2021 Orange Curtain 10K

Report by: Christian Bordal

chauffeur and TCLA uber booster michael berger arrived outside my house at 6:30am in his stately new tcla team car. he had already picked up scott, riding shotgun, and oscar. one more pick up -- dean in venice -- before the party headed southeast towards cerritos at the edge of the orange curtain. cruising east on the 105, michael gave the captive audience a demonstration of the rolls' insane stereo system by blasting over the hills and far away at many decibels. impressive, if earsplitting.

arrival was a little on the late side, 7:15 for an 8am race. the parking lot was full, but we were lucky. someone was pulling out as we circled. approaching the organizers' tents, i saw phillip and javier heading out for a warm up. bibs, safety pins, and t-shirts secured, i just about had time to run through my own warm up, following the instructions eric gave me a few years back: 7 mins easy, 7 mins "at your normal running pace" (whatever that means), and 3-4 mins tempo, some drills/stretching, and 4 strides. i only had time to finish two and get back to the starting line 4 mins before start.

my last race was the christmas 10k in venice at the end of 2019, a year and a half ago and a few weeks before pandemic lockdown. my goal in that race was to stay under 6:45 pace, and i ran 6:43. i didn't really know what to expect this time around, but i wanted to be around 6:45 again, preferably under. i felt like that should be doable.

gwen was also running, and she was shooting for a similar time, so we went out together and let the sub-6 group charge ahead. i had the usual adrenaline burst for the first few yards, but quickly dialed it back. oscar did the same; he was maybe 30-40 yards ahead.

the course is an out-and-back on a bike path running along the san gabriel river (another cement channel a la the LA river). there were plenty of bikers riding through, as well as other runners doing longer distances (100k/50k/30k races were going on simultaneously). not sure exactly, but i think the 10k had about 30-35 runners total. not a big race. but, as gwen had warned us, it did include colin farrell. pictures, anyone?

after a little more than a mile (strava estimates i ran the 1st mile in 6:41) a runner in a white shirt -- i'll call him juan -- passed me; and soon after, gwen decided i was moving too slowly, and went by, too. i let juan go and he started closing on oscar, but i picked up the pace a little and more or less stayed with gwen.

gwen and i hit 3 miles right at 20 mins, so we'd averaged 6:40 to that point. somewhere around there, we passed the leaders going in the opposite direction. javier and phillip were trailing not too far behind in 3rd and 4th. then we hit the turnaround cone and headed back to the big orange start gate.

as with any race, i guess, you're always trying to judge whether you've picked the right pace: whether you can hold it all the way in or whether you can even pick it up a bit. somewhere around mile 4, i started picking up the pace a little. not sure why, other than i knew we were getting closer to home and my body was ready to get this thing over with.

the bike path ran under a few bridges along the way. at this point, i looked up and saw another bridge in the distance. thinking it was the last bridge, where the start gate sat, i kept pushing the pace a little harder (strava says 6:31 for mile 5), i passed gwen and juan and started closing on oscar before i realized the bridge ahead was not the finish line (note: this would have been obvious to anyone whose blood hadn't deserted his brain to provide oxygen elsewhere). at the dip under this second-to-last bridge i caught up to oscar and passed him on the other side.

if i hadn't mistaken the bridges, i probably wouldn't have started to increase my effort quite so early. i don't know how that might have changed things. strava tells me i ran mile 6 in 6:33.

with maybe 800 to go, i thought i heard gwen's breathing somewhere behind me and tried to finish strong. final time, 41:11 (6:38 pace), which is a PR for me. (not that surprising: as many of you know, i started running late in life to support my soccer habit. i haven't run very many of these: i don't race much.)

final results haven't yet been posted, but i know that javier got 3rd and ran 37:05, phillip came in 4th, i was 6th, gwen was right behind me (2nd place for women overall - i predict the first and last time i ever come in ahead of gwen in a race), oscar in 9th. i also saw clarence, dean, scott, and michael berger come in running strong.