120 mile TT: Ya'll are runnin!

Last Friday saw the Noodle Bagz crew take on the NoShortcuts Time Trial. A 120 mile team relay race from LA to SD. The 8 member team went on to finish 4th overall with a serious effort from the boys involved. Check the full race recap below:

The Logistics

Being a SoCal brand we’ve often made the drive between LA and SD. So, imagine our surprise when we were asked to enter a team in the NoShortcuts Time Trial. A race that starts in Santa Monica and finishes in Pacific Beach around 120 miles of running. Turns out the logistics are more complex than the actual running. We committed with little training prep, a few eager lads, decent tans, and brand new rented Merc Sprinter. We drove up to LA the night before, filled with snacks, energy gels, icy hot, sunscreen, confidence, and very very long playlist.

The Route

We lined up at the start at 5am on the Santa Monica pier with the only expectation that this would be a long day. Starting gun went off and our first runner kicked on at a furious 5 minute mile pace. From the pier we headed east towards LA passing through Venice, Westchester, Inglewood, and Southgate before finally heading south along the LA River (river is a loose term, IYKYK). We ran until we finally made it to Seal Beach and hit the coast. From there it was the Pacific Coast Highway all the way to San Clemente; Huntington, Newport, Laguna, and Dana Point. We then jumped in the van to take the short, highway only, route through Camp Pendleton and restarted in Oceanside. Now we were on home turf and the last 30 miles saw the boys pick up speed. Encinitas, Cardiff, Solana, Del Mar up Torrey Pines… down to La Jolla Shores, then back up to La Jolla Cove and finally through Bird Rock to Pacific Beach. One Hundred Twenty Miles.

The Tactics

We did a bit of research and figured out that the best strategy for the fastest time was to try and make the run stretches a short as possible. 500-1000m running at a time. This way you could sprint all out for a few minutes and then have 4 - 6 times the rest. This meant that the driving had to be on point, runner goes, van speeds ahead approximately a kilometer, quick hand off and then the van zooms ahead again. Approximately every 4 minutes for 13 hours. These tactics helped the Noodle Bagz crew pull off a 4th place finish, and maintain a pace of 6:46 minutes per mile for the entire 13 hours. Not too shabby for a bunch of washed up footy players. (Authors note, we did recruit a current USA Rugby olympian Stephen Tomasin, unfortunately he was currently in the off season so he only had 6 of his abs and not all 8)

Final Thoughts

There is a real joy when running down some of the coast in California. It somehow made the burning lungs and legs much more bearable. It showed us some new spots along the coast that we would never have seen. Running past some iconic SoCal spots was also very special. Thanks to NoShortcuts for putting on an epic event. We’ll take a much needed break from running for a few weeks!

Check out the race page here: No Shortcuts TT

images by Kat Thompson