Trail Running Blog

Surf City 10K Race Report

Disclaimer: I received free entry to Surf City 10 as part of being a BibRave Pro. Learn more about becoming a BibRave Pro (ambassador), and check out BibRave.com to review find and write race reviews!

I registered for the Surf City 10 race in January, so I knew I had more than enough time to train for the race. I had initially signed up to run the 10-mile distance, but I was never able to ramp up my training enough to run that race confidently. But I was able to run the 10K without much trouble. Here are the results: 54:31 (8:46 min/mi), age group: 22/59, gender: 95/411, and overall: 142/1192. When I first registered for the Surf City 10, I was excited to run along the scenic Huntington Beach, but a few months before the race they announced that it would be a night run. I’ve had mixed results running at night, I wrote a blog post about running in the morning vs at night. When I was in high school, we went on a few night runs (with glow sticks) and I usually ran pretty fast, mostly because I was afraid of my surroundings and was trying to finish the run as soon as possible. On a similar note, running a race at night is a nice change. Instead of having to go to sleep at 9pm or earlier the night before and then waking up at 4am the day of the race is tough. I recall waking up early for one race, forcing myself out of bed while most of the world was still fast asleep. I looked in the mirror and said to myself, “why are you doing this to yourself?!” It’s a hard question to answer, it’s hard to justify putting yourself through that torture!

Surf City 10 Training Update

I registered for the Surf City 10 run back in January of this year. However, I had a few other races in the mean time so those races forced me to start training for this race earlier than I usually would. You can check out the number of miles and time spent running each month in the screenshot below. There were a few months where I almost hit 100 miles! But it was hard enough as it was to even run those miles, with so many other obligations and responsibilities. I started running consistently in January as a New Year’s Resolution and am happy to have been able to maintain that schedule pretty regularly. I basically forced myself to wake up around 6am every day and just get out of bed and run. Those first few weeks were the hardest because it was still wintertime and it was pitch black and freezing cold (think 40 degree temps). Most days I just wanted to stay in bed where it was nice and warm. But I knew I would have regretted not going for a run that day, so that didn’t happen often. As the months went by and the sun started coming out earlier in the morning, it became less of a drag to get up to run. The summer was nice because I was able to just get out of bed and go for a run in the shorts and t-shirt I slept in. And because I was up earlier in the morning, I avoided the afternoon heat.