Peter and Patty's blog

Moved...

2009-04-15T17:27:00.000-07:00

This blog has moved to peterhome.com

Live map of Colorado trip

2008-08-01T08:09:00.001-07:00

Here's a map of our trip:

View Larger Map

You can visit the album these are fed from at:

http://peterhome.smugmug.com/gallery/5590267_Tww2s#343096697_KPdao

Kelly biking video

2008-06-16T07:29:00.000-07:00

On the weekend Kelly rode her bike without training wheels for the first time.

Video on YouTube

New 5K PR such that it is

2008-05-29T13:43:00.000-07:00

On Sunday I ran the 5K race at Lake Merritt.

For me it was a new PR although I had hoped to break 26 minutes. As it was I had to settle for 26:11 ('gun time') or so, although my GPS recorded a 5K split of just under 26 minutes so that's good enough for me to use 26:00-26:05 as the basis of the half marathon I plan to run in the Fall and also for a speed work class I'm taking in June.

Obviously this isn't an especially fast 5K time, but since it was 33 seconds faster than the same time last year (my last 5K) and 4 minutes faster than 2 years ago, I think it's at least headed in the right direction. It will be interesting to see if there's much change after the speed work class as up to this point we've done almost nothing to try and increase speed, only long run endurance.

This months field was weakened by the Tilden Tough Ten the previous weekend, with many of the regular fast runners sitting this one out. Amazingly I actually placed 3rd in my age group (30-39 Male), and came in 16th out of 71 overall. Easily my best Lake Merritt placing. Unfortunately I didn't stay around for the awards.

Here's the pace/HR vs distance graph. At this point my my AT is just over 192 bpm and equates to around an 8:25 min/mile pace. Above this HR my running quickly goes anaerobic. I was feeling pretty good holding a little below this level through the 2nd mile. Interestingly at this point a couple of (small) hills and some pace fluctuations (it wasn't a closed course), didn't really alter my HR by more than a few bpm. Into the 3rd mile I decided to push the pace as best I could and see if I exploded. That didn't happen, and I did manage to keep it together. My fastest mile was the last one.

Big Sur Marathon

2008-04-28T20:54:00.000-07:00

On Sunday we took part in, and completed, the Big Sur International Marathon. This was our second marathon, and, what a difference 9 months makes.

Anyone who knows anything about this marathon knows two things:
1) it is often considered the most beautiful marathon in the country.
2) it is one of the hardest marathons in the country.

These two factors seem to be appealing to us, though it might take some soul searching to figure out our attraction to more and more difficult goals of completion rather than picking something easier and doing better. This is the kind of thing that is drawing us closer to the ultra marathoning world and further away from the flat course optimum speed marathons.

I think the reason for this is probably a combination of not being naturally fast, our desire to run our races together, and our past life hiking these same trails that we now run. We seem to be in it for the challenge of completion and the beauty of the journey. Perhaps speed will come, (and I'll come back to that in another post), but for this marathon, again, completing it was the goal, enjoying the course was paramount, and a sense that we did well and ran strong for our current abilities in the face of adversity important.

However, I was also asked several times about what time I wanted to run. Since Big Sur is said to be 20 minutes or more slower than other marathons I said if I could PR (against my other injury plagued first marathon), or break 5 hours, then that would be complete success. With the six hour time limit and the prospect of more hill running than I'd ever done, I imagined a scenario where I could only walk uphill, limp downhill and generally walk aimlessly for hours until I was either pulled from the course for taking more than 6 hours or preemptively leaped into the Pacific Ocean. I hoped that wouldn't be the case, but couldn't discount it completely as I truly wasn't certain my body was ready for this.

Finally the time had arrived. My parents were visiting from Australia and my parents-in-law took on Kelly early Saturday morning while we packed up and drove south the 2 hours to Monterey. Our pack list filled all the space of a notepad page, imagining hot or cold race conditions, cold start with warm finish (note: buy throwaway gloves at expo), cold waiting for bus (what if they have run out of TP? camera?) , post race needs (what if we need to stitch our own arm back on?), if we had our car nearby, or not, what to bring to eat (what? 8 packets of Gu??), what to buy down there (pasta place reservation?) etc. We had a surprisingly complicated checklist for what should require a pair of shoes and some sunscreen.

EXPO

Down at the expo we picked up our race numbers and chips and then shopped for a while. I came away with $80 of Big Sur branded (mostly Asics) gear, so really hoped I'd finish, and also a signed copy of Bart Yasso's new book. He's the chief running officer at Runner's World and maybe the nicest most interesting guy in running. He also has a quoted as saying that if he could run one marathon he'd make it Big Sur. How can you not like the guy?

I asked him about running the course and he said to negative split it, that although the second half in hilly, it's a net downhill and to save yourself in the first half and use the energy to work the downhills in the second half.

Later in the day we saw Jeff Galloway talk. Now here's my problem: I'm a runner. I'm a sucky runner, but still a runner. That means, I run. I don't walk. Walking is not the challenge running is. On the other hand, I'd rather make it through an event strong than 'run' hard the first half and then implode at mile 18. So, we listened to him answer questions about his walk running, the strategy of dropping the walk run ratio down to 1:1 or 1:2 on the hills, and other Galloway wisdom and by the end we both thought for this race it could be worth a shot. For this kind of course, where the ups and down were going to make energy conservation critical, we thought it couldn't hurt. We'd keep our planned pace, but we'd do some walking.

RACE PLAN

So we formed a race plan over our spaghetti and marinara that evening, largely formed off advice we picked up at the expo:

We'd use 4:1 run/walk ratio. This was very different from any walk/running we'd done before (mostly either walk through the aid stations only, or walk 1 min every mile). When the time hit a 5 min mark, we'd walk a minute then run again. We'd do that until Hurricane Point (a 2 mile climb starting at mile 10) where we'd do 2:1 (run 2 min, walk 1) to get to the top. If the going got tough later on we'd do 2:1 and then 1:1 until we completed the course.
We'd run 11 min/mile average pace until the hill. After that we'd do the best we could for the last half.
If Jeff Galloway ran by us (pacing for a 5 hour finish), we'd run with him.
Eat a Gu shot 15 minutes before the race and every 45 mins on course
Run down hills with caution, don't brake, shuffle. Save the quads!
Drink a cup of water at every aid station.

RACE

We spent the night in Salinas, CA, about 30 minutes of iceburg lettuce fields east of Monterey. Set alarm for 2:45am, woke up at 2:30 and made coffee. Yes, 2:30am. It was vomit inducing. I put on my race t-shirt and shorts. Stuffed an iPod shuffle deep into a pocket in case the going got tough. Added 8 Gus. Yum. Over that I layered a long sleave shirt. Over that stuff, a pair of fuzzy pants and a fleece. We grabbed our stuff and headed back to Monterey. Outside it was warm, already. I knew I wouldn't need my fleece.

We parked in a garage and boarded the school buses for the start line. It took more than an hour to wind their way down the coast in the dark. Half the people on the bus were talking loudly to each other, nervously telling strangers about their lives, while the other half stayed quiet, silently knowing what lay ahead, that perhaps by the time that made it back to the finish line hours later they might be changed forever. That makes some people disappear into themselves while others cover it up with apparent mindlessness.

The area where we started was filled with people already. It was good people watching. There were people doing push ups. There was much personal grooming. That a large number of people still run in cotton socks was an interesting fact. After a final trip to the port-a-potties we headed to our start spot on the road. A lone bagpiper played nearby. Once in position, it wasn't long before the national anthem was sung and the doves released. I'm not kidding. The gun fired and (3 minutes later) we were off. This is the point when you wonder how you got yourself into this again. Too late though, there's only one way back home. Start running.

For the first couple of miles it was hard to settle into anything, and walk breaking was difficult for fear of being run down. But we did it. Patty took charge of calling '5 seconds'. In 5 seconds we'd try to find some road shoulder to walk on. Way before 60 seconds we were itching to start running. But we held steady. Slow now will get us there faster later. Don't worry about the people running by. Stay on the plan.

We ran through redwoods towards the coast. Some kids were out now to watch us and the sun was out. It was already in the mid-60s and I'd started in just shorts and a t-shirt and never even begun to feel cold. I had a moment of thinking that was a little bad, but perhaps that should have worried me more. It was going to be hot. For now, it was perfect running, looking at the trees and the little streams and campgrounds or two nestled down in between trees. And the running was easy too, so life was good. But hold steady. Our pace settled into an 11:01-11:03 average. Perfectly on plan.

By mile 6 we'd cleared the trees and headed straight towards the coast and the Big Sur lighthouse perched atop a piece of marooned coastline. From there we curved north and started up along the coast. The road climbed slowly past cow fields with the Pacific ocean behind them. Cresting the hill we headed down to sea level and then onto the big climb: Hurricane Point. This hill was approximately 600ft up over 2 miles. It's work, but it's very doable and never gets too steep. Both of us felt strong the whole way up. At the top we stopped and posed for pictures (in hurricane force wind), the view was spectacular. People headed up the hill behind us, a trail of runners stretching along the coast in front of us.

Then started our way down. Easy on the quads. Easy. Easy. Easy. At the bottom was the famed bridge that is seen in many photos of the area. It was also 13.1 miles, halfway there. As we ran across the bridge a man was playing a baby grand piano.

Behind Patty the ocean was a deep deep blue. "This is Californian living," said Patty, "this is why you moved here." It was magical. And it was living.

We continued on. The next major hill I came too was the first sign of fatigue onset. It wasn't too bad, but the climb up the Big Bad Boy had taken something out of me that I wasn't going to get back before the end of the race. It was only going to get worse. The course became a fairly steady stream of climbing and dropping with little which you'd consider flat. Where there were hills, which is to say, everywhere, they had no name, but were still the equal of any heart break hill elsewhere. It was hard running. By mile 18 I was getting tired and my legs and I were having conversations. Our pace average had taken a hit on the big hill (with one mile in there taking 13 minutes), partially recovered on the following downhill (ran some nice sub-10 sections in there) and stabilized at about a 11:12 pace. All in all, the race to mile 20 was pretty good. Why don't they make races 20 miles long?

I remember at the San Francisco marathon a pace group leader giving the following assessment of running a marathon: run the first 10 with your head (be smart, don't go too hard), run the second 10 with your legs (it will get harder, use you legs to hold the pace), and run the last 6.2 with your heart. Not long after mile 20 I knew where she was coming from.

Around me the scenery was only more spectacular. Cliff sides we ran along were covered with flowers and dropped spectacularly into intimate little coves that you'd never see from a car. Sea gulls would soar by us against clear blue sky, while a we ran by a musician playing the harp. This is 80 or 90% of the experience of running Big Sur. The beauty of Big Sur far outweighs the challenge. And the two experiences become separate. While your legs can be saying lets stop. We're done. Your mind can be saying "Hell no, this is living. Let's keep going. This is fun."

By mile 23 I was hurting on the uphills. I was tired, there wasn't too much glycogen left, but largely it was this: I was very dehydrated. My HR was high and I unable to keep it down on the hills. Patty, we need to do 1 minute run, 1 minute walk, okay? What? My HR is 195! You know, like, as though I was sprinting the final 400 yards of a 5k, only we're doing a 12 min/mile up a hill and there's still 2 miles to go. I don't want to blow up here. So we walk-ran up the last few hills and cruised down the final downhills. They still felt good.

Soon we crossed the Carmel bridge and headed into the finish line. People cheered. It was amazing. A life moment. Our chip time was 4 hours, 57 minutes. A 10 minute PR for the two of us.

One of the organizers shook my hand as he placed the hand crafted medal around my neck. "How was it?" he asked with such sincerity. "It was hard" I said. But I felt like it wasn't a very good answer to his question. It was a momentous spiritual journey that I'll never forget. And it was hard.

CONCLUSIONS

Well, I'm still digesting this. The race itself was a perfect race for me. We beat our expectations on all levels. Our second half was less than three minutes slower than the first half (and some of that was picture taking). Not quite Bart's negative split, but I'll take it.

But there were things to learn from it, as always. Here are some initial thoughts:

Water. Hydration was the big issue. By the time we finished it was in the high 80s. Under those conditions I know I need a lot of water. It seems likely I need more water than I can reasonably take in at an aid station. I either need to practice that, or I need to run with a bottle like I do in training. And then I need to think about sodium intake.

Food. The 100 calories (1 gel) every 45 minutes worked well.

Knees. My knee is still a problem, but my PT and I are working on that. After the race I had someone at the medical tent tape ice onto it. It was borderline annoying during the race approaching 'pain' in the final few miles. Ugly afterwards. Back to those exercises.

Walk/Run. This was the brave experiment of this marathon, and I think it works. It doesn't sit right with me, but at this time and this place it made for a much better (and faster marathon). Being a slave to a watch is not fun either, but being in control of the outcome of your race is. Like they say: walk before you're forced to.

Hills. Good technique down hills worked really well. The final hill we ran down was our fastest. After 5 hours our quads were still going strong (not as good today!) Something to take forward. We can always be stronger running up hills, but all our trail running certainly helped. We'll get stronger.

All in all, we had a fantastic time. I haven't even mentioned how well organized this is too. Everything was perfect for every aspect of this event. Like the half we ran last November this is a class act.

done. running.

Concerned

2008-04-22T09:28:00.000-07:00

Now that I'm in my final week of tapering I find myself with a lot of spare time on my hands. Here's the product of a little of that time. A graph comparing the Boston Marathon with Big Sur.

I feel more than a little concerned.

