Dozens of runners who crossed the finish line at Sunday's Binational Half Marathon came back to an unwelcome surprise: their cars were gone. The 13.1-mile race began in San Ysidro and crossed into Tijuana, and by Sunday afternoon a long line had formed outside the Western Towing office as participants scrambled to track down their missing vehicles.
According to FOX 5 San Diego, the race website had listed Las Americas Premium Outlets and Baja-Mex Ped West Parking as two designated parking areas for runners. The site specifically promised that Las Americas would let participants leave their cars there on race day without the risk of being towed, according to the Binational Race website. A third option at 4575 Camino De La Plaza in San Ysidro offered a $12 race-day rate for runners who showed their bib at the entrance.
Runner Bernice Diaz told the station that she and her sister parked in the Las Americas Premium Lot, and that her car was towed anyway. Another participant, Alex Rodriguez, said race personnel had directed him to park at San Ysidro Village, near Popeyes — and that his car was simply gone when he got back. Rodriguez said Binational team members blamed him for parking where they had told him to go.
Organizers Point to an Unauthorized Lot
The Binational Race Team pushed back on the runners' accounts in a statement to the same outlet, saying all reported towing incidents actually occurred at the San Ysidro Village parking lot near Ross and Popeyes — a location the team says was never authorized for race parking. The team also said no Binational Race staff members were assigned to direct or manage vehicle traffic or parking within or outside Las Americas Premium Outlets, directly disputing Rodriguez's claim that he had been sent there by race personnel.
That leaves a sharp conflict between runners and organizers over who, if anyone, pointed drivers toward the lot where the tows happened. Diaz's account adds another wrinkle, since she says her car disappeared from Las Americas itself — the lot the race website specifically promised would be safe. Runners told the station they had simply followed the parking directions posted on the official event website, and that they ended up paying hundreds of dollars to get their cars back from the impound yard.
A Cross-Border Course With a High-Stakes Detour
The Binational Half Marathon is billed on its own site as a 13.1-mile course connecting two cities and two countries, with runners crossing the international border at the San Ysidro–El Chaparral checkpoint around the 10-kilometer mark. The crossing is part of the course. Instead, this year's edition is being remembered by some for the chaos that greeted them back at the parking lot.
As later reported by the New York Post, the towing dispute has drawn attention well beyond San Diego, with some runners alleging that race officials steered them into spaces that were never designated as official parking in the first place. The dossier's underlying reporting does not establish how many vehicles were towed in total, who authorized the tows, or whether the towing company, Las Americas Premium Outlets, or San Ysidro Village property managers have responded to the allegations.
California law does regulate how vehicles can be towed from private property open to public parking, and the City of San Diego maintains a page explaining those rules, according to the City of San Diego. That page addresses the general legal framework for towing from private lots, though it does not speak to whether any particular tow from Sunday's race was lawful. For now, the dispute over who told whom to park where remains unresolved, with runners and race organizers offering starkly different versions of what happened before the starting gun even fired.
