Oh, yeah, Hollywood!!
Awhile back a few of Jeff’s co-workers suggested they sign up for the Hollywood 10k. Since Jeff was just off his half marathon high, he signed himself up.
When we began to start looking at the logistics (packet pick up, parking, etc) it was apparent it was going to be an early morning.
The race started at 6:00am and was approx 40 mins away. It wouldn’t have been such a big deal but they warned that parking in Hollywood would be bad so plan to get there early…way early. I went to Twitter to look for any last year recaps and only heard bad news. Parking was horrible, the event ran out of water and had a horrible hill on the course.
To be honest, I tried my best to talk Jeff out of it…but he won and we set our alarm to 3:45am. When the alarm went off, we got up pretty quickly and then hit the road around 4:30am. We made one stop at the ATM for cash for parking and then hit the road.
We got to Hollywood around 5:15am and was turned away from the first lot but found parking at the second lot. We paid our $15 and parked pretty close to the finish line. As we were walking towards Hollywood Blvd we saw some people leaving a club. So crazy!
I parked myself on a bench once we hit the road and Jeff made the approximate 1 mile walk towards the start. I’m pretty sure the race started on time, because around 6:05am we saw the lead runners begin to make their way past us.
About 10 minutes later, I saw Jeff run by. I was so worried about waving to him that I forgot to take a picture! He threw me his hat and kept on running.
One pretty cool thing about the race was there were a lot of people running in costume. Superman, Wonderwoman, Marilyn Monroe – really impressed!
As the last walkers made it by us, I crossed the street and waited at the finish line for Jeff. Right on the time I expected to see him, he turned the corner and ran it in!
He ended up finishing just over one hour, maintaining a 9:42 pace! Pretty good since I think the last time he ran was last weekend. He made his way back to me right after crossing.
He said that the race was actually pretty good. They got rid of the crazy hill and had an abundance of water and lots of volunteers. The downside – the 10kers and 5kers finish in the same chute. So by the time the more speedy 10kers are finishing, they are behind the 5k walkers. There is nothing more frustrating than having to slow down your pace when you are trying to sprint to the finish line.
We headed back to the IE after the race and celebrated with some Flo’s. Perfect way to start off a Saturday morning. 