Ups and downs

2008-03-31T18:11:00.000-07:00

It's safe to say that my running life has had its ups and downs this past few months. This week is one of the down ones. With 4 weeks to go until the Big Sur Marathon, on a perfectly flat and easy stretch of paved path, 8.5 miles into a run, I went from fine one step to limping with a calf injury the next.

I'm hoping the fact that I wasn't doing anything too dramatic at the time means I'll be better in time for the marathon, but who knows. Somehow I suspect another sucky cross-training filled taper and an injury re-occurrence in the marathon, because that's what happened last time. But I guess we'll see.

Obviously, I've decided to take the early taper option, what miles are in the bank are in the bank. So, I present, the bank:

This graph starts in September last year and runs through to last Saturday's ill fated long run. But I'll start with last August, the month following my last marathon. With a marathon IT band problem, and outside foot trouble, plus fatigue, running never got off the ground. Every run would end within a mile with flashbacks to the last few miles of the marathon.

But things slowly improved. I started being able to run around the track, slowly. I remember how exciting it was to make it my first mile without any pain. But the reality was, after a month of not running, I lost a huge amount of fitness.

September I started to put some miles together and eventually we set our sights on the Big Sur Half Marathon. We drove down to Monterey to check out the course and also the full marathon course, just for the fun of it. As we drove the mountainous route of the marathon I remember thinking: "if this is a marathon I'm ever going to do, it won't be anytime soon." I started to think about Napa Valley instead. It looked much flatter.

In November we ran our half marathon and it was a complete success. We were still feeling a little under-trained for it, and I felt like I faded a little towards the end, but it was a PR by 9 minutes over our previous best, so it wasn't all bad. The scenery was spectacular and the organization fantastic.

Following the Half we started to build our long run, and although our mid-week miles never really got up there, we were cruising along pretty well and running lots of hills, doing pace runs, etc. We did multiple 18 milers, mostly on a tough trail course and did a 20 miler on the pavement that went really well. Things were all set for Napa Valley, except for one thing. We decided to do a 30K trail run instead.

While that race went well, and in the post race euphoria we signed up for the 99% full Big Sur Marathon, we were more beaten up from it than we realized and our miles dropped right back to get some quality recovery in. Since then we've put in a couple of okay long runs and more substantial week mileage. It feels like we were ready to go a month ago, and since then we've been trying to put together something that feels like a proper marathon build up.

I know what it takes to run 26.1 miles. I've been there worse prepared and arguably more injured than this time. Even on Saturday I was strong on the hills and could run through the calf thing. But somehow I had hoped that this had gone a little better. Maybe one always feels that way.

Or perhaps if you feel that way then the reality of the non-perfect marathon will be a shock, because anything can happen. Despite a perfect build up where you did every run on the plan, and they all felt great, there are so many things that can go wrong. IT pain when you never had IT pain before, hot conditions when you were expecting cool, you catch the flu the week before, or for unknown reasons you're just having a bad day. Who knows?

But I think that's part of what makes the marathon interesting. You can't control it, you can only overcome it. Marathons, like my build up, and life, have their ups and downs. You just have to do what you can.

(ups and downs at Big Sur)

Sequoia 30K

2008-02-18T17:05:00.000-08:00

On Saturday we ran our first race of the year, the Sequoia 30K. This was our first trail run with Pacific Coast Trail Runs. And what an experience it was.

BUILDUP

Our goal this year is to run a lot more trail races and a lot less road courses. When we are running down a road, some part of us is always wishing for a beautiful single track winding through the redwoods. But some part of us also knows that we're not strong enough for the trail runs around here and the thousands of feet of steep elevation gain (and loss) they bring. It's the former hikers and backpackers in us that love being on the trails.

Our lead up to this race was actually a build up for the Napa Valley Marathon. Since the half marathon in November last year we've increased our long run up to 20 miles and our weekly mileage peaked at 32 miles. We've run about 260 miles since then. It wasn't ideal. There was the usual winter sickness. There was travel. There weren't enough mid-week runs because work squeezed them out. But for us there was a good sustained set of miles stretching back to last October, and it's nice to head into the year with as many miles as we have and being in probably the best shape of our lives.

A few weeks ago Patty and I talked about what our goals were as we felt ourselves being swept towards another road race (Napa Valley Marathon). We thought about what and when we enjoy running, and it's always running in the hills which makes us happiest, so we scrapped the marathon plan (at least as a goal race), and set our sights on doing what we need to do to finish our first 50K ultra this year. The first step was to jump right in and see how these things work. That led us to this race, which is held practically in our backyard and on trails we've run many times.

RACE

We arrived early and picked up our bibs. Our friend Eric was there and we chatted a bit. He was running the 50K, us just the 30K (18.6 miles). There was little of the usual pre-race craziness, just people greeting old friends and getting ready to go. The lines for the bathroom were there, of course.

It was chilly, but I shed my long sleeve shirt and reluctantly discarded my fuzzy sweat pants. But soon we started and off heading out of the meadow and towards the first climb. From our back of the pack position, the field came almost to a halt as we were funneled into a narrow track that climbed up to Sequoia-Bayview. Most of those around us walked and so did we. In fact, we couldn't have run if we wanted to. It was a road block.

At the top people started to settle into their pace on the gently uphill trail that is one of our favorite runs. Around us people chatted about if they were planning to do Western States this year, or this or the other ultra. Below us we could look across the bay towards a foggy San Francisco. In front of us the trail followed the hillside trying its hardest to stay level as it ducked into gullies of redwoods and trickling steams and then out again for bay area views. We crossed over Skyline Blvd (were a volunteer made sure everyone crossed okay), and arrived at the Moon Gate aid station. Being our first run of this type we checked out all the offerings, dug into some of the potatoes and I filled up my bottle and drank two cups of water. I knew it would take us close to 1.5 hours to get to the next aid station 7.3 miles away. With just a 20 oz bottle to work with, better top up!

GPS track

From there we dove down into Redwood park towards the French Trail. It was just steep enough to fly down, and I was feeling strong at this point and didn't need to brake much. Even cruising down as fast as I was we were caught by the 20K lead runners who flew by 'on ya left!'. They had started after us. I tried to stay roughly to the right, but figured if they were going that fast into traffic while plummeting into the valley, they'd have to be the ones to make sure they were safe.

As soon as we hit the French trail (one of the nicest trails we know), we slowed down and started to power walk the steep parts and run the rest. People continued to pass us running the shorter distance, but mostly we'd found our place in the 30K field. I felt like the trail was more runnable than I remembered from training runs, but perhaps I would have felt better later if I'd not moved through this section as quick. At the time it was just fun and hard and beautiful.

At the end of the French trail we climbed up to the west ridge (walking), and then headed onto the out and back section for the 30K and 50K runners. This took us down a long hill section of fairly tight trail. Here we encounted the first of the lead runners running up the hill at full speed. Steve Stowers was headed for a 50K course record (at a 7:36 min/mile pace!) followed closely by Victor Ballesteros, who wasn't going much slower. For the good runners, these hills clearly aren't a problem like they are for us.

At the bottom we took Golden Spike trail into the main Redwood park area. Along the way we had to keep jumping off the trail for runners headed the other way. We greeted Scott Dunlap along here, whose blog I've read for the past year. We also ran into Eric who was placing well.

Eventually we made it to the mid-run aid station (at around 9.5M). I filled my bottle with cliff sports drink, drank another couple of cups, ate a cookie (which didn't work too well), so went back for the potatoes and bananas. It did feel good to break the shot bloks with solid food. After that break we headed back the way we came. I was happy to see there was plenty of folks headed towards the aid station still, so my fear of us being the last one there hadn't actually come true. Of course I didn't really know how many of them were 30Kers.

We headed back to the hill where we'd seen the lead runners. It was our turn to head up. In my imagination, before the race, I thought maybe we'd maybe run this hill, and normally it was pretty runnable. It was long, but not horribly steep. But there was no way. We slipped into a power walk, which by the top was more of just a walk. Fatigue was setting in, and uphill progress had become painfully slow. I'd hit a wall. If I was on flat or heading down, I was beat-up, but okay. If I was going up then it had become a real struggle. My HR was high and my pace was slow and getting slower. Basically I was done, but I still had 4 miles left to run. I stopped and poured several rocks and small trees out of my shoes. It felt good to sit on the ground. Nice ground. Birds chirped happily. I noticed it was just warm enough in the shade for this kind of lazying around to be the ideal way to spend a Saturday. Then remembered I was in a race. Sigh.

The next couple of miles were great. They were all uphill. I loved it! Actually, they were pretty horrible. We walked a lot of the 500ft climb behind Roberts before arriving back at the West Ridge. I joked about being lapped by the lead 50Kers right as we were, in fact, lapped by the lead two 50Kers.

At this point I knew the climbing was basically done. We were back on a trail we've run dozens of times. Although I'd probably never felt so horrible any of those times, we knew the end was within our grasp. Patty took off, sensing the finish line was waiting for her. We stopped briefly back at the Moon Gate aid station and downed some more potatoes and other snacks, and for some reason I had my bottle filled. Then we were headed back across Skyline, back along Sequoia Bayview and then down down down. I did notice that when it came to some small uphills I did surprisingly better at running them than walking them. Perhaps I should have run more of the hills through the race?

Eventually the finish sign appeared over one last hill, a heard a couple of voices coming up behind me while Patty was 30ft ahead of me, clearly doing much better than I. I was pushing as hard as I could. My HR spiked up to 197, my GPS registered me at the break neck speed of a 10 min/mile! It was all I had. I crossed the finish line right on 4 hours and 15 minutes (about 75 people ahead of me, 25 people behind me). Patty finished 9th in her age group. I finished... well, lets just say I finished. We'd done it. And I was SO done.

CONCLUSION

Trail runs are fun. And even when they aren't fun, they are still beautiful.
People were super friendly and this event was really well organized and marked. I had a great time!
Hills, hills, hills: We need to incorporate hills, both running them and power walking them into our training. There was over 3000ft of elevation gain. Much of this was in short steep bits on 'rolling' trail. I see walking up and down Mt Diablo, Lyon steps, and Lovers Lane many times in my future if I want to improve at this.
Water: I was somewhat dehydrated at the end, but about what I expected. I need to drink more if the race is going to be longer. I need at least 20 oz every hour. The distance between stations and our slowish pace meant I couldn't get that much with one water bottle. I should think about running with two.
Food: I stuck to my plan. I ate 100 calories in shot bloks before the race. I ate at the aid stations and liked the results. A ate 100 calories every 30 mins between aid stations (again, shot bloks). I drank 20 oz of sports drink between aid stations (Accelerade on the way out, Cliff on the way back). I don't know if it was enough. It didn't seem to be the problem, but perhaps more food would have helped.
Strategy: I went through the French trail too hard as it turns out, but I was there for the lessons. I wasn't going to run it as slow as I ran it in training, I already know I can do that. But running it as fast as I did burnt me out on the uphills. The lesson is probably that I need to train for that better. Train to power walk the really steep stuff and to run the moderate hills. And keep doing it for 32 miles!
What gave out: apart from uphill muscles, my upper back was pretty sore especially walking up hills. I also got a couple of good blisters, but I'am retiring those shoes anyway. On the positive side, I felt like my hip flexors held out better than they have in the past, so maybe the core work is starting to pay off. My other known weak points also held out: my IT band twinged around mile 3, briefly signaling the end to my race. Then didn't bother me the rest of the time. Outside foot and peronials also didn't present a problem. A case of runners knee we've both had this past few weeks also didn't present a problem.
A couple of days later I'm a little sore in the quads and calves but in basically good shape. Yesterday afternoon I even went for a jog at the track. In some ways it was as hard as the marathon. Certainly the course was harder but the duration shorter. But I feel much better than I did after that.

So, our feet wet, we'll be back for more. We're still deciding if we want to run Napa Valley as a training run, or perhaps hold off a month and run the Big Sur Marathon. After that we have our eye on Pirate's cove and then the East Bay Triple Challenge (Tilden Tough Ten 10M, Lake Chabot Trail Challenge 13.1M and Woodminster XC 9M), beyond that our goal ultra is the Skyline 50K.

Merry Christmas

2007-12-24T15:48:00.000-08:00

Christmas Relays

2007-12-17T10:51:00.000-08:00

This weekend Patty and I ran the Christmas Relays at Lake Merced in San Francisco. Our running club put together 9 teams, each of 4 runners. Each runner completed one lap of the lake, about 4.5 miles.

On my team one runner couldn't run because of a knee problem, so Ken stepped up to run two legs, each at a spectacular pace (sub 6 min/mile). My leg of the race went well and I held roughly my previous 5K pace for the 50% longer distance. Of course, that meant I was passed by a lot of people as the position Ken had put us in was totally out of my league. At one point I was running down a hill at just under 7 min/mile and people were flying by me on both sides like I wasn't moving at all.

The course itself was tougher than I thought when I drove around it. There's a hill at the start which you run too hard because it's the start, then a lot of downhill with a lot of people moving faster than you. Here you fly, too fast. By the third mile it's a slow uphill and the reality of how fast you ran the first two miles and how far it is still to go sets in. The final push to the finish also had a untimely hill. On top of that, the whole time you know there's a guy standing at the finish waiting for you. That keeps it moving along. I finished my leg in about 39 mins. Our team was the second LMJS team to finish.

Anyway, a fun time was had by all. After the race Patty, Patrick and I ran around the lake again to keep our miles up. It was a little rough as Patty and I were thinking 12 min/mile and Patrick was thinking 10 min/mile. Oh well, the legs were already trashed from the race, so what did it matter.

