Hollywood Movie Madness Race: May 2013

 

Today I did the Movie Madness 5K Race with my Dad.  The race started at the Hollywood Casino and since the theme was Hollywood Movies, there were several runners dressed in costumes.  Prizes were given to runners who sported the best costumes.  . They included a lady dressed as Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger Games, A family dressed as Batman, cat woman, and batbaby, and my personal favorite was the child that was dressed as Ronald Weasley from Harry potter ( he didn’t have to try very hard as he already looked a lot like Ron even without the costume). 

 

  In the spirit of Hollywood, I decided to wear my Marilyn Monroe shirt with my black running skirt to go along with my dad’s James Dean inspired tech shirt with a motorcycle on it.  Since my shirt was not a tech shirt, I had reservations about wearing it during the entire race, so before the race started I decided to just wear my black running tank.  I’m glad I made this decision. I think I would have been too warm with the t-shirt on, and running with the tank felt just perfect for the weather today.

The first thing I must comment on is the port o potty situation ( yes, this is an important situation to a runner, am I right?).  The limited amount of port o potties started to become a concern. This was the consensus among many of the runners we waited in line with.  One runner had even made the comment that there was even a port o potty rental spot around the corner somewhere. (Sure enough, we did pass about 100 or so port o potties in a parking lot on our run, of course they weren’t meant for us to use though)

We didn’t have much time to wait before it was our time to start. I didn’t look at this course beforehand so I didn’t know what to expect.  My goal time was to finish in 30 minutes. When we started and I saw that this course had some hills, I quickly change my goal time to 32 minutes.  This race was an out and back, so I had the same hills to look forward to on the way back. I tried to just concentrate on the ground below me instead of looking at the distance in front of me. I feel like I kept a pretty good pace the entire time.  I did set my Nike Fitness app so I could track my time and pace, but I didn’t turn it off right after the race, so It wasn’t accurate.   As soon as I made it up the last hill to go back to the finish line is when I picked up my pace. As I got closer and could read the clock, I saw that it had just turned to 30 minutes. I pushed myself and crossed just a few seconds later.  My official time was 30:25 which I was happy with.

Me and my Dad

After all the runners had completed the course, they had the awards ceremony.  I missed placing in my age group by just a few seconds. My dad on the other hand did an awesome job and placed first in his age group. I’m so proud of my dad! We both got medals and he received a movie madness trophy.

Afterwards there was water and food for runners as usual. I grabbed a water, but I can never eat right after a race. We also got some great US Road Running tech shirts at registration. They had run low on the men’s tech shirts so my dad received a different running t-shirt at registration but was told that he would be mailed the tech shirt when they came in. We thought that was a good deal!

This was the first time for us doing the Movie Madness Race.  Even though it wasn’t a flat course, it wasn’t a bad race and we would consider doing it again. It was a great way to spend a morning with my dad doing something active!



 





 The Movie Madness Race was sponsored by US Road Runners who also sponsor the “Get Out and Run Program”.  Check them out here http://usroadrunning.com/index.php

Finisher's medal

 

Age division trophy

 Have you ever done a US Road Running race? Have you ever placed in your age group? -M