How do i get the date from my posttype to show in my menu

For the life of my i cannot figure out how to retrieve the start date of the event from my custom posttype events table to show in the output of my custom menu.

i would like the menu to show up like this.

<ul>
    <li>event 1 | 01.02.2013</li>
    <li>event 2 | 01.02.2013</li>
    <li>event 3 | 01.02.2013</li>
    <li>event 4 | 01.02.2013</li>
    <li>event 5 | 01.02.2013</li>
 </ul>

but i cannot get the date to show no matter what i try.

function event_custom_menus() {

    $menu_name = 'home-locations-list'; // specify custom menu slug

if (($locations = get_nav_menu_locations()) && isset($locations[$menu_name])) {
        $menu = wp_get_nav_menu_object($locations[$menu_name]);
        $menu_items = wp_get_nav_menu_items($menu->term_id);

        $menu_list = '<nav id="c6 hp-loc-list-custom" class="locations-list clear" style="">' ."\n";
        $menu_list .= "\t\t\t\t". '<ul style="">' ."\n";
        foreach ((array) $menu_items as $key => $menu_item) {
            $post_meta_data = get_post_custom($post->ID);
            $race_date = get_post_meta($post->ID, '_event_start_date', true);
            $title = $menu_item->title;

            // $race_date = date("m.d.y", strtotime($post_meta_data['_event_start_date'][0]));
            //$today = date("m.d.y");
            $url = $menu_item->url;
            $menu_list .= "\t\t\t\t\t". '<li style="" class="tcr"><a class="notcr '. $title .' "  href="'. $url .'">'. $title .'  '.$race_date.'</a></li>' ."\n";
        }
        $menu_list .= "\t\t\t\t". '</ul>' ."\n";
        $menu_list .= "\t\t\t". '</nav>' ."\n";
    } else {
        // $menu_list = '<!-- no list defined -->';
    }
    echo $menu_list;
    }

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