Southwest

2007-12-03T20:59:00.001-08:00

We were recently on a roadtrip to the American Southwest and managed to get in a few runs. Here's the first one. Patty returning down Echo Canyon in Death Valley National Park.

We camped there for two nights in perfect camping weather. This run took us a couple of miles up a canyon along a jeep road. It was pretty hard going on the way up as it was uphill and the footing was very loose rocks. On the way down those same rocks were like pillows for our feet to crunch down on.

From Death Valley we headed into Arizona where the temperatures were not as nice. Flagstaff was in single digits and windy when we got up so we decided to pass on our planned run in Buffalo Park. We Northern Californian dwellers are not built for those conditions (or at least lack the right apparel!)

A couple of days later, now in Moab, UT we woke up and, because Kelly was still asleep and we were in a dark motel room, we checked the iPhone to see what the weather was like outside. "28 degrees." Not bad. A run looked on. "And a chance of snow." Hmmm. We checked the radar image and a big green and yellow blob hovered over Moab. Double hmmm. I got up and looked out the window. White. Snow. Everywhere.

When Kelly woke up she was pretty excited. She'd never seen snow actually falling before.

We spent the first part of the morning hanging out in a coffee shop and then playing in snow at the local park. While there I noticed how many people were out running! There was even a couple doing intervals across the park's snowy grass. If they could run, so could I. We went back to the hotel and got changed and then took turns in putting down a 3 mile run.

While I won't go so far as to say it was really all that nice running into the snow, it was refreshing and something different. Plus, with almost 3000 miles of driving in a week, it got my legs moving.

Big Sur Half Marathon

2007-11-13T22:34:00.001-08:00

This past Sunday Patty and I completed our last big race for the year, the Big Sur Half Marathon. It was also a PR for both of us, by more than 9 minutes!

As I might have mentioned before, this race isn't actually in Big Sur at all. Rather it is in nearby Monterey and along its own beautiful coast line. It is run by the same people who organize the somewhat famous full length marathon in April, except this run is (of course) shorter, and also much less hilly. What is the same is that it is exceptionally well organized and run along one of the nicest courses in the country.

Pre-race

The lead up to the race could have been better. I was off work sick for the whole week with stomach bug, the effect of which is best not described. With antibiotics I started taking on Friday I recovered just in time to make the start line.

Saturday afternoon we drove down to Monterey and spent the afternoon at the Expo including seeing Bart Yasso talk. He is the chief running officer (CRO) at Runner's World. Now that's a job. He's paid to fly around the world and attend interesting races. His talk included some great stories including being in the first every Badwater ultramarathon. I'll never think of banana bread the same way. On a sader note he talked about being at the Olympic trials and the death of Ryan Shay. His discussion of that will stay with me for some time.

In the evening we found an Italian restaurant. While you don't really have to carbo-load for a half marathon, it can't hurt. Plus, who doesn't like Italian?

We considered going for a walk somewhere but decided it might be better to stay off our feet so instead we spent the evening lying around watching bad TV. I did catch the end of Eragon and noticed to my surprise that I actually have a credit in that movie.

Race day

Our alarm went off at 4:30am and as usual we were already awake but lying in bed denying what lay ahead of us. I woke a few times during the night to the sound of rain, but by morning that seemed to have moved to the north and east. The wind, however, had not moved on.

We drove down to the start area, it still being dark, and parked in a free lot. The start line was right outside. We walked over to fisherman's wharf but couldn't really find a spot out of the cold wind. It was pretty empty over there, just a group of fisherman about to head out on a trip. Note to self: if I ever go on an organized fishing trip I need a big big cooler. We headed back and used our (secret) pottys for the last time and then returned to the start line. In our absence several thousand people had already gathered. With 5 minutes to go we slipped between the corral fence and took our place. Then we were off.

We took about 40 seconds to cross the start line and picked up to about a 9:30 pace. I'm not sure if it was the wind or just the fatigue from being sick all week, but I knew it was going to be a hard run. I was already tired by mile 2. But my HR was holding steady so we kept up a pace between 9:30 and 10:00, hoping to keep it together for a 2:10:00 finish. The run up to Pacific Grove was the only real hill and our pace slowed there, but much of the course was rolling with there always being a grade of some sort and always the wind, especially on the outward bound portion. It wasn't as easy as I'd hoped.

The course itself was completely gorgeous. Much of it ran right along the pacific coast. Waves crashing into rocks, sea lions barking at us from rocks, pelicans flying by us. Plus, with the road closed it was only the sounds of the sea and other runners. On the way back part of the course was along a bike path which presumably was an old railway grade, and took us even closer to the water and down tunnels of Cyprus trees. Even the parts in the town were nice, running around a lagoon of sorts and also down through the historic old town of Monterey. In front of the old movie theater a man dressed in a tux played the piano for us. At the end of a tunnel a Scotsman in full gear played the bagpipes. It was very cool.

I recorded the race on my watch. Here's the pace, HR and elevation on a chart. The blue spikes are us walking through aid stations. The mileage misses a little bit at the beginning.

With a couple of miles to go Patty picked up the pace and dashed off 30 yards or so in front of me. She is clearly the faster runner now and she shows a whole other side when it comes to hitting a time goal. My pace also quickened and I kept her close, but my HR was pushing up into the 190s so I was more inclined to balance my pace against imploding so close to the finish. Plus, I'm willing to give up a little time to not scare the medical staff waiting at the end.

As the finish line came into sight Patty slowed to allow me to catch her and we cross the line together in 2:09:21. It was very charitable of her, of course.

They hung a hand made medallion around our necks and then passed us an empty box. I soon found out what the box was for. It was to put all the food in. All kinds of fruit: strawberries, apples, oranges, bananas. Muffins. Cookies. Fruit cups. Bagels. And, a bottle of water. We slumped down against the side of a building and may I just say that those were the best strawberries and cookies I've ever had. I'm pretty sure of that.

The taste of fresh PR.

Conclusion

This was a great half marathon and everything we hopped for. A class act of event organizing which I plan to judge all future races against, completely spectacular scenery, and we came in under our goal. An awesome weekend.

Two weeks to go

2007-10-29T10:05:00.000-07:00

Week mileage: 22.3 Miles (4hrs 4min)

Another pretty good week, although there's signs of overtraining.

It's been a pretty fast climb back up to decent miles, both for our long runs and total miles. Because of this we've now peaked for our half marathon and will hold at this level with some easy running this week and then taper down the following week so we're fresh at the start line.

This weekend I did my first real race since the marathon three months ago! We did the 15km race at Lake Merritt. Both of us were pretty happy with our run. My time was just over 90 minutes, which was my goal.

According to the GPS we ran quite a bit over 15km, probably because of poor tangents at the beginning (and maybe GPS error). Apart from the first two miles, which were fast, we basically negative split each mile until the end, with the slowest being 10:00 mins (actually our goal pace) for mile 3, and just under 9:00 mins for my final mile. It was good to be able to finish strong like that. Patty finished so strong in fact that she kicked my butt by 30 seconds.

From this race I'm supposed to draw conclusions on how fast to run the half marathon. I feel like 9:30ish pace is probably doable now, with 10:00 being pretty easy and 9:00 being probably too hard for that distance at this point. That puts our goal between 2:05 and 2:10.

We'll see.

Taco Tuesday

2007-10-23T07:35:00.000-07:00

Weekly mileage: 25.1 Mi (4 hrs 56 min)

Running has come completely around in the past month and I'm back to enjoying it. Mostly. Last week I hit my target of 25 miles a week which I hope to more or less sustain until the beginning of next year.

On Wednesday morning we headed out to Tilden, a local regional park, in pouring rain to run five miles on a trail there. It turned out to be one of the hardest runs in a long time. With the rain the trail turned to sticky slippery mud. How can something be sticky and slippery at once? Somehow this mud was. Running was something like running on sand dunes, two steps up, one slide back with the bonus of extra pounds of mud caking our shoes and rain pelting our faces. Afterwards I was beat for the rest of the day.

During the week I also put in a couple of good runs at work. I have a new Garmin Forerunner which I got to test out for the first time. It's pretty cool, but I have the same feeling I had when I first got a HRM. That it will initially just show me how slow I really am. But in the long run, that's probably a good thing.

On Sunday we headed out for our long run. The morning started with a flat tire on our car, followed by a flat battery on the forerunner, and plus, I felt terrible and in completely the wrong place for the run mentally. After about three miles the run came round and we ran a little over 12 miles in total. I've been having some kind of cramping and/or early onset fatigue on the outside of my right shin. Not pain, like shin splints, but something else. It usually subsides after a while. No idea what that's about, but it doesn't help!

Our goal is a half marathon in three weeks called the Big Sur Half Marathon. Rather than actually being in Big Sur, it's in Monterey and runs by the aquarium and out to near Pebble Beach and back. The course is actually pretty stunning as it runs right along the coast.

I'm really looking forward to it, although I don't have the best sense of how my body will respond to a race that length or even what an good pace is for me right now. I'm surely fitter than the first and only time I've run a half marathon that wasn't a mountainous trail run and that time was 2:18. To help figure this out, and kick ourselves into the racing mood, we're running a local 15km race this weekend. Three laps around the lake. I'm mostly hoping to not DNF like the last time I raced there, but the goal is tentatively 90 minutes.

Well, it's Tuesday. And that means track workout and Baja fish tacos!

One month later

2007-09-05T18:19:00.000-07:00

Well more than a month has gone by since the marathon so it seems time to update.

I've been considering this lately: does anyone really care to hear about nagging injury and failed runs for blog after blog? That should give you a hint of how the last month has been. But it is time to recap, so here's the rundown.

The bad:

Firstly, the marathon took a toll that I wasn't really expecting, and I was expecting plenty of toll. Both of us have found running hard and even now barely consider ourselves over it. But then a month is probably not that unusual for the damage to heel and lingering fatigue to depart our torn up muscles. 26.2 miles is a rough ride. I'm amazed now by those I know going on to run another one already. For me, I needed this month almost free of running on many levels.
Although the fatigue seems mostly gone, for me, there are still bonus problems I'm dealing with.

I ran the marathon on a foot injury, which exploded mile 19, and left my foot mostly blue. It also hurt a lot. While this seemed concerning to me, my doctor was completely unconcerned about the whole thing. Perhaps the patient before me had a severed arm to show her. I was expecting a horrified gasp. Instead I got a 'Well, that will heal. We'll do x-rays to make sure it's not a fracture and here's a PT referral'.

X-rays were negative on the stress fracture, so off I went to PT. What I learned is that this is almost certainly caused by some tearing in one of the peronial tendons, which in turn was probably caused by tightness in the peronial muscles which run down the outside of the leg. They probably got tight from running, and since I didn't know they existed, didn't stretch them. Apparently they are there for stability mostly, but the 'push-off' uses these muscles and can stress the peronial tendons in the foot. More so on uphills. Enough of that tension and pop! If they pop, the blood flows out and turns your foot blue. Cool. Anyway, I have a plan and am working on that.

But the real problem has been IT pain. This is really something which I thought would vanish after the marathon since I never had much of it before. But it's stayed around like an annoying 4 year old. I didn't even bring it up with my doctor. At that stage I still had blown quads and hamstrings and was hobbling around with a blue foot. The IT stuff was just background noise. But not when I ran. By 1.5 miles it inflamed and put a quick end to my run. Over and over. This was depressing. Pretty soon I felt like the whole marathon was a mistake and had decided that, for sure, I would never run again. Time to move on to sitting on the couch and eating potato chips. Time to call the cable company. This is, of course, crazy. But I, of course, am crazy.

The good:

Well, I needed a good news section to this post or I may not have written it at all.

Firstly, we went to Idaho on vacation after the marathon and it was fantastic. I'd like to write a post about that, but if I could move to Boise, I would.

Secondly, I've been spending some quality time with my mountain bike and am beginning to see the appeal. I spent 5 hours on it this past weekend, including a great ride in Tilden regional park down a 1000 ft drop single track trail through the woods. We had to carry our bikes across a stream. It was completely fun.

And thirdly, the best news is that I have now done 2 three mile runs with little IT pain, both on a track.

So, perhaps there is life after a marathon.

San Francisco Marathon

2007-07-30T08:27:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we completed our first marathon. Patty and I crossed the finish line together in 5 hours and 8 minutes. What a weekend!

Expo

After collecting our race packet Friday, we returned to the expo site Saturday to watch some of the talks. There was a crazy mix of people presenting, including the race medical chief telling a room full of people that they didn't need to eat before or during the race. The highlight was seeing ultra marathoner Dean Karnazes talk. He was funny and inspiring.

I also managed to meet up with a couple of Internet friends: Steve from the Hal Higdon v-team message boards and Mary who lives in Florida and has been blogging about her marathon training since March.

We went home and ignored the race medical chief and had a big plate of pasta.

The race

We were awake and up by 3:30am. I downed a cup of coffee, drank a last glass of water and ate a granola bar and yogurt (sticking to my standard pre-run breakfast). By 4:30am we were out the door and driving across the bridge. We were beyond ready to go by this stage, no room to feel tired from the early wake up.

We made it over to SF and parked fairly close to the start/finish. People were emptying out of their cars, attaching timing chips to shoes, bibs to shirts, jogging around. We used the potties and ran into one of Kelly's teachers two people in front of us in the line. We walked over to the start line and watched the first wave go off, joined the potty line again, and had basically the perfect amount of time to join our wave, find our pace leader, before we were off.

