Walking with the L.A. Roadrunners

Wow, was it cold and dry this morning--freezing cold, very unusual for Los Angeles. There was also a breeze which made it seem even colder. Some people showed up bundled up but I just put on a light thermal top under my usual racing shirt and glove liners on my hands. It worked fine once I warmed up.

I met up with Lindsey Goldbloom's group at around 6:30am (still quite dark at that hour) at Venice Beach and was surprised to find that there were lots of other walking groups. The Roadrunners had about five groups and there were several walking groups from the L.A. Leggers too. It turns out that Linsey heads the fastest walking group for the L.A. Roadrunners.

There were about eight people in the group, everyone but one had more experience than me. I was able to keep up quite nicely until mile 17 when I tripped on a bump in sidewalk and fell down. I jumped back on my feet and announced that I was fine, but it did shake me up, scraped my knee and threw off my pace for the rest of the workout. I faded back about a minute or two from the pack but caught up with a couple of the walkers on the last mile and passed them. It was tough, but that was the right group for me--challenging but not out of my league.

We started in Venice Beach, went up the Santa Monica Pier bridge to California street then all the way around the Marina to Playa del Rey and back. I wasn't familiar with the mile markers and we took some strange detours so I wasn't able to keep track of most of my mile split times. When it was all over some of the people with GPS watches said that we went over 20 miles, somewhere between 2.4 and 2.6, let's just call it 20.5 miles.

20.5 Miles
Average Pace - 12:43 minutes per mile
Total Workout - 4:20:52

Would I do it again? Sure, it was great getting that group support and with the aid stations I didn't go through all my Hydralyte. Next time I'd take less liquids and more gels.