Day 1 - 5/20/16:
We started to Socal this afternoon for a few events we'd booked for the weekend. Our first event there would be the Fun in the Sun Fun Run at the beach in Long Beach the next morning so we found good parking right by the start line and got ready to sleep. Sleeping was close to impossible though. It took several hours to get to sleep and we kept waking up.
Day 2 - 5/21/16 (Fun in the Sun Run & US Sumo Open 2016):
The race start/finish was here:
5400 E. Ocean Blvd
Long Beach, CA 90803
(off of 54th Place and Ocean Blvd)
As usual, we were kinda tired when it was time to get up. We got ready though and headed to the start line. Then we got warmed up, wished each other luck, and started our races at 7:30am - Sean in the half marathon and me in the 5k. They also had a 10k and 15k. I'd wanted to do the 15k but wasn't brave enough this time. I won the 5k though, placing 1st female overall and getting a first place medal to go with my finishers medal. (Being a smaller race, they didn't have an awards ceremony but gave out place medals at the finish.) Well, technically I was 8th place out of 82 overall but the first 7 people were men. Still, I actually did HORRIBLY and got an awful time, despite trying really hard... I keep getting worse! I guess it's time to start taking running more seriously and figure out what the heck I'm doing wrong. Anyway, at the finish line I had a little over an hour to wait for Sean after getting my medals and catching my breath. During that time, I got to snack on and collect a few goodies near the finish while listening to their funny playlist that consisted of Eye of the Tiger, Chariots of Fire, and a couple of other songs that happen to be on the dance game Stepping Selection. :p Sean didn't leave me waiting too long. He was the 3rd half marathon runner to finish out of 61 total and got hiss 3rd place medal, along with his finishers medal, to show for it! We spent a short while recovering, chatting with other runners, and consuming more goodies before leaving for our next activity.
We'd booked a Groupon deal for entry to the US Sumo Open 2016 there in Long Beach so we drove to the Walter Pyramid at Cal State Long Beach, where it was being hosted, stopping for a couple of In-N-Out burgers on the way. It was our first time watching live sumo and it wasn't at all what I'd expected. I'd thought every sumo wrestler would be around 400 pounds or more and male but on the contrary a lot of them were fairly average in size, they had both female and male divisions, and each gender had 3 weight divisions (lightweight, middleweight, heavyweight). There was a competition for each gender's weight division as well as the open weight division, where sumo wrestlers of any weight could compete against those of any other weight within their gender. Everyone wore a sumo belt, I guess it's called, while wrestling. Some of the guys wore shorts under and all of the ladies wore leotards (kinda like onesies with shorts on bottom and tank tops on top, actually) under. A lot of the guys had nothing visible under though. So many buttcheeks! Aside from all the buttcheeks, the most memorable part of the event for me was when a retired sumo wrestler who was there as a judge for the event was introduced as Yama, the heaviest Japanese person ever recorded. Funny, there are a LOT of Americans larger than him, I'm sure! He was definitely a big guy though. We were there for HOURS. A lot of people left after a couple of hours but we stayed til the very end of the awards ceremony, amused and unable to pull ourselves away any earlier.
Our friends had invited us to a going away party for our PIU friend Jessica Collette who would be moving across the country, hopefully temporarily, to sort out some things with her family. The party was at the house we'd taken our friend Josh Thomas/Nova to view when he was looking at a place a good while back. Our friend Ervin and his girlfriend Jessica, the one now moving, had later moved in with him, hence the party location. We went to the party after sumo was over and were greeted by friends and friends of friends. We spent the rest of the evening playing fun video games (like modern board or card games but using a game console, tv, and our phones), eating super healthy foods Jessica had made, and even trying Josh's DDR machine for the first time! It was a SuperNova machine running DDR Extreme in the living room. My type of setup! :D Of course, I had to add it to my DDR binder, ddrfreak (without the address, obviously!), and my Groovestats profile. Yet another Cali location. Yay! More friends came to hang out and play and eat with us through the evening but it finally got a little late for us and Sean and I had to say our goodbyes and head out.
From there, we drove an hour to Corona, CA for yet another race the following morning. The race this time: the Nude 5k at the Glen Eden Nudist Resort!! It'd be our first time running a nude race as well as our first time at a nudist resort and I was sooo excited. It was actually mostly on the way back towards Vegas too. Perfect! We stopped to get some Del Taco for dinner and then drove to Glen Eden, parking just down the road from it a bit to sleep til morning.
Day 3 - 5/22/16 (Nude 5k):
In the morning, we went into the resort:
Glen Eden Nudist Resort
25999 Glen Eden Rd
Corona, CA US 92883
Inside, we immediately saw older, fully nude people. It was a bit of a shock to see suddenly but after that initial shock seemed so natural to me. We parked in the designated lot, stripped down to our birthday suits, and headed to the resort's registration they had set up for the event to get checked in. They gave us each a shirt and a tote bag then and other goodies a short walk from there at the race start location both before and after the race. The race itself started a bit late. Once it did start, it wound through the neighborhood there and we were greeted, cheered on, and given water by everyone along the way standing and sitting outside their RVs and homes to watch us! The race was really hilly, longer than expected (3.24 miles), and tough but I surprised myself and did much better than expected considering! Sean did amazingly as well! We both got 2nd place in our age groups, Sean got 3rd overall but was deemed 2nd because the 2nd place person accidentally continued on and ran a 3rd lap, and I got 3rd female overall. We got some badass medals for it too! Sean even got a laurel/crown thing made of faux leaves for coming in the top 3 overall! (It would've only been guys getting overall top 3 medals and laurels/crowns since the overall awards weren't gender separated but the actual 2nd place male's time didn't end up getting counted so the 1st place female, who was technically 4th overall, was presented with the 3rd place awards.) Hopefully next year they'll gender separate and everyone will be placed correctly but it was still an amazing race, incredibly fun, and impressively handled considering it was their first year doing it! As for Sean's and my performances:
Sean:
-Chip Time: 21:02.113
-Clock Time: supposedly 21:02.113 (they obviously made a recording error)
-Overall: 3 of 107
-Male 30-39: 2 of 15
-Overall Gender Place: 3
-Age Bracket Place: 2
-Overall Age Bracket Place (no gender separation): 2
Me:
-Chip Time: 25:31.956
-Clock Time: 25:36.445
-Overall: 16 of 107
-Female 20-29: 2 of 4
-Overall Gender Place: 3
-Age Bracket Place: 2
-Overall Age Bracket Place (no gender separation): 3
(^3.24 miles total distance.)
After the race, we recouped with free refreshments and socialized with the extraordinarily friendly people there. Seriously, they were the friendliest bunch I'd ever met and made a point of making us feel comfortable and welcome! The awards ceremony and raffle came next. We won a free Glen Eden refill cup from the cafe in the raffle and they even filled it with beer for us for free too! We bought a couple more beers while in the cafe and spent the rest of the day lounging in the hot tub and pool, sipping drinks, listening to live music (guy playing there even performed Faithfully by Journey!), and chatting with people there including a guy named Jeyzel who did the timing for the race and also does programming like Sean. One couple even introduced themselves and invited us to do a couple of shots with them. Finally, when the sun started going down, we headed out so we could get some Starbucks and start the long drive home to Vegas. It was hard leaving. We'd had such an amazing time. Definitely one of my best days so far this year! Can't wait to go back and do it again next year!
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