TBA
UCLA Tri-team Bruin 5k
Offical event photos.
UCLA Triathlon Team's Bruin 5k, plus food, and fires, and air pollution... lots of people probably didn't run this race because of the three massive fires creating some of the worst air quality seen in our lifetimes, but being young and stupid, Team SSC ran anyway.
The tip-off should have been when we did our warm-up lap from the IM field up Janss steps to the top of the Royce Quad. As we climbed the steps, the air visibly got worse. We were wheezing by the top. Uh-oh...
The course was the north half of the UCLA perimeter, starting at the IM field, running up Sunset Blvd, cutting through the dorms at Bellagio down to Bruinwalk, then up past Dickson Plaza, past Public Affairs, back to the perimeter and along the perimeter til it was time to cut back to the IM field. Tons started off fast, then as the elevation climbed, you could almost see the smoke increase in thickness and people started to slow down. David, Mike, and Albert slowly pulled away from Jarett and I as all three of us cruised uphill, then downhill they really pulled away.
People on the downhill started to spread out, Jarett had pulled away as we hit the flat part of Bruinwalk, then back uphill after just a few hundred feet of flat left people dying again. I caught a bunch of people as we continued uphill, then passed them, and ended up just 4/10ths of a second behind Jarett at the end and at the end of a big pack of people who crossed the finish line at around the 23:48 mark.
Quite a bit of fun to run on a psuedo-cross-country race... but ultimately the air quality sucked, the event was small, and medals and results took a while to get organized, which killed the mood a bit. Still, it was fun!
Afterwards, more photos of the horrorific air around 1pm, then lunch at Qdoba, and dinner at some Mexican joint near Santa Monica College (SMC).