This past Sunday I completed step one of the Conqur LA Challenge at the Santa Monica Classic. The day before, I ran in the Ventura Adventure Race. I was originally signed up for the Ventura Marathon on Sept 11, but once I was selected to be a Conqur Endurance Ambassador, I opted to do the Conqur LA Challenge instead. Luckily they offered a few events on Saturday that I could transfer my registration to. Initially, I transferred to the 30-mile bike ride, then I noticed the adventure race and switched to that.
Packet pickup was on Friday near the Ventura Pier with the option to pickup on race morning, picked mine up Friday so I could sleep in a little. The reusable bag came with race flyers, a tech shirt, a trucker hat (meh), a clif nut butter bar (yay), and a few other snacks. The race was advertised as being chip timed, but they ended up doing manual timing. Vendurance normally uses bib timing chips, so I imagine quite a few would've been destroyed or bent on obstacles.
Wave 1, I'm on the left in the light blue shirt
The race started at 9:30, so I got there around 8:30 to get a quick 1-mile warm-up in and stretch out a little. They assigned people to one of 3 waves based on estimated pace, I was thrown in wave 1. The start line was just south of the Ventura Pier and it was on the beach. After race director Josh Spiker went over a quick course rundown and a few words on safety, wave 1 was off and running. The first 1/3 mile was on the sand, way tougher than I imagined that would be and killed my initial pace. After a quick right turn on to the bike path, the first obstacle finally appeared. It was a short run through a maze of tires and a leap over a wall of tires, quick and easy. The next 1/3 mile was along the bike path and then it was a short uphill jog in the sand back on to the beach where obstacle 2 was located. They had a bunch of empty home depot buckets with blue tape about 1/4 way up from the bottom. Volunteers instructed people to fill the bucket to the line and carry it about 200 meters to a turnaround sign and back. Some people were filling the buckets by hand which seemed like would take a while, so I just dragged mine through the sand real quick. After dumping the sand out of my bucket, the course stayed on the beach for almost a mile. I tried to get as close to the ocean as possible where the sand wasn't as loose. At this point, I was back near the start line for obstacle 3, a low crawl under some cables. This is usually where some OCR events toss in some barbed wire. Since there was none of that, I didn't worry about how much I hit the cable while crawling under them.
Low crawl
After a short jog on the sand and under the pier, it was time for obstacle 4. There were two large black tubes that we had to jump over and then run another 200m before leaving the beach leading up to the promenade.
Dolphin Jump/Totally Tubular
I tried to make up a little time since the course was finally back on the pavement before getting to obstacles 5-8. The 5th was a jump over a 5-foot wall where obstacles 6-8 were ready to be tackled, I'll just let the pictures tell the story of those.
Packet pickup was on Friday near the Ventura Pier with the option to pickup on race morning, picked mine up Friday so I could sleep in a little. The reusable bag came with race flyers, a tech shirt, a trucker hat (meh), a clif nut butter bar (yay), and a few other snacks. The race was advertised as being chip timed, but they ended up doing manual timing. Vendurance normally uses bib timing chips, so I imagine quite a few would've been destroyed or bent on obstacles.
Wave 1, I'm on the left in the light blue shirt
The race started at 9:30, so I got there around 8:30 to get a quick 1-mile warm-up in and stretch out a little. They assigned people to one of 3 waves based on estimated pace, I was thrown in wave 1. The start line was just south of the Ventura Pier and it was on the beach. After race director Josh Spiker went over a quick course rundown and a few words on safety, wave 1 was off and running. The first 1/3 mile was on the sand, way tougher than I imagined that would be and killed my initial pace. After a quick right turn on to the bike path, the first obstacle finally appeared. It was a short run through a maze of tires and a leap over a wall of tires, quick and easy. The next 1/3 mile was along the bike path and then it was a short uphill jog in the sand back on to the beach where obstacle 2 was located. They had a bunch of empty home depot buckets with blue tape about 1/4 way up from the bottom. Volunteers instructed people to fill the bucket to the line and carry it about 200 meters to a turnaround sign and back. Some people were filling the buckets by hand which seemed like would take a while, so I just dragged mine through the sand real quick. After dumping the sand out of my bucket, the course stayed on the beach for almost a mile. I tried to get as close to the ocean as possible where the sand wasn't as loose. At this point, I was back near the start line for obstacle 3, a low crawl under some cables. This is usually where some OCR events toss in some barbed wire. Since there was none of that, I didn't worry about how much I hit the cable while crawling under them.
Low crawl
After a short jog on the sand and under the pier, it was time for obstacle 4. There were two large black tubes that we had to jump over and then run another 200m before leaving the beach leading up to the promenade.
Dolphin Jump/Totally Tubular
I tried to make up a little time since the course was finally back on the pavement before getting to obstacles 5-8. The 5th was a jump over a 5-foot wall where obstacles 6-8 were ready to be tackled, I'll just let the pictures tell the story of those.
Once done with those obstacles, the course followed the same path back on the promenade down to the beach and the tubes from earlier. This time, instead of jumping over them, I had to crawl through them. After I was out of the second one, it was a short "sprint" in the sand to the finish line where my medal was waiting! My finish time was 41:57, which put me 29th out of 119.
Upon finishing I grabbed some water and headed down to the beach to cool off and clean the sand off. The post race party had a live band and a beer garden run by local brewery MadeWest. I used my free beer voucher to have a glass of their outstanding pale ale. If you are ever in Ventura, definitely check their place out.
This was a really fun
event and very well done considering it was the first time they have offered
it. Another perk of this event, free
race pictures! If it's part of Ventura
Marathon weekend next year, I'll definitely sign up again!
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