The San Clemente Ocean Festival is the greatest show on surf. Seriously, that’s the slogan for the event. The annual festival includes athletic competitions revolving around the beach. There are dory boat races, surf competitions, biathlons, stand up paddle board competitions, a sand castle building competition, and then some. While my mom & sister compete in various events throughout the two days, my dad & I are excellent spectators. (Side story: I’ve tried competing in the past and it typically ends quite poorly. For instance, I did a beach swim and was so slow the jet-ski lifeguard offered to give me a ride back to shore multiple times.)
This year, my sister had a particularly exciting experience. Early Sunday morning she and my mom did a 5k beach run. As they took off down the sandy shoreline at 8:00am, my dad and I took to overlooking the course from the wooden pier above. Since we had some time to kill and because we’re Arnolds, we made up a game. We were trying to guess what time the first runner would come in. I figured it would be a man around 8:18, allowing him to be running at a 6 minute per mile pace. Sure enough the first man ran in right beneath us at 8:18. I recalled Nicki having said she wanted to try to complete the run in 25 minutes, so at 8:20 we descended from the pier down to the beach finish line. Once we got there we realized we hadn’t seen any females yet. Just as this thought occurred we saw three women burst out from under the pier. As they came into focus, we realized we knew one of them. Nicki was charging toward us in her patented mismatched outfit in a full out sprint. We cheered, I snapped a photo finish pic, and we watched Nicki almost vomit afterward. She ended up coming in second overall for females, but first in her age division, which means gold medal for Nicki! Hooray! It was quite the eventful race.
Mom finished the 5k in a stud-like fashion and then won a bronze medal later on in the day for dominating her age division in a beach swim. Go family members.
man, that would've been gross if i ACTUALLY vomited.
ReplyDeletealso, i think you forgot multiple 1s in this post..8:18 is lightning speed for a 5k.
I meant 8:18am...not 8:18 timing. We weren't timing them down to the second.
Deletebut...timing them at 8:18 min/mile is still down to the second...
ReplyDeleteNoooo. I'm saying we thought a man would come in at 8:18AM, as in a time of day, it's what time my iPhone said it was at our current location in the world.
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