-race, but arrived early enough to see that race day pick-up was ready before the promised time.
Starts for the several distances were half an hour apart, with a briefing for each group 15 minutes before their start. The Los Gatos Creek Trail is sort of my home trail and going off-course would be difficult, so I didn’t pay much attention to the markings. But the course markings would have been fine for a first-time user of the trail.
Bib: The bib has a wide orange stripe across the top, with the race logo and distances. In the middle is a wider stripe with the bib number and PCTR’s logo, and at the bottom another, more narrow, orange stripe. I noticed that marathon runners’ bib numbers were in the 200s, half marathon runners in the 100s, and 10K runners under 100.
T-Shirt: I do not know if my words can do the race T-shirt justice. It is tech-type for runners of all distances. The color is orange and brown pixellated camo, orange being the dominant color. In front is the race logo. It features the ears and top of a cat’s head, with “Los Gatos” just under. Instead of “o” in each word are the cat’s green eyes. Below that are “Creek Trail”, and below that the distances. On a solid color shirt the logo would be merely OK, but on this shirt it under-statedly lets the shirt speak for itself … which it does … loudly. Insta-Favorite!
Finisher’s Medal: The medallion is wood and chevron-shaped. It has the race logo, large, and PCTR’s logo at the bottom. There is an orange border around the chevron. In addition there is a rectangular wooden tag with the year. Instead of a ribbon the finisher’s medal hangs from an orange-yellow cord.
LGCTR was a smallish “boutique” race, with 138 finishers of the three main distances. I ended up winning first place in my age group. Only one 10K participant, a younger guy, finished after me, so the Math is obvious. The age group medal is a shiny silver finish bottle opener. In the center are PCTR’s logo and “1st”, with “Age Group Winner” around the top and “2018 at the bottom. The ribbon is wide, with sky and navy blue stripes. It isn’t race-specific, but it is very nice.
Finish & Recovery Area: The whole set-up was kind of squeezed into a picnic area with a covered pavilion. It worked fine for a race of this size, but somewhere between 150 and 200 finishers it would have to be spread out more. A finishing runner was handed their medal right after passing under the arch. While there was no water by the arch, a table with water, sodas, and beer was just 4 or 5 yards straight ahead. There were plenty of picnic tables under the pavilion at which one could sit and rest.
Instead of a spread of cookies, cakes, and candies, finishers had a choice of “teriyaku” chicken or portobello mushroom-garlic “sliders” (they were pretty much full-hamburger-sized) with coleslaw prepared by Chef Yaku and served by his team. Yeah! Delicious!
While I was eating the RD was announcing finishers and also called up race and age-group winners. I kind of knew I would place by just finishing, but it was still pretty cool being called out. The RD was also very outgoing.
My Results & Opinion of the Race: I had been lazy all week, hadn’t “run” my smartest race ever, and miscalculated the distance to the finish when I was in the final mile, so I was expecting a finish time 10 or 15 minutes later than my actual, so I’m actually pretty happy with it. I’ve got another 10K next weekend, so I’m going to try to be a bit smarter.
If it isn’t already obvious, this was a greaty race experience for me. It was a really well organized race, the first I had done anywhere on the LGCT in 2 years, and the first on that part of the trail in over 4 years.
A lot of things go into a race experience as I think of it, but people are probably the biggest part. The RD and staff were friendly and helpful, as were the aid station volunteers. I didn’t know anybody there (though I learned by looking over the results pages that a fellow Race-Raver did the half marathon), so I sat at a random table to rest, recover, and eat. It happened to be a table with several young ladies who had served as guides for the runners from the California School for the Blind, and we had a really pleasant chat. All in all, the people part of this race experience was great!
The registration fee for the Los Gatos Creek Trail Run is $5 or $10 higher than (somewhat) similar 10Ks, though it uses two parks in two different cities (and the longer distances go into a third city), which may increase the organizer’s costs. On the other hand, the finish area food, the people (organizers, volunteers, and runners), and there being the special 5K made this one of my best race experiences ever. So I will consider doing LGCTR again, and Pacific Coast Trail Runs events will be on my “radar screen” for future planning.