Orange curtain ultra marathon February 2016

Orange Curtain Ultra Marathon
By Alan S


Well, after such a positive experience running at Surf City 1/2 marathon barefoot as well as great encouragement on here, I have decided to run a full at OC marathon on May 1st, 2016. This left me with 12 weeks of training between the surf city 1/2 marathon I completed on February 7th 2016 and the full I want to complete.

I also figured I'd complete a few races as long run days as my training progressed.

The Orange curtain ultra marathon is a race I had my eye on as it is close to me, very barefoot-able and an easy "dip of the toe" into the ultra world. So, I jumped at the chance when I noticed that they opened a 10k/20k division for friends and family members of the more typical 50k/100k real runners.

The course is along a Southern California bike path that is adjacent to a concrete river system that travels through several cities. This section travels through Cerritos, Lakewood and Long Beach (bordering Orange and Los Angeles Counties). The bike path is paved in asphalt, and in good condition other than one small section which is an under pass where water pools during rain and leaves it very rough and bumpy.

Parks line most of the river bed on both sides which help to distract from the sad and boring concrete city river system. There were also many people out walking, jogging, and biking on the path, which I thought was nice and a distraction as well. The route is an out and back 10k with aid stations at the start and the turn around.

I started at 8:00am as a 20k racer. The 50k and 100k runners had already started. The race director and others at the start were very friendly and had a great aid station set up as well. The weather was great, chilly with a little fog, which I soaked up as I knew it was supposed to be over 80 degrees (F) by mid day.

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I felt great and ran my fist 10k leg saying hello and encouraging the other runners as they did the same to me. I did feel a tightness in my right hip which made me baby it the first leg trying to feel out the race course. There were some bike clubs that were very professional looking and sounding shouting commands to fellow bikers that were drafting each other on the path. There was a small bit of glass from a broken beer bottle that I didn't notice until it was too late as I was saying 'hello' to a fellow runner. I stayed gentle and didn't have any problems.

See Ken Bob's video on that.


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Barefoot Ted ran this race years back.

I'm going to run the 50K next year! This was a blast. I stayed after hanging and helping and talking to people for another 2 hours. I had a great run and it was with some great people.

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Hi Alan, thanks for sharing! I have copied your report to the home page. :barefoot:
 
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Congrats! sounds like you are enjoying your barefoot journey:)
 
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cool. That runs right by my sisters house. I've used that path to get to Cerritos park before.
 
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