The drive from Redwood City started at 7am. The destination was the Castle Rock Park just south of Walnut Creek in the east bay. That would be the starting line of the 2014 Save Mount Diablo Trail Challenge. I made a wrong turn in Walnut Creek onto Walnut Blvd, I was looking for Walnut Avenue. That set me back on my arrival time which should have been 8am but now looked like 8:15 at best. That will leave 15 minutes to get my bib and get ready to run at the 8:30 start time. When I finally got within a mile of the park I noticed all of these runners parking at the high school. The traffic was grid locked but I was determined to get through to the park. When we got there we were told the parking lots were full so we had to turn around and drive back to the high school where a shuttle would pick us up and bring us back to the park. I jumped out of the car, told my wife to do the shuttle and I started off in the direction of the crowd flow. Moments later a guy came jogging by and my worried mind told me that under the circumstances I had better start jogging to the bib pick up too. I was certain the race start would be delayed. With all of the people back at the high school and that long line of cars piled up waiting to be told to turn around there was no way Brazen could start this race in the next 10 minutes. My light warm up jogging covered about a half mile from the parking lot to the sign in booth. I got through the line, pinned on my bib and noticed a crowd starting to form near the start. Sure enough the pre-race announcements started and this race was about to get underway. I called my wife to see if she made it to the shuttle yet and she had not! She too figured the race would have to delay the start. I told her not to worry about it, I would see her at the finish because the race was going to start any minute. I'm dying to know how many, if any, runners missed the start of the half due to this parking situation. I certainly would have if I had either went to the shuttle parking lot as instructed or if I had walked to the sign-in booth not realizing it was a half mile down the road. I got lucky with some key decisions. How many others were not so lucky? If you know of any I would love to hear about it in the comments section below.
