Race Recap: Brazen New Year's Day 10k at Lake Chabot

Better late than never. So they say. And so I say. It’s been exactly 14 days since the year started and I ran my first race of the year.

It was all pretty hazy. No. No. No. You mis-understand. It was the smog and not the New Year’s Eve champagne!
We have had “Spare the Air” alerts for a few weeks before New Year’s and let me show you why:

You couldn’t see the valley, just smog everywhere. Luckily it didn’t impact my run. What did make an impact was this tiny little MONSTER HILL:

The drawing of the hill reminded me of a drawing in a book I love: The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. The drawing in the book is of a snake that has just eaten an elephant. Yeah, you should read the book…

Pretty close, right?
So as I was running I imagined crossing an elephant. Well, it was indeed a slightly bigger elephant. And I did walk up the elephant all the way. The run down was pretty nice after all.

I don’t know about you, but running up hills (and elephants) makes me hungry. I love Brazen races, because they always serve ice-cream as one of their post-race treats. And I think that’s how they get to me.

Despite the MONSTER HILL (I am sure that’s what Google calls it too), I made this my fastest Brazen 10k so far and hence started the year with a race series PR.

My running buddies, +Lauren (who writes about her tri adventures and will stand outside the San Jose Sharks ice-hockey stadium in a wetsuit soon!) ran the New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day race and got a beautiful double medal: