Race Review: Carrera de los Muertos Los Angeles 5K

I was in Los Angeles 2 weeks ago for RnR Los Angeles and ended up finding the Carrera de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) 5K.  Carrera de los Muertos is a way of remembering those have passed and that was well shown at the race.

The race itself was on a Saturday and took place at Olvera Street in downtown LA. I registered last minute, so I ended up paying $55, which is high for a 5K race. I arrived at 715 AM via Uber. Olvera Street is next to Union Station, which was fun to see. It took me 5 min or so to find bib pick up and it was an absolute disaster. I stood in line for 30 minutes to get my bib because they were assigning bibs as you checked in and were scanning QRS codes that were given during registration. Simple solution should have been to have anyone who was preregistered through a certain date, should have been assigned a bib before pick up. I feel like this would have decreased wait times greatly pre race (quite frankly, I’m not getting to a 5K that starts at 8 AM at 645 for packet pick up). When I tried to get my shirt, they were out of smalls, so I had to wait until after the race to get my shirt when more smalls had shown up.

The race itself was suppose to start at 8 AM. At 755 AM, we got the announcement that the race would start at 830 AM so people could finish getting there bibs. Seriously? Second recommendation for packet pick up: have an option to pick up day before the race, not a week before the race. I ended up looking at some of the displays set up remembering those had died. I then tried getting into the start area, but it was so overcrowded. We finally did get started, but there was a lot of walkers in front who shouldn’t have been. The course itself was out and back, fairly flat and the only hill was when we were going over a bridge in Mission Junction. It took me less time to run the race than it did to 1) get my bib and 2) wait for the start. The course itself was also short by ~.15-.2 miles.

Overall, not a fan of the race. Something needs to be done about packet pick up because assigning bibs on race day for a fun run essentially isn’t working. Having the race start half an hour later because pick up was a hot mess is an issue. It was such a mess, I’m not sure I’d go back for it.