We decided we'd join the 4:30 pace group. Not because we planned to run 4:30, but because we didn't want to start faster than this. It was fun running with them for a little while, easy running, but staying with a pace group would be hard for the whole race. At the first aid station we slowed, grabbed a couple of cups of water and looked up to see her halfway up the Fort Mason hill! We couldn't believe we were blown away by her so fast through the first aid station so we ran a 9:37 mile to catch her. At the end of Crissy field the same thing happened again and by the time we sighted her she was halfway up to the bridge. We blew her a kiss goodbye, we were on our own.

Up on the bridge it was very foggy. A refreshing wet wind blew through the gate. No view, but it was better to have it cool. The running was at it's most congested here and the walkers who didn't move to the right drove us a little crazy. Really, do they think running 3 across and then coming to a relative halt is helpful to the thousands of people coming up behind them? Half way across I heard "Go Patty! Go Peter!". It was Mary, who'd caught up with us. She was more or less naked (sports bra and skorts). We stayed with her for much of the rest of the bridge and then she was gone.

Also interesting about the bridge was that my IT band started to act up. This is Patty's designated problem and I haven't had any problems with mine in all the training runs. Oh well, if there's one thing we mentally practiced during our training, it was that anything could happen and we'd take it and deal with it.

From there we headed south to the park. We were keeping roughly a 10:30 pace for much of this time. This section was underrated for hills. They are not steep, but they wear you down then you're not paying attention to them. We started to walk one minute every mile too, realizing that we had a long way to go. During this period my foot started to hurt again. Slowly, each mile, it got worse and worse. I knew it would come at some point during the race, but I had hoped for later rather than sooner.

We passed the half marathon mark in 2:20, almost a half PR! I'm looking forward to running another half some time soon and see what I can do when I don't have another 13 miles to run. But back to the business at hand.

The course soon headed back up the park from near ocean beach. This section was where we dived. It's hard to say where 'The Wall' was, but for us this was it. Our pace dropped a minute or two a mile with the long long uphill and never rebounded. My foot hurt. My knee hurt (IT). My hips hurt. And generally, as far as my body went, things were all downhill from around mile 15 or 16.

Around Stowe Lake was one of the low points. We weren't moving towards the finish line, just going around in a circle and my foot was now so troubled that I seriously was considering the nearby half marathon return buses. This is the only point where I started to doubt things. Then something happened. I don't medically know what went on, but around mile 18 the buildup of pain all of a sudden gave way and there was a feeling of having something very cold poured on it, followed by a slightly mushy feeling and dull pain. I could almost feel the internal bleeding. Yikes! But the good news was that it was then much easier to run!

From the park we re-entered the city and ran down the middle of Haight street. This was a highlight of the race and the energy coming from the spectators there gave me a big lift. Mile 20, a point I was looking forward to (and dreading) came and went without us spotting the marker. We ran across Market street and I knew then I'd make it. Finishing sub-5 hours now seemed doubtful, so it was just a matter of getting it done.

This was a much more industrial area of old rundown buildings and bikies mixing the tunes for the runners under freeway overpasses. To be honest, I didn't care for the music by this point, but every spectator gave me lift. One had a sign for "Patty" and yelled "Hey, a Patty. Hey, we made a sign for you!" They put a smile on my face and really helped to keep me going.

But in general those were tough miles for us and there's some take home lessons there. Like have a slow walk-run backup plan for when/if the wheels fall off, don't just start walking with no plan to start running again. We didn't have too many clear thoughts in there.

By the final two miles I regained my focus and actually felt good and strong. The "dog patch" area was the turning point where the course turned to face the ball park and the Bay Bridge. The effect of seeing where the finish line was overcame everything else. I was ready to run the rest but Patty wanted to walk more because of the old IT knee thing.

We passed AT&T park, with a game about to start, there were people everywhere, but we were a secondary attraction to some guy called Barry Bonds I suppose. Rounding the park was the 26 mile mark and the finish line was in sight. I picked up my pace with what I had left and ran strong across the line.

The aftermath

My foot is now a mess. A red-blue bruise now covers half the side of my foot. And of course much of my lower half will take some recovery time.

All in all, we're really happy. When I hurt my foot 5 weeks ago I thought that's it, no marathon this time. Then I got some more running in and hurt my foot again. Again that was it. But I cross trained like a crazy person and did make it to the start line.

"The only way you really fail is to not try at all"

I wanted the experience and was willing to take a cost. I felt like even if I dropped, I would still learn things for the next one. So I did all that. As a bonus, I finished.

Physically, this race was a serious challenge. But I never stopped enjoying being out there and being in the event. Even in the final miles I knew it wasn't going to be the last. I wasn't saying to myself "how did I get myself into this thing?" like I probably should have been.

Was running my first marathon a defining moment in my life? Unfortunately not in the way I thought it might be. It was almost anti-climatic. But it really was living life and that's what it's all about.

We're already deciding what's next, but first I need to see about that foot.

Week 15

2007-07-14T17:51:00.000-07:00

The big week. In many ways this week, the highest mileage week of my program, has been the focus of my training, even more than the marathon. I thought, if I can get through to that peak week then I'd be in good shape for the marathon.

The numbers:

Running: 32 miles (on a plan of 40 miles)
Time: 6hrs 25mins

As you can see, things rebounded some what from the previous forced fall back week and I got some much needed final miles in.

The foot injury held up well during the week. It was ever present as a faint something, but didn't escalate. I ran 3, 10, then 3 miles. The 10 mile run was also one of those focus points of this training cycle. The peak mid-week mileage on the 4th of July holiday. I really enjoyed this run and felt pretty encourage about the marathon outlook after this.

Then Sunday came and we went out for our 20 miler. I felt I needed another long run before the taper so I went for it. If I made it then it would be like week 14 never happened. If I broke I'd have 3 weeks to heal.

It felt pretty good for the first 10 miles, but then fell apart. How can something be fine for two hours and then have a problem? It was right after our half way point where we stopped at our car to fill up on water. Perhaps my foot started to swell at that moment or something. We took off from the cars and I had the same sensation of there being an unusual pressure in my shoe. A couple of miles later the pressure had became more like stabbing pain and soon after that I was walking back to the car. There's no point in pushing through that kind of thing in a training run.

Back at the car I waited for Patty to finish her run. I couldn't locate any sharp objects to kill myself with, so I just had to sit there watching a woman hit a tennis ball against a wall for an hour. When Patty finally showed up she was only 17 miles into hers and had circled back to see how I was doing. She wasn't doing so good either (ITB issues), but she was moving. She suggested that if I needed to kill myself, the BART tracks were close by. I didn't think of that.

Anyway, enough dwelling on the failure of this run. My goal now is to forget it happened and get my foot in shape to take the marathon. I'm fit enough to run it, I have a solid number of miles banked. I just need a working foot. Now almost a week later, it doesn't really hurt anymore so hopefully in two weeks it will be healed enough to not relapse in the marathon.

Here's a graph of my training up until the taper, just for the fun of it:

Time will tell if it's enough.

Fallback

2007-07-03T20:35:00.000-07:00

Well this week was more of a fallback than I had in mind.

Here are the numbers:

Running: 4 miles (on a plan of 32)

Cycling: 20+ miles (on a plan of 0)

Injuries: 1 (on a plan of 0)

Last Tuesday I headed down to the lake from here on a gentle 5 miler. The first 2 miles went by quickly, a nice run downhill. The next mile I looped around a tree a 1/2 mile around the lake and then headed back towards home. I passed one of the marathon training LMJS guys headed the other way and said Hi. Heading back home, initially, my left foot felt a little funny. Like the tongue of my shoe had moved to an annoying location. Kind of a pressure in the outside of my foot.

I passed a woman who noted how much energy I looked like I had. In fact, I felt good. I was thinking about how well the run was going after the 17.5 mile trail run just a few days before. It was exactly 300 miles since we began training for this marathon. Pretty good!

Then my foot started to ache. Hmmm. I ran a little further. It hurt some more. I stopped and started to walk. I was a mile out from home. By the time I got home I couldn't put my foot on the ground. Nice.

I took the rest of the day off work. I didn't really know how I was going to get in there anyway. I iced. I Advil'ed (verb). I elevated. I compressed. I hoped around.

Things didn't really get too much better for a few days. I posed to Hal Higdon's message board. He said it wasn't a good sign. I might have to taper. My doctor told me to rest it. It was probably a stain. Since there was no sore spot to touch it probably wasn't a stress fracture.

So, I've taken the whole week off, my second last build up week. I didn't go to work (they let me work from home), and concentrated on my resting and icing. By Saturday I could walk around. Kelly and I went out to Moraga to crew Patty on her 14 miler. That was fun, but I wished I was out running of course.

The cause of my injury is anyone's guess, but the suspects are:

The 18 miler did the damage, something I didn't feel at the time finished it off.
I was trying to break in new shoes and instead they broke me.
I walked around the lake the day before wearing a pair of sandles.
I only had 300 miles in me.

Who knows?!

Bike

The good news, since I'd like to reflect on the good parts of my marathon jeopardizing week, is that I finally got a mountain bike. It's not a very expensive model, but I like it. In fact Patty had to warn my that it wasn't coming to bed with us.

On Sunday I did two rides. One out on a rail trail we run on (I mean I used to run on, when I was, you know, a runner), and in the evening I did I trail ride in the area of our trail half marathon. Both were a lot of fun.

Week 13

2007-06-27T21:01:00.000-07:00

Our biggest week so far (and what may prove to be my biggest), and not at all unlucky.

Distance: 35.4 miles on a plan of 36.
Duration: 7hrs 18min

Well, last week was great. A complete change from the sad tale that was getting through a 16-miler with a knife stabbed into the back of my foot. The mid-week runs are taking up a lot of time so I've been working at home a lot, or trying to slot them in really early.

Mid-week runs:
Tuesday's run was at my old nemesis, the Lafayette-Moraga Regional trail. It follows an old mule train route where loggers once pulled redwoods from the hills and carted them to Sacramento. Later a steam train ran along part of the route. Today it's a stretch of pavement with a 'linear park' on either side. It gives you 7 or 8 miles each way of relatively uninterrupted pavement and pleasant enough scenery to look at. For a rail trail, it's also decently hilly. We ran just 4 miles. Map.

Wednesday we were back out to the same area to run around a canal trail. The Walnut Creek area (which I used to associate with hellish shopping, baking heat, and misguided visits to The Container Store) actually has these canals everywhere. I suppose once upon a time the whole thing must have flooded all the time. There's water control infrastructure everywhere. These canals are not canals like Venice, however, more like irrigation concrete channels that are mostly about 6 feet or so across. If you like concrete canals, then you'd like these. They do have wildlife sometimes, which right now means there's baby mallard spotting to be had. There's almost nothing cuter than a baby duck sliding down a concrete bank. Anyway, several of these long canals have trails next to them. Wednesday's run was 9 miles east from Walden Park in the middle of Walnut Creek, out to the hills on the Contra Costa Canal Trail. Then we turned south and travel up along the hillside, eventually passing under a road in a pretty cool tunnel. This section, being up high, is actually quite pretty. You can't even spot the Container Store, just trees mostly. Then it's back on a different canal through mostly residential areas along the Ygnacio Canal Trail. Map.

Thursday's 5M run was from home down to Lake Merritt-a pretty well trodden route. It felt so good I picked up the pace and ran it as a tempo run. I hadn't had the energy for that kind of thing since the whole 3 races in 3 weeks thing.

Long run:
This was all, of course, just a warm up for Saturday's long run. We decided that running a safe route, flat and easy, was just not for us. I was probably still a little crazy from my tempo run, and plus, the Western States Endurance Run (100 miles through the Sierras) was simultaneously off and running (a friend of ours was pacing), so we felt like something more adventurous than running along I-80 for 4 hours. So instead we headed out to the hills, to Tilden regional park where the LMJS running club was meeting.

The first section of the run was what the organizer Karen described as flat. Well maybe "with a hill in the middle, but mostly flat". In what universe was that flat? Not a flat universe, that's for sure. Most of it was, however, runnable hills. Except the one in the middle, which we walked some of. This section took us from the Little Farm parking lot north through Wildcat canyon to the Wildcat staging area, and back. It was pretty enough in there, and definitely better than running along the interstate. But somehow it wasn't quite trail running. At about 4 miles along a woman stopped us (who actually stops runners?) and asks if we could give our water to her dog. We look at her dog and it looks fine. She's less than a mile from her car and we're out for an 18 miler. We say sorry and keep running. After 9 miles we were back near our car, and those in the club doing just the Half headed to the parking lot. We stopped short of there at a drinking fountain and filled up and ate. After chatting to a couple of runners we started our second leg. A couple who is doing the marathon opted to get in their 18miles by running the first 9 miles again. We thought about it for a moment and again decided adventure needed to come first.

We headed up the road less travelled, more or less up the side of a mountain. We ran for an acceptably long time and then eventually started to walk. As the walking was getting tough we turned our walk break into a stop break. At the top was a paved section called Nimitz Way where the Tilden Tough Ten is held each year. We started to run again, but something was up. My HR was high, and quick to anger. Patty figured I was having some problems and gave me her bottle which had Cytomax in it. Now, I don't mean to promote Cytomax, or to appear like I believe a thing of their (FDA has not verified) claims, but that stuff is great. Half a mile later I'd gotten about 20 Oz of fluid in me and I was back on track.

Math interlude:
Now, I take from this that I need more water than I'd drunk up until that point. That is, in 10 or so miles I had drunk about 2 bottles worth of water, or around 3-4 oz per mile. This was pretty much in line with my pre-run plan. But on a warm but not hot day, that wasn't enough. In the following mile I drank another 20 oz and that set me right. About 50% more liquid. So, based on that, if I up my intake to 4-5 oz per mile, then in the race that's 8-10 oz an aid station which means getting a whole cup down plus some. In the race, this also means about 24 oz per hour, which is well below the 30 oz per hour considered dangerous. Also, note to self. Cytomax rocks.

