Super Bowl Sunday 10k 02/05/06

Super Bowl Sunday 10k
Redondo Beach, CA - Feb. 5, 2006

Here's the race from my perspective. After a good hard warm-up I got off the line fast and settle into the 3rd position in the paceline. This year I didn't start behind a bunch of kids and have to work my way up. The first stretch of the course was recently re-paved which was nice. The lead pack pace was pretty reasonable but had only 8-10 people or so. Fairly early on Brian Talley broke away from the pack and Howard gave chase. I hesitated and then chased too. The rest of the pack stayed back, or was sort of held back by Scott Wolf, who I think is a teammate of Brian's.

After about a mile I wasn't getting any closer to Howard, who was still chasing Brian, so I stood up and re-joined the pack. Howard eventually caught Brian and they skated together for awhile, but then Brian pulled away and won. Howard took second.

The rest of our pack more or less stayed together, maybe dropping one or two people. There weren't any really serious surges or attacks. I tried a few hoping 2 or three of us could break clear with Scott again holding down the pace of the chasers, but it didn't work out. At the end I was the first to sprint but then got passed by several people, and re-passed one of them at the line. I ended up 8th overall, 6th male.

Several SDSE members placed well in their age divisions. Alejandra got 3rd in her division, I got second, Howard won his division (& second overall), Jessica and Luis won their divisions, and Brandon, Rodney, and Joe placed well also. Also there was a guy with Jessica whose name escapes me at the moment who completed his first race at Redondo!

There's still time for the rest of the team that didn't make it to Redondo to get in a friendly bit of racing this season. The Los Alamitos 10K is February 25. That means you have 2 more weekends of Coronado to prepare for the race, and pre-registration is open until February 20!

-Carl