Conquer the mountains in your own back yard! The Verdugo Mountains 10K is produced by the City of Glendale’s Community Services & Parks Department to benefit the Glendale Parks & Open Space Foundation. CourseIn a word: Challenging! The course begins in beautiful Brand Park, climbs steadily to one of the …
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Conquer the mountains in your own back yard!
The Verdugo Mountains 10K is produced by the City of Glendale’s Community Services & Parks Department to benefit the Glendale Parks & Open Space Foundation.
Course
In a word: Challenging! The course begins in beautiful Brand Park, climbs steadily to one of the highest points in the Verdugo Mountains, and then heads back downhill for a fast descent to the finish. Breathtaking views of the L.A. Basin, the San Fernando Valley, and the Pacific Ocean await you at every turn. From the race’s highest point, at 2,536 feet above sea level, the panoramic view of the San Gabriel Mountains is truly spectacular.
The Verdugo Mountains 10K is an “out and back” course, so you will encounter runners approaching in the opposite direction. The Brand Motorway is a fire road wide enough to easily accommodate two-way running traffic. So please stay to the right side of the fire road when you see an oncoming runner, or when someone is attempting to pass. There will be water stations approximately every mile.
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A SoCal gem with an amazing community!
I run a lot of trails around LA and I've avoided the Verdugo 10K for a while, for whatever reason. I'm a "tough" ultra runner so maybe a 10K seemed … MORE
I run a lot of trails around LA and I’ve avoided the Verdugo 10K for a while, for whatever reason. I’m a “tough” ultra runner so maybe a 10K seemed beneath me, but also, it’s like $35 bucks, so I finally bit the bullet this year.
Strategy-wise, this race was all about the climb. 1500 feet from bottom to top, then you turn around and run back down the mountain as fast as you can without flying off a cliff and turning into a big flesh bag full of broken bones.
For my inaugural effort, I felt pretty good about my performance, but I’m sure I could’ve shown up to the start line as a much better hill climber if I had gone to more of the free group training sessions they offer for two months or so leading up to the race. There’s a lot of support for these runners!
After the race, I was a little disappointed that there wasn’t a finisher medal (I have enough, it’s fine), but they did have a free, glorious pancake breakfast with all the trimmings along with coffee or juice as well as a large post-race expo in the beautiful Brand Park where you’re invited to grab a table, eat your pancakes, enjoy some free coffee and imagine what it would be like to nonchalantly stroll up to take your age group medal at the podium next year.
They also had a live raffle with tons of prizes, and as the winner of one of the grand prizes (a Garmin Forerunner 125), I was quite pleased with the outcome. Awesome prize notwithstanding, I was really impressed by the support for this race and community that showed up to run and encourage the runners. Overall, it was a really great morning and I look forward to doing it again in 2019!