At inspiration point we'd stashed more water, more Cytomax and a couple of Cliff Shots. We ate a little, refilled out bottles and then headed off. The next section was really tough. It took us up hundreds more feet along a spectacular ridge line. But mostly we were annoyed that a lot of this wasn't really runnable. Sure, it was a great workout, but we also needed just long running. After a few miles we reached the highest point. Some hikers were there looking at the view that extended for miles both inland and across the bay. In the distance was San Francisco, our marathon course. We were looking down on the whole city thinking that at least no hill was going to be as high as that one in the course.

By the time we returned to our car we'd covered around 17.5 miles in a slow but grueling 4 hours on the trails. We were beat. The gain/loss was over 2500ft not counting all the small hills. It was pretty rough.

Recovery Peter and Patty style:

1) Ice water in the car. Start drinking.
2) Start replacing calories. One Mocho Freddo (large) from Peets Coffee. This is a chocolate shake with coffee in it. They are beyond good, and not really that bad for you if you don't get the whipped cream.
3) 2 Super burritos (one each). I went with Veggie. Patty had smelled grilling meat somewhere on our run as we past near a picnic area and had partially turned into a grizzly bear ready to kill for meat. She went with the steak.
4) Ice bath. Filled half way with cold tap water. Add ice. Not so it's a slushy, just enough to put a chill into it. Soak for 10 minutes. Do not share. It heats the water up too fast and isn't romantic. Also, you need a clock. It's a long 10 minutes.
5) Lots of Advil. 800mg is a good place to start.
6) Sleep. 1 hour of quality napping.
7) Next day:recovery walk. One 3M lap of the lake works well.

Woodminster XC

2007-06-27T20:05:00.000-07:00

The Dick Houston Memorial Woodminster is a cross country race here in Oakland now in its 42nd year. You might not normally associate Oakland with cross country racing opportunity, but in fact Oakland is bordered to the East with beautiful hills that hold some great trail running. Redwood shaded creeks that are great for hiking and steep rough terrain which makes for tough running.

Originally we were going to run this race, a 9 mile event which runs over some of the toughest course you could imagine around here. Instead, we decided it was time to work on running longer and not potentially injure ourself on this. So, rather than run it I decided to take some photos.

Woodminster is a handicap race, different age groups leave one after another. If I was in it I'd be 4 minutes in front of the fastest group (the young men), and about 20 minutes behind Patty in the old ladies group. Here's a couple of photos from the start:

Runners coming down the hill near the finish:

The trails are mostly like this, although there's hills which bring the whole field to a walk. Last year we were hiking on the day of this race and had a nice conversation with one of the racers as we walked up one of the more serious hills.

Here are a few more photos of the runners. This first one is the winner, Roy Rivers.

And I think this is the first place woman:

The rest of the photos are here, and the organizers were excited enough to have some one take photos they sent out a link to my photos with the race results and on their page.

Post-race slump

2007-06-13T21:55:00.001-07:00

The payback for the trail race in the middle of our marathon training had to come.

In the days following the race I didn't feel especially bad in any one place. Just tiredness. Okay, well that's not exactly true. My knees felt tweaky. My back hurt a little. My blister did it's own thing. Nothing unexpected though. But as the days past I think the biggest problem was tightness.

By Tuesday I managed to get myself down to Lake Merritt and put in a slow and really rough recovery run in gusty and somewhat hot conditions. I threw in lots of walk breaks and a few times they weren't really walk breaks. More like just straight out walking. I cut the distance short to 3 miles (planned 4) and felt proud of myself for even getting out there, but NO fun was had, for the record. My main complaints at this stage: inside of right knee had a little pain left over from the weekend and my calves felt stiff.

Thursday morning before work I took on my 8 mile mid-long run with much better results, running from home to the lake, 2 miles around, then reverse. I felt tired, but basically I felt okay. And I love this run, especially early in the morning. The city rises over the course of the run's elapsed time. There's lots of people out doing their thing. It's Oakland at it's best.

Friday I skipped the first run of my training. There was supposed to be a 4 mile run in there that just didn't happen. Patty had run even less than me this week, still fighting ITB soreness around her knee from the race. So together we convinced ourselves another day of rest would do us good.

Saturday we had our 16 miler. It was horrible.

It was all a little disastrous from the beginning. With no relatives around this weekend we called in a play date we were owed. But there were two problems: Firstly, it ended up on a Saturday. Usually we do our long run on Sunday and besides, another day of rest would maybe have helped. The second problem was we ended up dropping Kelly off at nearly midday, which is neither good marathon practice, nor our idea running time food-wise (where was lunch? oh yeah, we ran for 3 hours instead!), nor the coolest time of the day. It was warm.

On top of that we made up a route with the following criteria. 1) Flat! 2) Long. 3) Few cross streets 4) close by, we didn't have time to drive anywhere. Enjoyable was not on the list. The result was we used the trail that runs along the bay from Emeryville, near the IKEA, north to the horse racing track, looping all over the place (into Chavez park twice and Berkeley Aquatic park once) to get 16 miles out of it.

Now, this might not seem so bad, with it's San Francisco views, but it is also right next to I-80.

Bike path between I-80 and the bay

The run started with us having to park a mile from where we'd planned to start. Curse you 'Chevy's customer parking only' signs. This made all the mileages I'd marked on a map a mile off. This was okay for a while, but by the time we'd run 10 or 11 miles, the math was too complicated. Seriously, it was.

Cesar E Chavez Park near Berkeley marina

The real problem with this run though was none of the above. It was my achilles of all things. I'd never heard a thing from my achilles. Never. Until just ONE mile into this run when it started to hurt out of nowhere. By mile 8 it was painful. Each step was a knife stab in the back of my heel. Interestingly, it was much worse to walk than run. So I ran. Now I look back on it as amazing I even finished this run. Each time conditions are not ideal we look at it as a good experience for the marathon, because things will get tough there and just like this run I will just have to tough them out as best I can. I just hoped that when I was done I'd walk again one day.

In the last few miles my foot still hurt but I'd stopped listening to it. It was best to keep moving. But a sense of fatigue descended on me which is hard to put into words. If they could bottle it, I think it could have dropped an elephant. But we maintained pace, such that it was, and got the job done. 3 hours and 14 minutes. 40 minutes longer than we'd ever run before. Fallback week ahead, thank God.

We got home and we both took an ice bath and I started 72 hours of rest, Advil, elevation and ice. My achiles seems to have responded, with a couple of solid runs (4 miles and 8 miles) in the past couple of days with no pain. My guess is an overly tight calf caused the damage, so I'm hoping if I keep up the stretching and stay off hills for a while, I can steer clear of that one going forward.

Although we love the trail racing, we're just not strong enough to do it in the middle of this kind of mileage build up. So we've decided to skip the Woodminster XC race this weekend and maybe do a run out on the Iron Horse trail (paved, relatively flat) this Saturday with our running club. After that there's two big runs (18 and 20 milers) with a fallback in between and then the taper! Let's hope, NO MORE SLUMPS!

Lake Chabot Trail Challenge

2007-06-04T13:37:00.001-07:00

This past Sunday we took part in the Lake Chabot Trail Challenge Half Marathon. We signed up because we thought the course looked beautiful, because ultimately we'd like to get better at trail running (so why not dive right in?) and because it fit into our schedule and general sense that a few tough races would do us good on marathon day, if we survived. If the San Francisco Marathon is our A race, then this is our main B for the spring. On one hand I couldn't wait and on the other I kept thinking "once I get past that Chabot run then it's full speed ahead to the marathon."

Initially my expectations were that we'd go in it, try to have fun, and run with a bunch of people who went as fast (I mean, as slow) as us. Most races have a pretty good range of abilities. But then a week or two ago we started to look at last years times. They were fast! The last person in my age group last year finished in 2:33. Not normally too fast a time, but over a rough course with 1800+ ft of gain/loss, that seems to me like a pretty competitive field. Perhaps we were completely out of our league here. And what's more, there was a course limit of 3 hours. We started to become a little scared. What if we got to the finish line and they'd already folded up the tables and everyone had gone home? What if the race results just showed "LOSER" instead of a time next to our name? I'm not really a big fan of signing up for something that I'm clearly going to completely fail at. Perhaps this was really a bad idea.

So, meetings were held, expectations beaten with a large stick and goals were reset.
In order of importance (and decreasing order of likeliness) they now read:

finish first trail race
finish in under the 3 hour time limit
try not to injure self or severely hamper training week ahead
enjoy it!
beat at least one person in my age group
run under 2:30hrs (an unlikely goal)

The race:

I woke up after a bad night's sleep and really didn't feel too good. Nothing felt right in my stomach but I was willing to head out and give it a go anyway. Race nerves or oncoming illness? Who knows?! Our baby sitter arrived just after 7am and we were out the door, headed into the unknown.

When we arrived at the lake, the street nearby was already swarming with runners parking along the road and heading down to the lake (there's a $5 parking fee to park in the lot). We too parked on the street and followed them to the start line and picked up our packets, then made a pre-race bathroom stop. That left us barely enough time to put down a granola bar and get a little pre-race stretching in before the start. A ready. Set. And go! and we were off and running. It was all so fast I didn't even start recording my HR until around mile one!

Patty and I at the start

The race initially followed along the lake on a paved bike trail. A guy went by on his tandem bike (alone) and said he was catching up to his 11 year old daughter who was running. She'd done several half's before. Then he was off. First mile went by in around 10:00. Still plenty of people around us.

At 1.5 miles we hit the first real hill and headed up. We imagined the fast people half way home by now. We ran to the top of this hill with perhaps a little walking near the end. Some people started to fly by us on the way down the other side (perhaps the steepest downhill of the whole race). At the bottom we noticed one of them was covered with a smear of dirt down one side of his body. I don't think you need that so early in the race.

At the bottom of this hill the course runs along the golf course for a few hundred feet through tall trees and ferns to a cool wooden bridge and an aid station at the 3 mile mark. We later noted that this few hundred feet was the only significant flat section of the course!

Across the bridge was the major climb of the run. Something like 650ft straight up. Pretty soon we realized running was out of the question here and started to walk and settled into a power hike to the top , practiced through many years of hiking up bigger hills than this one. We noticed that we were gaining here on lots of people. We caught up to the guy with who'd fallen. He said "you guys walk faster than I can run". Yes we do. Still, my HR was up in the 180s just walking. As we continued up the hill. we passed several more people as everyone in view started to walk eventually. Back behind us was a beautiful view of the lake nestled within the green hills. I tried to appreciate how nice this section was scenically and ignore the incline. Goal 4.

The top was an aid station, at 4.5 miles, and we stopped for a minute or so and tried to swallow freezing cold Gatorade. Brain freeze! My stomach was still not pleased too, so I didn't drink too much. For what would be at most three hours running I was willing to risk a little dehydration. I carried a hand bottle filled with Cytomax and sipped this from time to time. Mostly I just wanted to practice running a race with it, the aid stations would have been fine. In hindsight I probably could have used more fluids.

The terrain after this aid station became a very welcome gentle downhill before becoming steeper as we entered the loggers loop. This area was filled with gum trees and smelled of home (Australia). The trail was a little slick with their leaves and nuts; we had to be careful. Goal 3. The second half of the loop regained the elevation lost and we walked several sections here. On the way up I felt like a pebble had gotten behind the heel of my shoe. At the top I reached in the see what the problem was. No pebble. Hmmm. I kept running. A little later I figured out I had a blister, caused by all the steep uphill walking. Note to self.

The miles from this point on became a bit of a blur. I do remember the mile markers coming by faster than I expected so I took this as a good sign. I didn't really feel any real pain anywhere, just growing fatigue. I think perhaps I was numb by this point. Patty was yelping at anything like a downhill with a sore knee and/or IT band problem. Overall though we were feeling pretty strong.

At the half way point I calculated that we might run 2:45 . And the hard hills were behind us. That was exciting but we had to keep moving. And moving we did. By the time we hit 5km to go it was 2:01. We had 29 minutes to do a 5K. Easy. Normally. I set off at a faster pace. Patty yelled at me for going so fast. I yelled back "Let's give it a go!" And both of us were off. Each mile mark we seemed on track. It was going to be close. We rounded the final corner and the clock read 2:29:22. 40 seconds! No problem!! I don't think I tried to kick at the end, just ran it in. Final time 2:29:35 (unofficial). Patty came in a few seconds back from me.

Here's a graph of elevation (blue) and HR (red):

Afterwards we sat around on the grass with Patty's friend Julie and her son and watched the rest of the field come in. It turned out that Julie had run with the eleven year old girl for several miles. They both came in just after two hours (and both won their age groups.) An eleven year old running that course in two hours. My daughter is such a slacker!

It felt nice sitting on the grass when I probably should have been walking around. They gave out pies and bags and water bottles. When I got up later I noted that I could barely put my weight on my right leg without intense pain. I also noted that walking around had my HR back up to the 150s! Interesting! We went home and both soaked in an ice bath for 10 minutes and popped 800mg of Advil. After that we were good to go.

Conclusion

We're elated! We achieved all of our goals for the race. We entered and finished our first real trail run. Our time exceeded both our expectations by half an hour and any reasonable prediction. Looking at the results I was not last in my division (the tough 35-40 men group), and most importantly I felt like I had fun and arrived at the finish line in okay shape. Marathon full speed ahead!

