I’ve been procrastinating long enough and I’m now 3 race recaps behind with another race this weekend so I better get a move on!
Sean & I have headed over to LA to run in Griffith Park, in downtown Los Angeles 2 out of the last 3 weekends. Our first jaunt up there was with a small group of friends for an informal marathon.
I found us a cool historic hotel about 15 minutes from the start in Koreatown. We got there around dinner time and just decided to grab dinner in the cute burger place below the hotel called Cassell’s since we had already valeted the car.
You’ll see that eating burgers before a race is now becoming a trend, which is interesting. lol
These burgers were super yummy, we also got some amazing sweet potato fries that were covered with cinnamon sugar. I’ve eaten a lot of fries, but none that were like dessert, lol. I also ordered a ginger beer that Sean & I shared, it was homemade and huge! Like 2x the size of the water glass.
Of course we couldn’t resist getting some pie. Personally I prefer fruit pie, but Sean is more of a chocolate person so we decided to try the chocolate peanut butter, which was good but the back crust was a little tough, I kept clanking my fork on the plate.
After dinner, we got our gear ready and then hit the sack. I’ve been so exhausted lately, I sleep but yet it doesn’t seem to be helping me to feel rested.
We were meeting at 6:30am so we got up around 5:15a and left the hotel around 6:00am. It was raining as we were waiting for the car to pull around and it was a little chilly.
We got to our meeting point a little bit before 6:30a, we got our gear ready, chatted with some of the other runners and then after the last runner arrived, we got started.
The loop started out with a tough technical climb up to Wisdom Tree. We got a quick photo and then headed out to the next spot, above the Hollywood Sign, we would only go to the top the first loop.
After another quick group photo there, we headed down the road to the next set of trail. Up a steep section that reminded me of a slip & slide.
From there we took an overgrown & muddy single track trail to a fire road. When we got down, we ran down the road to the horse trail, which was like a fire road.
We took the horse trail down for a bit and then we were at the bottom of the Hollywood sign. We got a few photos and then headed on. The next section included in a little more downhill fire road and a bit more road before turning onto a dirt sidewalk and heading back to our car.
Sean & I stuck together the whole “race” for the most part. He is a bit better than me on the uphill, but with his knee still getting back to normal, I was a little faster on the downhill.
It was not an easy race and I struggled up the hill to Wisdom Tree on the 4th loop. I really wanted to quit, but I pushed through and we made it finishing 4 6.2ish mile loops for a total of 26.4 miles & somewhere between 5-6,000ft of climbing and earned this amazing medal!
Afterwards we went to Howlin’ Rays Tennessee Chicken with our friends, where we stood in line for 2.5 hours to order our chicken sandwiches. They were good, but I’m not sure if they were 2.5 hour wait good, lol.
We did have a great time and of course watching Andrea eat the Howlin’ chicken was very entertaining!
Next up, I’ll recap Keira Henninger’s Griffith Park 50k.
What is the longest you’ve waited for a post race meal?
