Running and rails

February 4th, 2007 · No Comments

Ticketing concourse

A quick recap of this busy weekend: Saturday morning, we were up early to head downtown for lunch at The Pantry, which, given that we only had 45 minutes, did not happen. The huge line outside made us think twice, and we vowed to come back when we had more time on our hands. We headed over to Union Station Union Stationin time for a bagel before our 10 am tour, a new members welcome tour given by the wonderful Los Angeles Conservancy. We joined when we moved here, but haven’t had the time to take any of their dozen or so tours yet, and this seemed like a great opportunity. I had never even seen Union Station before (or Union Station, either), much less learned anything about it, and we certainly got a lot of information in the three-hour walking tour. From the original 1939 ticket concourse, to the 1990s addition and the Red Line subway station, to the old Harvey House restaurant, a little faded but still glorious, we got the full tour (and used the photobooth). It was enjoyable and informative, and filled in a little more information in the vast uncharted territory that is the history of our new home base.

Oft-reupholstered seats

From downtown, we headed to some more uncharted territory in Orange County, namely “Surf City USA,” Huntington Beach. We found beach parking and registered for my race the next day, the 11th Annual Pacific Shoreline Half Marathon. We had lunch along Main Street and watched the cars crawl by in the midday sun and pleasant breeze. By 4:00 or so, we headed back and had a quiet night (more of the first season of “The Wire,” getting good) in preparation for an early wakeup call.

This morning, we were out the door by 5:15 or so, and took an empty Santa Monica Blvd. to the 405; if only Santa Monica always looked like that… We found parking at a bizarro meter; first, it was in service 7 days a week, which was annoying, but then it didn’t register all of the quarters we put in. Oh well, we thought; Aimee will just come back while I’m running to make sure we’re still covered. Turns out that we put in for an hour and ten minutes, and by the time we left, four hours later, the clock had only run down to 43 minutes. Aimee watched it for awhile, and it seemed to decrease by a minute every 9 or 10 minutes. We’ll have to remember where that one was.

After the requisite hydrating, stretching, and otherwise preparing, my race started at 7:30. Having not run 13 miles since the first half of the marathon in 2004, I wasn’t sure how things would go, but I felt ok, aside from some annoying muscle strain in my foot that I’d been worried about. It hit around mile 5, and I just had to deal with it. It’s nice and sore now, but I don’t think it slowed me down too much. I kept my 8:30-ish minute per mile pace for most of the race, which was right along the beach along the Pacific Coast Highway. Surfers on one side, oil derricks on the other – a strange combination. I bottomed out around mile 10, felt myself really slowing down, and came in around 1:55, happy to be in under two hours but a little off my time in the half marathon I ran on the Cape three years ago. Next time… The race was very well organized and a pleasure to run, with a picturesque course and a ton of participants, somewhere around 11,000 finishers. Official training for the marathon begins in about seven weeks.

Tags: Los Angeles · Running