Links

Bay to Breakers

2007-05-23T20:52:00.000-07:00

This past weekend we ran one of the largest foot races in the world. More than 60,000 people take part, many without a number. I came 7334th (being narrowly beaten by Patty who came 7333rd).

We entered this circus because I used to watch it and be amazed at how many people could get up on a Sunday morning and run 12km (7.5 miles) across the whole city. At the time that seemed a pretty long way. At best back then I'd run a couple of miles anaerobically on a gym treadmill. Running on a road, for that distance, was unimaginable. So this year it was a running goal to enter it, do it, run the whole thing including the dreaded Hayes St Hill and put that one to rest.

For bonus measure, we decided we'd do it, and then we'd turn around at the finish line and run back downtown. This would get us our 13 mile long run. And it would save us each $7 to take the special bus back. And, we'd rock.

The race started with us standing in Zone 2. That meant there were 3 city blocks of people ahead of us. Tortillas flew threw the air and occasionally spin into the back of our heads. They almost hurt. I lifted my foot to stretch, a difficult act in itself in the confined space, and noted that the bottoms of my shoes were now tortilla covered too.

Soon the count down began and we were off. Actually, of course, we just stood there. This year they had timing chips and so it wasn't a big deal. Up ahead, a long way ahead, you could see heads start to bob. A wave of bobbing coming towards us at a snails pace. When it hit us, we started to bob too. A walking kind of bob.

Almost 9 minutes later we crossed the start line and broke into a slow shuffle. Then back to walking. Then the shuffle. Then walk. Then something like a slow run. Then there it stayed, a slow run. For miles.

Just before The Hill, Kelly and her Grandpa were waiting for us. Kelly was later given a string of beads by a naked man. That's an education for her. She enjoyed the spectacle. We stopped for a couple of minutes and chatted with them, then slow ran it towards the hill. Our pace was greater than a 12:00 at this point, possible closer the 13:00. Flying!

Up the hill we went and it was fine. In fact it felt good. All the hill work has made a big difference. There started to be some open space and we even picked it up. Pretty soon we hit the top and started the journey down to the coast. At this point we noticed there was few walkers and people were moving much faster.

Photo: Novato Advance

The rest of the race was pretty easy and passed quickly. We settled into a comfortable 10:00-10:30 pace for much of it always mindful of the return trip we still had ahead. There was probably faster miles in there too. Running felt good in the park with a slight cool breeze and a clear blue sky and everything was bathed in the morning light at our backs. We stopped for water a couple of times for practice and I had some luck with grabbing the back of the cup and squeezing it to make a mouth opening and drinking while moving.

I'm not sure where the 6 or 7 mile marks were, but we hit the end of the park all of a sudden and ran out onto ocean road and headed to the finish. I kicked at the end and probably passed 200 people in the process. We had lots left, I wish I could finish all races with so much to spare.

We crossed the finishing mats. Beep. Grabbed a couple of bottles of water and then after a few minutes of walking picked up to a jog again and started to head back up through the park. Initially this felt awful, but it settled down to being just unpleasant.

Half way up the park we rejoined the race (us headed the wrong way). We stayed over on the sidewalk and it didn't really cause a problem. A few others were either walking or running back too. Most people in the race were walking by now, but there was still thousands of them. Many were really just wandering around drunk. Or dancing on truck rooves. Or lying face down in the park. Or lined up at a port-a-potty. By the time we hit the panhandle it was mostly people who had no intention of finishing.

At this point we hit the regular streets and made our way towards to the BART station. By now we were both pretty beat and the concrete downhill pounding, raising day temperature, increasing dehydration and the constant start. stop. of the traffic lights was pretty brutal.

But eventually we were there. Reflecting what it would have been like to turn around and run another 13 miles, like we'll have facing us in the marathon, was not a happy thought.

Across the road was a Rite Aid where we wandered the around looking for calories for a while. I came out with a King Size Snickers bar and a 32 Oz Gatorade. The Snickers bar vanished instantaneously. The Gatorade followed fairly quickly.

So, would I do it again? Well, in a way I'd have liked to have actually raced it. So maybe one year we'll do that. The race itself was fun and the costumes and general madness were worth being involved with, once at least. If you're going to try and afford to live in the Bay Area it's worth being part of what it has to offer. Not everything has to be a race, so once you let go of that, realize you can't run this fast anyway, then you set the running on cruise control and enjoy the show. So yes, I'd do it again. It's funner than it looks.

Progress

2007-05-15T08:02:00.000-07:00

A running update on several fronts.

1) The hill running is starting to pay off. My run up Park Blvd, 1.5 miles straight uphill followed by a steep drop into and out of a canyon, then a downhill return, has gotten noticeably faster and at a lower HR. Last week's pace was 11:51 (avg HR=158). A month ago the pace was 12:16 (avg HR=162). Back in November last year, the first time I ran this route, my pace was 14:00!

2) Last week was my longest week ever: 24 miles (5:00 hours). On top of that I got in some stretching and strength training and went for a Sunday morning hike. Sure, the theory is that my marathon training will peak at a 40 mile week, and the marathon, at 26.2 miles, is longer even by itself, but this is still progress. Last time I ventured over 20 miles (much faster build up than this time), I self-destructed. This time I'm ready to run some more.

3) Longest ever training run: 12 miles. Yes, I've gone 13.1 in a race, but this was the longest self motivated run. It was also a trail run, with climb/loss 1750 ft so it felt like an epic.

We spent the weekend camped in San Mateo Memorial Park, which is between Silicon Valley and the coast in surprisingly beautiful coastal mountains filled with windy roads and redwood groves and misty open space ridge tops.

On Saturday, our long run day, we drove up to one of these ridge tops to run 6 miles each way from Russian Ridge to Horseshoe Lake in Skyline Ridge Open Space and back.

It was a tough run with almost none of it being flat. The first mile of the trail was tight single track which had been cut into a V shape by the mountain bikers, surrounded on both sides by waist-high grass. This made for terrible running and during this section we were imagining that 12 miles was going to take all day.

Fortunately the rest of the trail was either more standard gauge single track or wide fire roads. The return trip after the lake was much faster; we knew how far we had to go and could moderate our energy usage appropriately. That makes a big difference. Patty took the lead in powering up most of the hills and we both put in a fast final quarter mile to cap it off.

In three weeks we are scheduled to do the Lake Chabot Trail Challenge, a half marathon, so this was perfect practice for that. That promises lots of elevation gain. But before that, this weekend, is the infamous Bay to Breakers which we plan to run double (out and back).

commute

2007-05-05T07:50:00.000-07:00

My commute went up in flames this week and it's making me grumpy. It made news world wide. "Peter's commute went to hell" said the headlines.

Last Sunday a Gas Tanker lost control and exploded melting the I-580 East overpass (it then fell down like a giant molten blanket across an I-880 connector). The 580 section is the freeway that gets me home each night and there are no options. Traffic is now using Oakland city streets which have become a giant mess. Bottom line: getting home by bus is now 45 minutes longer and will be for the next 2 months while they rebuild this.

And that's 45 minutes I could be running!

High altitude training

2007-05-02T20:44:00.000-07:00

This is really a post about something other than running. This past weekend we finally made it to the snow, what little remains, and got in some very late season fun.

We left early and the day was already warm in Oakland. We drove east to the town of Davis in the central valley and stopped and had breakfast, then took in some of the farmers market across the road. Kelly rode the old merry-go-round which is powered my someone pedaling! We also watched some hula dancing. The pickings at the market are still slim but we did buy some cheese, bread rolls and slightly too early strawberries there before heading towards the mountains.

Up into the mountains we drove thinking it was too late. In fact there was so little snow that we ended up at Donner Summit, the highest point as I-80 crosses the Sierras, as it was the only area with snow at highway level. With so little snow up in the mountains people around here are now talking about water restrictions this summer. I remember last year people saying there was so much snow pack that there'd not be restrictions for years to come. Ah, easy come easy go.

It turns out, however, that the little snow we found was perfect for what we wanted: some snow play. Usually we head down back roads until we can find a plowed pullout or jeep road. We get out, climb the bank, and make our own fun away from the crowds. At this time of year, even along I-80, there wasn't any crowds. We parked in a snow play area just below Donner Summit and headed off to find a sled run.

Patty crossed the river first. I stood back uncertain her idea was sound. She prodded the middle of what was admittedly a small stream with a stick and then with hardly a hesitation leaped into ankle deep water and headed upstream along the middle to a place where she could cross the snow bank on the other side. Kelly and I followed, impressed.

The other side was sledding heaven. Someone had built a long chute which we could use. Here's Patty making a run...

And there were little hills that Kelly improvised her own 'butt slide' on...

We built a snow man, of course...

And later, Kelly also went down the main sled run by herself, a first...

We probably stayed for about an hour. The air was warm, there was nobody else there, the sled run was ideal and our snowman rocked. What could be better? So what if we were on the only snow patch in the Sierras!

Running, running, always running

2007-04-24T21:15:00.000-07:00

I hate it. And I love it.

When I'm not doing it my shoes look up at me like a sad puppy who wants to go out. Or I'm reading running blogs: "Wow, she ran a 2 hour half marathon! Good for her!" Or reading running magazines: "Do men always run shirtless like on runner's world covers?" Or looking up race results: "I can't believe she can run a 67 min 15K, and to think I sat right next to her at the running club potluck!" "And HER! she runs by my house doing a 20 minute mile shuffle and she just beat my best 5K race time!"

When I do have to go run, when it's one of those short weekday runs which are suppose to just put miles down and shake off the hard ones, I practically feel sick at the thought. 9 miles: bring it on. But what? 3 miles? Easy? But I'm tired. And my outside left lower legs feels a little tight. It's kind of a tearing sensation. Where did I put my HMO card? And the ever troubling right outer foot is complaining that it would like to take me down for another 2 weeks if I even put weight on it. Everything just says "really, shouldn't you just take a nap instead?"

Today was one of those days. The day after the rest day after the long run. Those days suck. It seems everything has tightened, my breathing seems off, my legs are heavy having not fully rebounded from Sunday's glycogen exhausted state. Worst of all worlds.

We would normally run around the lake for a flat and easy 3 miler but motivation was low so we headed to the hills to run one of our favorite trails. This always gets us going and after the pavement pounding of 9 miles a couple of days ago the trail surface was perfect. As usual, we felt better when we finished than when we started.

So the question is: why are we so flat? Why aren't the days rest cutting it? Lack of carbs? But we live on pasta and rice. Lack of protein? Maybe, but not really. Dehydration? Well you know you are supposed to drink like 64 oz a day. Does a cup of coffee count towards that? Ha. Tomorrow I start my new well hydrated life.

Tomorrow is our day after the sucky day after the rest day after the long run. That usually goes better. I hope so. But now, I need to sleep.

100 days

2007-04-20T21:08:00.000-07:00

I have a count down on my Google home page that tells me how many days until the San Francisco Marathon. It's the geek-meets-runner in me. Anyway, today at 6am marked 100 days left to train.

It is also nearly 4 weeks since we started official marathon training. We're doing a pretty standard ramp up of weekend long runs (up to 20 miles), mid-week medium-long runs (rising to 10 milers) that we kick into pace or tempo runs when the mood strikes, and two extra runs: one easy and short and the other a hill route. And in theory we're doing fallbacks, but we blew that off last week in favor of a hard trail run.

Today was our hill run. It's a route we've run plenty of times before because it's the perfect little but hard 3 mile workout. It starts with the climb -- a steady uphill for more than a mile -- from our house, up Park Blvd in Oakland, to Hwy 13. It's a somewhat busy road with a mix of sidewalk and use trail on the shoulder. (There's plans to put a multi-use path along here which would be great.) But in spite of the proximity to the road it is nicer than it sounds. If you can look past the occasional road kill and KFC boxes and other unmentionables, the run, at least the top half, has no houses to be seen. Ahead are the East Bay hills. To one side is a drop down into a tree filled canyon. To our back, when the weather is good, is a view across the whole bay and beyond to San Francisco.

Our route turns at the top of the hill and then takes a trail down into the canyon. Suddenly it is another world: a muddy decent through lush vegetation, beneath towering redwoods, down to a small creek bubbling with last night's rain. We cross a little wood bridge and then ascend the other side. This is still a steep hard climb to run, so much so that it usually reduces both of us to a walk. Even then my HR rises as quickly as the switch-backed trail itself. At the top we continue our walk to steady for a moment, then, once the world stops spinning, we take off down a fire trail that skirts the side of the canyon and looks across, between the trees, at the road we just ran up.

Occasionally we pass someone walking their dog, but on a week day there's usually not many people in there. It really is a little treasure that hardly anyone knows about. The fire trail eventually ends at a road. From there it's full speed downhill, or however fast our knees feel like that day, until we reach our home. Fun over.

We'll probably run this route ten more times before the marathon. And then, when the famous San Francisco hills come at us, we'll be ready!

99 days of running to go,
99 days to go!
Run across town, log it down,
98 days of running to go!

Running club

2007-04-15T06:22:00.000-07:00

Last year we started to run some of the monthly 4th Sunday runs at Lake Merritt. There are 5K, 10K and 15K races (1, 2 and 3 laps of the lake). There is also a kids race every second month.

The club which organizes these is called the Lake Merritt Joggers and Striders. This year we became members, as one of our goals for the year was to be more of a part of the running community.

So far it seems like a great group.

Yesterday we practically spent the whole day with LMJS activities. By the end of the day our heads were spinning with running and runners.

9am: We met at Skyline Gate trailhead in Redwood Regional Park. About a dozen runners from the club gathered as the rain started to drizzle down. The forest surrounding us was shrouded in mist but was beautiful and inviting nonetheless.

