Race Re-cap - The Great Race of Agoura

I have been looking forward to this race for years! I signed up two years ago and had to back out. This year I signed up the week registration opened. It's billed as one of the best 10ks in the country, and it's right in my backyard....how exciting is that?

Pre-race (man, I look tired!)

Well, I had to back out of the 10k, just not up to it while pregnant, but I managed to still snag a spot in the 5k. I went to the expo, picked up my packet - and that's where things started to go downhill :(

Now, I wanted to love this race. I was so so excited about it, but I didn't really. It was fine. It was probably the biggest race, in terms of participants, that I have ever been to. There are two half marathons, a 10k, 5k and a 1 mile.

So the expo was clearly laid out, nicely staffed, free samples, easy to navigate. But the volunteer who gave me my shirt was down right rude. Whatever, she must have been having a bad day. I grabbed a free chocolate covered strawberry on the way out (I deserve it, right?) and immediately spit it out. It was completely brown and mushy. Yuck.

The next day I started looking up parking and just about freaked out. It is the most confusing parking situation ever. There were a dozen different spots - many of which said, "good for early 10k participants" or "perfect for the Cheeseboro half" - not one of them specifically said anything about the 5k, and a lot of them spefiically said they'd be closed during the time one wold arrive for the 5k. Very unclear and frustrating.

So the day of I decided to try my luck, drove around a random neighborhood until I found something, was super glad I had my phone to tell me how to get out of the weird winding streets (since there were no signs) and finally made it to where the race (almost) started. I decided to stop and use the outhouse.Worst mistake.  Though since I am pregnant, I probably didn't have a choice :) That was the dirtiest, nastiest outhouse I have "visited" in a long, long time. I know there are tons of people at the race, but oh my god, so so gross.

Mulling around waiting for the race to begin (narrow start!)

I finally managed to make it to the start (sitting around in people's driveways) - waited to figure out when to start (since there were so many people I couldn't hear the announcer) - and finally started. I nearly got knocked over three times. There were too many people for such a narrow street. High schoolers were locking arms and singing, runners were weaving in and out, there were just too many people. Finally I got out of the gauntlet and started enjoying the race!

It was pretty flat and downhill, and it was a beautiful morning, perfect temperature, I felt great after running - the little bean isn't adding too much time to my race, so all was well. I enjoyed the crowds cheering at the end, and running the last bit through grass was fun. It was nice to get a finishers medal for even the 5k.

(Update 4/4) - After reading my blog, the Race Director called and offered to give me a medal for my IRun4 buddy! Even though I couldn't figure out the day of, they ended up being very generous :)

Post-race waiting in the long pancake line - since there were no race photos of me - selfie is the only baby-bump photo :)

Free pancake was awesome. Even had strawberries on top!

Lastly, I was super excited to get the e-mail with the website for race photos. Alas, of the thousands of pictures up, no pictures of me :( I would have loved to have one of me running pregnant! Oh well.

Best part was getting an egg, bacon, cheese bagel afterwards!

Regardless,there were happy, smiling people, a free pancake and a short drive from home. I probably won't return based on this experience, but I'm still glad I went!

I might stick to smaller races in the future though, I really like the more personal touch! What do you think...big races or smaller ones?