Race Recap: Lexus Lace Up Palos Verdes 10K

Lexus Lace Up Palos Verdes 10K

November 14 | Palos Verdes, CA 

Photo courtesy of Lexus Lace Up. 

I was obviously going to be doing this race all along, but when Tina said she'd be in town I knew I had to jump at the chance to get to run with her! Even better, when I got moved from pacing 2:30 to 2:00 on Sunday, I knew I shouldn't be running the half on Saturday, so I took the opportunity to run the 10K instead (a hilly course throughout) and spend an extra hour (and 9 minutes) with my bestie. 

Tina and I left the house about 5:15 to make the hour-ish drive down to PV and find parking. Turns out we found the one parking lot that required you to take the shuttle down to the race start, so we found some random porto-potties first (hooray no lines!) and made our way to the shuttles. Turns out, one of the four hired bus drivers showed up that morning, so the poor man was angry and frazzled as he was the only one carting people back and forth. Needless to say, there were tons of us still on the top of the hill at 6:45 when the half and 10K were supposed to start at 7 (5K at 7:05). A member of the race staff came running over and told us the race would be starting late. 

We caught the second run of the bus driver and got down to the race area just about 7. Easy peasy packet pick up -- I love that these races are small enough (1,000 runners among the three distances) so race-day pick up is a breeze -- t-shirt, bib, bag, check! Gear check wasn't an issue either, as nearly everyone else (save for a few of us, like Tina and I!) had already been settled for a while.

Finally, about 7:20 we were off. Tina runs 4:1 intervals lately with some knee issues, so I told her I'd stick with her and have a fun, easy day! She just got a new interval timer so it wasn't cooperating so I all of a sudden was counting minutes - which I think helped keep me distracted too. Sometimes we'd walk an extra minute, so I'd have us run an extra minute! The rolling hills were enough to keep your muscles in check but for a girl from Phoenix, these hills were a new concept for Tina! I used to live down near this race, so I knew exactly what was coming for us. 

The course is pretty non-descript, just a main road along the coast - but the views are certainly something to behold. 

Miles flew by for me, Tina powered up hills as best as she could and we were at the turnaround before we knew it. The only super crappy hill is the long one just after the 10K turnaround, and it was even before this point that I decided I was glad I didn't do the half that day. The 10K was just what I needed and challenging enough to get a good workout in.

Tina said her PR was somewhere around a 1:11 - she knew she hadn't broken 1:10 yet, so I kept banking on the fact that if we kept our intervals up at a decent pace, she'd PR that day! I didn't tell her this and she wouldn't let me tell her at the one point I wanted to, so I kept pushing our intervals, pushing pace just a little (sorry Tina!) and got her to run the last .2 all the way into the finish! PR, yo! 

We found our way through the finish area. Unlike Irvine, this parking lot was super tight, so tables and tents were right on top of each other. We found our way to gear check, post-race snacks (animal cookies might be my new favorite post-race munchie ever) and got changed to find our way to the food truck and beer garden.

On our way, I commented that one of the things I love about this series is the ability to check your results on the TV screen right then and there. For the first time ever (of the two previous Lace Up races I've done) they had a volunteer sitting there to type in information. Clearly this girl was from a local high school group or something and she was just taught how to type in bib numbers and pull up results because when she first pulled up Tina, her results said "11:06:07." The girl goes, "Um, yeah, like 11 minutes, right?" We laughed and said that wasn't humanly possible (1:47 pace). So we pulled up mine, which said the same thing, and she goes, "So like, 11 hours then?" Um, no hunny, I didn't start running last night. *sigh* We figured they'd upate later on that day. On to the beer! 

I'm not usually the one to take my  beer, but it was cold and actually sounded kind of good - I only drank about half my Sierra Nevada, but oh well. There was also supposed to be post-race brunch from Scratch, but it turns out the space (parking lot) where the race was wasn't permitted for a food truck, so they just had a booth set up. Post-race brunch? More like a salad and some kind of mushroom empanada thing...

Ew. So we packed up, walked our way back to the bus, and headed home. Good thing we had leftover pizza from the night before anyway! 

I'm so glad I got time with Tina and am so glad we got to run together too! We haven't since Ragnar Del Sol in February (also the last time I saw her, nonetheless) so this was just what I needed! Final results came in later on Saturday to confirm Tina's ~3 minute PR (formerly a 1:12:xx in the end!) and now a smashing 1:09 and change. What an awesome way to spend her morning with me! :)

What's the worst post-race food you've ever been offered?

I serve as an ambassador for the entire Lace Up series and as such, was provided my race entry complimentarily. All opinions are my own and do not reflect the opinions of other ambassadors nor the Lace Up organization.