Our running plan had this week being a fallback week but here we were out for an 8 mile trail run with a running club. Sometimes you have to give in and go with whatever feels right. We headed off down the trail as the rain picked up.

The pace warmed us quickly. Our HRs left our training zone within minutes. These were runners. These were runners who get up on a Saturday morning in the rain and want to do a brisk 8 miles in the forest. These were runners who could leave us in the dust (or mud, in this case) whenever they wanted. But they didn't. At least not by too much.

As we continued the rain got harder. It was pouring as we crossed Skyline Blvd and entered Jouquin Miller park. Trails had become rivers. We couldn't get wetter but still made an effort to avoid the lake-sized mud holes. It's hard to say why. The runners in front of us disappeared into the mist and the redwoods and we were left to run by ourselves. Those who had been behind us decided to take a shorter option, leaving us at the back of the pack.

As we neared the turn-around point, we realized we weren't very far behind. It wasn't a race. A while later the run organizer Karen was waiting at a trail junction in case we got confused which way to go (although these are our trails, we know them pretty well). We ran with her for awhile (she recently won her age group in the Chicago Shamrock Shuffle , the largest 8K race in the world). We talked for a while until she effortlessly pulled away from us.

10:30am: after the run we were all covered in mud and soaked to the bone. Hard work behind us, we headed to the club president's house for brunch. Much needed calories made of bagels and warm coffee and chocolate covered cherries!

Several of the founding members of the club were there including Ruth Anderson, one of the pioneers of women's ultra marathon running.

3pm: nap.

6pm: In the evening we attended the 30th anniversary club dinner. It was filled with stories about the founding of the club and the characters which have kept it going for 30 years. By the time the music kicked up we left it to the old guys to party the night away. Old guys who can run 6:00 miles.

9pm: Driving home I feel all the more determined to become a stronger runner. Now that I've found the running community I just have to be able to keep up with them!

Make your own Google map

2007-04-05T10:53:00.000-07:00

Google today updated it's mapping application to allow you to create your own maps. You can add place marks, lines and polygons to a map. I gave it a try.

Grand Teton Backpacking trip

My first attempt was to make a map of a backpacking trip we did a few years ago.

In Google Earth I was previously able to import actual GPS data for the trip which included some sections of the route itself, plus various waypoints I recorded such as our camp locations. I was pretty satisfied with the results in Google Earth, but sharing it on the web involves putting a KML file someplace that needs to be downloaded and then loaded into Google Earth, if they even have it. So, being able to display this on Google Maps would be cool.

For sometime you have been able to do this. In Google Maps, simply put the KML file on a webserver and then point Google Maps at it by entering the URL into the search field.

Here is the gt.kml file on my webserver displayed in Google Maps.

Pretty good and anyone can follow that link. It displays the elements in a hierarchy of data just as it was arranged in Google Earth. But no photos. Hmmm...

So today I tried to do the same thing in the My Maps feature on Google Maps and it was initially a no-go right from the start. The reason is there seemed to be no way to recreate that route simply by staring at the satellite imagery.

In fact, there are two solutions for this which escaped me on the first pass. The first is that in Map view, Google Maps will actually display hiking trails for national parks as a dotted line! Who knew?! Tracing the trails leads to a pretty nice route. The second thing I didn't realize was that I can display the KML file at the same time as I'm drawing within My Maps. There's a link that will Clear Search Results when you don't want to see it anymore. When this data is displayed you can even click on place marks from the KML file and it gives you the option of adding it to My Maps. Cool! Unfortunately you don't seem to be able to do this for routes.

Here is my attempt, displaying the backpacking trip with the My Maps interface.

Adding photos was pretty easy. The editing of the bubbles that appears when you click on a place mark is really nice. I was able to quickly add a few images from my smugmug album of this trip.

All in all a successful little project even though the way to import data is pretty obscure.

San Francisco Marathon route

Then I turned to a different project. I tried to make a map of the San Francisco Marathon route. This project suggests many problems with My Maps.

Firstly I began by drawing the entire 26.2 mile course. This took quite some time as the interactivity of the map was slowed right down. Eventually I started to use the Overview window in the bottom corner to move the window and this worked much better. In addition, the line drawing has some wacky display issues, often drawing the rubber band dots in the wrong direction from the previous point or sometimes in a completely wrong place. But the actual line placement always worked. It's nice that you can edit the points later, but how about right when you make a mistake while drawing a 26 mile route. I was able to fix problems later.

Secondly I added place marks for the mile markers and for the water stations. This worked well and it was nice to change the icons and have the next place mark remember the previous place mark's settings. Nice work flow detail.

But then I tried to save it. Hitting the save button seemed to do nothing. Trying to navigate away from the page warned me I was going to lose unsaved changes. I clicked save again and gave it 5 minutes. No feedback as to if it was trying to save, or just failed to save. Eventually I went back to My Maps to see if I had anything to show for the past 45 minutes work. It turned out I only had my place markers. The whole route was gone!

Normally, this is when I'd give up and never use this again. But I did try again and added the route mile by mile instead of one long route. And I saved as I went. And this worked out fine.

The result is here.

So now you'd think I'd have a nice map of the San Francisco Marathon course. But instead, Google Maps has divided it all into two pages, meaning all the mile markers which are first are on one page along with about 13 miles of the course, while the other 13 miles is on a second page. It displays them as one long list of all the pieces and there's no way to group anything or form any kind of structure like the import of the KML file displayed. When you export the map to Google Earth it only outputs what's on the current page. It shouldn't do this! It should export the whole thing not just part of it!

Conclusion

I think that My Maps is a cool feature and it ended up working well for the first project. But a combination of bugs, the failure to save, and the poor final result (in terms of the display of elements on the left hand side as a long list, divided into pages) means this is just not ready for all but the simplest maps.

San Francisco Marathon

2007-04-01T21:05:00.000-07:00

This was our plan: run 3 half marathons this year and when we felt good about that and our bodies had hardened to steel (as hourly trips before the mirror would attest) we'd talk about running a marathon. New year would come and we'd go to a restaurant, and one of us would eventually say 'pass the chips and salsa, honey, and by the way what do you think about running a marathon?' And then we'd make a very careful plan to run one, if we wanted to. Or we'd say 'running a marathon doesn't MAKE you a runner, let's just see if we can knock some time of our 5K time?'.

This is the reality: we decided, after running one half marathon, that this is the time. We're in decent shape, it's exactly the right amount of time until our 'home' marathon San Francisco, and although I hate to admit this, it seems like almost everyone we know has run one or more at some point. Some of the people we know run ultras on regular basis. That means they run MORE than 26.1 miles at a time. Much more, usually. Some are even champions at, you know, 100 mile races across mountain ranges.

Compare this to our little teeny weeny half marathon that so recently whooped our 10:30 min/mile butts. In the face of this kind of peer pressure, we are forced to admit we suck.

But here's the thing: one third of American are OBESE. I'm thinking they can't run a half marathon (stop me if I'm unfairly categorizing obese people, but I think not) and, more directly, 75% of Americans don't get enough exercise to save themselves from possible heart failure. So a couple of Google searches for statistics later and I feel much better. Suck is relative.

And another thing. We had plenty of time sitting about the start line to our Half Marathon in which to survey the competition. They were some fit people. It was like an issue of Calves Illustrated. Okay, so there was a few people who looked like they shouldn't have been there, but the ambulances picked them up as they fell. But as I ran I thought 'these are really fit people and I'm running with them.' And in the last couple of miles, I was passing them too. Again, suck is relative.

So, back to the marathon thing. Once you admit that 1) You are not going to win. When my mother and/or father was not Kenyan, or of any particular running pedigree, I was never going to win. Or place. Or probably break 3 hours. Ever. 2) I wasn't going to qualify for Boston. Maybe one day I will, but frankly that seems easier when I'm old and slow instead of young and slow; and 3) that most people don't know a good finishing time from a bad one. When they ask how long it took they are fascinated that you might be out there running for 5 hours. How could you run for 5 hours, they are thinking? They are not thinking 'dude, if I ran, I'd do it faster.' Or, 'doesn't that Kenyan guy (what's his name?) do it in 2 hours and change?'

So, come the 29th of July, we'll run a first marathon content that it is not really about time. The goal will be to finish. And to finish a marathon is to not suck.

After that I can maybe do something about my 5K time.

First race

2007-03-29T20:41:00.000-07:00

No, not my first race. My daughter's first race. On the weekend Kelly took part in the kids race, part of the Lake Merritt Joggers and Striders 4th Sunday run at Lake Merritt in Oakland.

She did great, perfectly focused, systematically moving through the field. It was a proud parenting moment. So here's a photo:

Kelly crossing the finish line

I, on the other hand, attempted the 10K race (a week after the Canyonlands Half) and was forced to admit that it was probably a mistake.

Canyonlands half

2007-03-23T21:40:00.000-07:00

It's now been a week, but I wanted to write a little something about our latest running achievement. On March 17th Patty and I ran the Canyonlands Half Marathon together. For both of us it was and is the longest we'd ever run. 13.1 miles.

It was also one of the most beautiful places I could possibly imagine running. The first 10 miles are along side the Colorado River as it cuts through a deep canyon of red rock. The sound of the river and the sheer scale of the landscape sucked away even the sound of runner's footsteps and chit chat, leaving a surreal quiet and the scenery to enjoy as the miles ticked past. It was a privilege to be there.

View from the start of the race

The morning started with an early bus trip up the Canyon in a classically American yellow school bus. At the start line we sat for far too long in the freezing shaded canyon. A DJ played music. People tried to stay warm. The port-a-potty lines grew longer.

Almost an hour before the race they announced that we needed to sweat check our warm clothes. Yeah, right! But we did. We made a last trip to the potty, joining a line back onto the closed road. "If you are in line and are standing on the road, you're not going to make it. You need to make other arrangements." was the announcement. We stayed in line, and it was fine. That taken care of we made our way up the hill ahead of the starter with the red mega-phone and took a position near to the back. We shivered. Everyone else shivered. And then we were off.

The crowd started to walk forward and picked up into a jog about where the start line was. The timing mat beeped. I started my watch...

The miles cruised by easier than I'd imagined. I feel like in a race some kind of flight instinct kicks in that just isn't there in training. It was basically easy going except our heart rates were up from the altitude. We settled in at a 10:30 pace including 30 seconds walk breaks every mile and 1 minute every water station.

Patty running in the canyon

All was well until we left the canyon. The race course followed a bike path under the highway and then turned left up a painfully steep (but short) piece of path, then alongside the trucks towards town. This part was bad. The midday sun, a slow long up hill, the altitude and the truck exhaust. We passed a downed runner, lying head on the road, body on the sidewalk. We'd seen the after mouth of a deer which had been just hit by a car earlier in the morning as we drove to the start. It was trying to get up but couldn't. The running looked about the same. Fortunately EMS was on the scene for the runner.

By the time I got to the top of the hill my heart rate was up and I was ready to be done. Over a mile to go. I took two cups of water and poured most of them on my self. It felt good. Then it felt a little weird. And then I was back to being hot, dehydrated, having too high a heart rate and being ready to be done. But I kept running.

Along the way the towns people were out to see us. The kids lined the side of the road giving us "low fives" as we ran. It was very cute. One house sprayed us with mist from their garden hose.

Me at the finish

We turned the final bend towards the finish line. Patty pointed to the finish sign. I looked and when I saw it too my only thought was how far away it seemed. My heart rate was now approaching max as Patty picked up the pace. She decided we could better our goal of 2:20 if we ran faster. I followed her as best I could. As we got closer the route was packed on either side with people cheering. This was good because at this point I might have considered not running so hard. Perhaps sitting down. In the final seconds Patty and I held hands as we crossed the line. We did it!!

For me this was a big achievement. I'd hurt my foot a month earlier, had given it a few days, run on it, hurt it some more and basically couldn't even walk on it without pain. So I'd taken two weeks off running. Two critical weeks before this race. My longest runs had been stunted to a little over 9 miles and I'd put in just 11 miles total in the three weeks leading up to the race.

Now back home it seems like some kind of dream that I was out there in Utah, running down a canyon outside of Moab. That we ran all that way. That we sat on the grass in the park eating scones and cookies and bananas. That we sat in a coffee shop watching all the runners go by in their green race shirts. That that night we watched the sun set on a towering wall of glowing red rock from beside our motel hot tub. That we drove back to SLC the next day and flew home.

But it wasn't a dream. Moab, we'll be back.

Kelly's 4th birthday party

2007-01-28T22:00:00.000-08:00

3rd-4th January 2007 - San Diego, Anza Borrego and Palm Springs

2007-01-03T07:10:00.000-08:00

We woke up early to a beautiful San Diego day and headed right away to Peet's for our first espresso in over a week, plus some of the delicious baked goods from the bakery next door (Bread and Cie). It was so nice we were able to sit outside around 7:30. We went back to the hotel and changed clothes and headed towards the beach (Mission) for a run. Peter took off down the path so Kelly and I braved the beach-I say "braved" not because it was anything less than a PERFECT day, but because there were several trucks going back and forth sifting the sand. Maybe there are nicer beaches around San Diego because there was next to nobody there but this was a really nice beach. The sand was completely clean and nice-Kelly had a great time. When Peter returned I asked how it went-it was our first run in over a week-and he reported that it was "like running in paradise". I reported that for us it was "like waiting for him in paradise". I ran down the pathway along the beach and many condos. It really was like running in paradise and when I returned all I could say to Peter was "so what is the downside to living in San Diego?".

