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It was awesome!! It poured over the weekend. I boated over there on Friday afternoon from Long Beach harbor and camped out on a beautiful clear Friday night. My camp site was about 2 miles from the landing dock. The walk up to the campsite was really nice. When I got there it was dark already, so I had to hustle and figure out where to pitch my tent. Luckily, I brought my trusty head light lamp to help guide my way. After I set up camp, I went back down at ate a nice pasta dinner. I was so full. I was thankful I could walk off that meal on the way back up the hill. The cool thing about the camp site was that there were a ton of deer out there running around. I saw a bunch of them on the way back up after dinner and I could hear them in when I was falling asleep. The sound of prancing deer was quickly replaced by a different sound though - rain. It stared raining that early morning about a quarter till 5 and progressively got harder up till race time. At that point, it was pouring cats and dogs. Of course, I was already soaked from my two mile walk back to town by the time I got to the starting line!! When I arrived, people were sort of milling about trying to stay dry (what for I have no idea; didn't they realize they were about to run 7 miles in the rain! duh). The race was totally disorganized. We started late and the course was not marked at all. I got my expected time, but I feel I could have done better if I would have known how far I was at different stages (I could have been a contender Howard!). Since I had never run that course, I had no idea how far I went or how far there was to go. I was definitely not tired at the end of this one. The race itself was spectacular though. We ran up the mountain and got an excellent view over the water. Had it been sunny, I would have been tempted to just stay up there. We ran around up on those hills winding our way back towards town. It was so much fun. I felt like I was running through one big continual sprinkler! After I finished the race, I hiked back to get my tent (still raining) and stuff from the campsite and packed up. Everything was still dry on the inside of the tent (thank you North Face), so I was able to put on some dry clothes. Of course, I didn’t bring a change of shoes so I had to put back on my squishy running shoes. I headed back through the rain (this time I was wearing my rain poncho) to town for some quick eats before I boogied over to catch the boat back to Long Beach. Good times.

It was great to get back to SD to run this race. Back when I originally lived in SD, if anyone would have said "Dave, you are going to run from Del Mar Fairgrounds to the La Jolla Cove" I would have replied "What are you on?" LOL. Well, that is exactly what we did for this race. It was a pretty amazing run too. We started off at around 7:30am when it was pretty chilly, but it warmed up quickly. Amazing how a couple miles into a race, temperature becomes forgotten - thoughts focus on the course.

We ran a gradual upgrade for about 4 to 6 miles, then the real kicker came - 2 miles up a very steep grade. After that hill, it seemed like a piece of cake finishing the remailing 7 miles. It was beautiful to finish the race at the Cove. I had visions of me running all the way into the ocean!! After the race was complete, I stretched and lounged on the lawn on the cliffs above the water. I was just basking in the sheer beauty and power of that place. The race itself was extremely organized and I highly recommend it. They put on a pasta dinner the night before and after the race had all types of goodies. They even provided shuttle services back to your car at the Fairgrounds which I thought was great.

OK, remember how amazed you were when little and riding to school in those old yellow buses? Well, image donating blood (yes, voluntarily) on one of those. Not a pretty site. While I was in Florida, there was a blood drive. I walked out to give my donation and was told it was out in the parking lot. OK. I go out there and there it is - what looked to me like an old converted school bus! I thought to myself, I hope they don't try to move this thing while I am hooked up! Seriously, it was OK. Everyone was very professional and efficient. In fact, one of the nurses was kind enough to snap a few pics of me in the chair. Check them out.

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