Our checkout time was noon so we raced back to the hotel to shower and get out of our room around 12:03. We decided to fuel up ourselves and the car before the projected 90 minute drive to Anza Borrego. I had spotted a Chinese restaurant just down from Peet's so we went there and go broccoli beef and vegetables with tofu. I was having serious vegetable cravings and this did the trick. We fueled the car and hit the highway. The drive out of San Diego was strange-you hit a National Forrest right away and yet there are no trees. Eventually we did some climbing and driving through rolling foothills with large oaks, and then finally hit some dessert.

ANZA-BORREGO

We drove into Borrego Springs and found the visitor center. Behind the counter were a bunch of senior volunteers who didn't look like they were going to be very useful in helping us figure out where to camp. At some point though I hear this man telling Peter advice about off road driving, here is a great canyon to camp, etc. Apparently this man had been traveling around AB his whole life and had too many recommendations for us even to remember. He came up with once canyon that was just a few miles from the visitor center and since it was nearly 4 and therefore about to get dark, we headed for that.

The drive up to Glorietta canyon was really easy-sandy roads. As we got to the top there were already 2 cars there but on closer inspection, they didn't look like they were camping so we just looked around and waited. We found a very nice spot off of the road and Kelly started scampering around on the rocks. As it got dark I made some dehydrated stragonoff and we settled in to enjoy the spectacular rising of the full moon over the mountains.

It was a relatively warm night but Kelly was excited to get into the tent (we had been promising her camping for nearly 2 weeks) so she and I retired somewhat early. I woke up early and went out to see the sunrise and watch the moon go down. Again it was warm and pleasant. We had coffee as we sat in our chairs and watched the sun light up the mountains and valley.

BORREGO PALM CANYON

We drove to the VC to wash up a bit and then drove to the Borrego Palm Canyon. There's a short hike (3 mile round trip) to an oasis up a canyon. It started out well with Kelly scrambling over the rocks as she went. A few hundred yards into it we realized we had forgotten sunscreen and it turned out to be really lucky that I went back to the car for it-the hike lasted a lot longer than we had thought. About halfway through we were having some trouble getting Kelly to keep moving. We had to bribe her with promises of treats, but by about a mile we hit some shade and could see the palm trees so she perked up. The last half mile is along water with some palm trees and she liked that. We had a short break and snack at the end and headed down. Kelly braved the hike down with nearly no complaining at all-in fact she and I ran the last part of it together when I mentioned that there was a Coke waiting for us in the car.

We certainly could have spent more time there-the park is beautiful and we only explored a small amount, but we decided to head to Palm Springs and come back another day. We had lunch in Borrego Springs at a kind of depressing cafe, and hit the road. Kelly napped as we headed to Palm Springs which we entered just as it was getting dark.

PALM SPRINGS

We were a little disoriented but spotted a nice looking Motel 6 and decided to see if they had a room. For $60 including tax we decided to take the bargain-most places in PS didn't look too cheap.

There was a pool and hot tub at our hotel so we decided to give Kelly a treat and go for a swim. Even the pool was heated to a comfortable warmth which I enjoyed, and a little time in the hot tub was very welcome for both of us. After a quick shower, we went to the Pizza Hut down the road and had pizza. While driving through town earlier, we had seen that there was some big event being set up so we drove up and went for a walk. One of the main roads was closed and full of hundreds of booths of art, food, etc. It was definitely a scene. Later we found out that every Thursday they have this Farmer's Market type of thing (without the farmers).

2nd January 2007 - Guerrero Negro to San Diego

2007-01-02T08:38:00.000-08:00

We woke up and had a quick breakfast of yogurt and granola bars. There was a coffee maker in the room so I made some coffee (not so good) and we hit the road headed north. Our plan was to visit Catavina, lunch at Mama Espinosa's, and spend the night in San Quintin. Kelly fell asleep around 10, probably an indication that the New Year's Eve party two nights previous had affected her since the previous night in GN was gloriously quiet.

CATAVINA

Just before noon we hit Catavina and pulled down a dirt road north of town to get a closer look at the crazy plants and rocks. Kelly had a great time climbing on rocks while Peter and I finally got a close look at the "upside down carrot" trees-the cirio, and the cardon which look like seguaro cacti but are HUGE. There were actually close to a dozen different types of cacti within a few feet of our car-hopefully we can get back and camp here some time.

DRIVE NORTH

We got to El Rosario around 12:30 and eagerly headed to Mama Espinosa's. This time it was fish tacos for me and Peter and quesadillas for Kelly. Peter and I have agreed that we have never had a fish taco that we really liked before but these were great. We also tried once again for "Mexican coffee" and once again were served "regular" coffee with a pitcher of milk. All of the coffee we have been served has been good but not the special brewed-and-poured-with-steamed-milk "Mexican coffee" that we had read about. Sigh. While at lunch Peter suggested maybe we should just make a run for the border. The idea struck me as pretty appealing-we could be back in the USA that night and at Peet's SD again the next morning. We agreed to see how it went since we knew we had a few more military check points to go and the first part of the trip had been very slow. On the positive side, once we hit the outskirts of Ensenada we knew that driving at night wasn't going to be an issue like it was elsewhere in Baja due to the development (lights and the toll highway to Tijuana).

This was actually the emptiest we let the fuel go-getting bolder by the knowledge of where Pemex stations were located for our drive North. We filled up at the station adjacent to Mama Espinosa's and drove on. We stopped only to switch drivers in San Vicente and when we hit the turnoff for the Bahia San Quintin it was still early so we made the decision to press on. We reached the outskirts of Ensenada just as it was getting dark and drove through a see of shadowy dirt as we made our way into town. While leaving Ensenada the previous week, we had spotted a McDonald's so we decided to have a break, go to the bathroom, and give Kelly a break before making the final push to the border and whatever it was that we faced there (the "busiest border crossing in the world"). There was a huge new shopping mall with a brand new McD's, Walmart, Home Dept, etc. We got the Mexican version of a Happy Meal for Kelly (can't remember the name) and ice cream cones for me and Peter. Kelly finished her nuggets and headed for the climbing structure and made friends with a little Mexican girl there. It was with a little sadness that we got back into the car to exit Mexico. This time through Ensenada we drove past the port area so saw where the big cruise ships land-quite a bit fancier than the part of town we had seen on our first stop there. The toll road to Tijuana was just like driving an American highway-wide with lights, reflectors, etc. so we had not trouble with that night driving. Coming through Tijuana we felt a little nervous but it became obvious when we were getting close to the border-suddenly the cars stopped, nearly all had American (California) plates, and there were people walking on the freeway between cars trying to sell caftans (?) and snacks. After about half an hour we made it to the booth of our lane. The immigration official asked us a few questions and even he was impressed with how far we had come "Guerrero Negro, that's a long way away"-and he hears answers to that question all day. It was a little strange for me because he Mexican and even had an accent so I kept staring at his uniform to confirm to myself that he was an American immigration official. Once again there was NO sign of any Mexican government presence at all-we were told we needed to surrender our tourist cards when exiting the country but to whom?

We drove on to our previous hotel in San Diego and even though it was empty now it was more expensive than the previous week but in any case it was a welcome sight. We got a room two doors from our previous room and were able to transfer Kelly from the car to her bed without much disturbance (she reported the next day that she didn't remember it at all). I made a cup of noodles in the microwave and Peter ate a couple of granola bars as we sat in the near darkness and tried to readjust to our by now strange surroundings (i.e. the US).

1 January 2007 - Mulege to Guerrero Negro

2007-01-01T22:02:00.000-08:00

We woke on the first day of the year in Mulege. The woman at the hotel restaurant was particularly grumpy but we figured that nobody in Mulege got any sleep the previous night. After coffee we loaded up the car and headed North. Our first stop was Santa Rosalia-the former French mining town. We had a major disappointment when we found the French bakery (yes-Mexican baguettes) closed, presumably due to the holiday. We did manage to get a look at the Eiffel-designed church in town and some other really cool, odd buildings. Kelly was too hot or tired or too something (I'm sure she didn't sleep so well either) so we got a quick snack.

SAN IGNACIO

The next town North was San Ignacio which we were also interested in seeing due to the interesting mission on the square. It was a nice afternoon with Mexican famililes hanging out on the square and visiting the mission. We had a picnic of tuna and crackers since nothing much was open.

The drive North was beautiful again-spectacular wildflowers in a desert full of seguarro cactus and Yucca/Joshua trees. We also experienced our first military checkpoint-so far so good-just took a quick look in the back and asked a few questions.

GUERRERO NEGRO AGAIN

We arrived in Guerrero Negro around 5 pm and stopped at the nice hotel which we had breakfasted at previously (La Marinella) and got a room. It was a little much ($50) but definitely the nicest room we have had in Mexico and there even seems to be hot (warm?) water. Unfortunately the pizza restaurant proved to be closed for the holiday so we decided to eat at the restaurant at our hotel. We had a very good meal of halibut and carne asada.

31 December 2006 - Bahia Concepcion

2006-12-31T22:01:00.000-08:00

In the morning we headed to the restaurant in our hotel for the bottomless cup of coffee (and some eggs topped with slices of ham and possibly American cheese). It tasted slightly better than it looked. The coffee worked though.

Then we wanted to stay in our room for another night and confusion followed. There was some Spanish confusion, but mostly it was a procedural problem. It seemed that 2 other people needed to check out before we'd be allow to stay. They wouldn't be able to tell us for another hour or so.

We drove out to the Mission. The Mission was closed but cool looking. It was up on a hill too and looked out over the palm trees and the river. We spent some time on a small lookout nearby looking at the vista.

Back at the hotel we were told staying another day was 'no problem'. So we headed for the beach.

We drove south to the Bahia Concepcion. The road wound along a coast with beautiful coves along the way. The concept of beach camping started to become clear with many of the beach fronts filled with RVs and 4WDs. The beach was then turned to a parking lot. It wasn't particularly appealing.

Hungry ("100 times hungry" said Kelly) we stopped at a restaurant built right on the beach called Bertha's. We were the only people there but it took about 30 minutes to get quesadillas. I tried quesotacos which, at least at this establishment could be described either as quesadillas with meat, or tacos with cheese. The food was easily the worst we've had but at least it allowed us to proceed to the beaches. We finally made it to El Requeson beach, described as "one of the 10 best beaches in Mexico", which must mean that there aren't very nice beaches in Mexico. It was pretty but full of campers and the wind really had picked up. We walked out to the islands which were attached to the beach via a sand bridge and Kelly was able to do some sand play while Peter and I relaxed. On our way back North we stopped at Coyote Beach which was recommended by some Americans at the restaurant. We got a nice spot on the beach to ourselves and Kelly played in the waves until the sun disappeared.

Back at the hotel we were able to get Kelly to nap and Peter and I were able to enjoy a beer on the patio outside our room while we worked on this journal. It was nice to be able to get Kelly a nap and not have to be hanging out with her. Peter and I also took turns taking little walks around town. When he came back he had news that there was a big party being set up at the gymnasium a block away (it was New Year's Eve). This would prove to be a problem.

When Kelly woke up we took a walk around town and finally decided to eat dinner at our hotel. When we went into dinner around 7 there was one group ordering and the rest of the restaurant was empty. By the time we had ordered, the whole restaurant was full of Americans out for a nice New Year's Eve dinner. We ate steak and some kind of fish we'd never heard of in front of a fire, and finally had a couple of margaritas (good). When our bills came, we got celebratory crowns and horns-it was actually a fun, festive atmosphere.

The very LOUD music of the party started around 10 pm, just after we got Kelly to sleep. We managed to fall asleep for awhile but woke up just before midnight and heard them playing a Mexican version of Auld Lang Syne. The loud music went on and we finally slept again for awhile. I woke up some time later and the music was still going on-I checked my watch and it was 5:20. It finally ended around 6:00! Now that's a party. We had it pretty bad but there was a hotel adjacent to the party which must have been unbearable.

30 December 2006 - Guerrero Negro to Mulege

2006-12-30T21:59:00.000-08:00

Peter and I decided that since we had already missed the 8 am whale watching trip and we wanted to reach Mulege, maybe we would try to do whale watching on the way back. We drove down to the nearest whale watching place (at an American-style hotel) and spoke with a man there. He agreed that waiting would be better since there were few whales in the cove at the time. We also determined that Jan 1st they wouldn't be operating since they couldn't get down the road (it's controlled by the big salt company that "runs" the town). The restaurant next door had a very pleasant outdoor patio so we stopped for coffee and breakfast which were both good.

Back on the road, we put down some miles, or at least it felt like it. Around noon we arrived in San Ignacio, an oasis town with a river and lots of palm trees and an old colonial town square. There was a place called Rice and Beans advertising itself as a SCORE destination so we decided to give it a try. We had a pretty good standard Mexican meal on the veranda and hit the road again. The next town was Santa Rosalia which had some interesting decrepit structures and apparently a French colonial town square but Kelly was sleeping so we kept moving. Finally we made it to Mulege around 4 and checked into a very quaint hotel with palm trees.

29 December 2006 - San Vicente to Guerrero Negro

2006-12-29T21:57:00.000-08:00

Yes, there was no hot shower, even after letting the water run a LONG time as suggested by the hotel keeper. We ran into him outside while packing up and asked "Is there anywhere around here to get a cup of coffee?" He directed us inside and we had a very pleasant cup of coffee (probably called something like "cafe americano" with him and his family. He showed us pictures of a recent road trip he had taken "down" Baja, and we made simple conversation with his wife (who spoke no English) and daughters (who spoke some). We headed out feeling renewed by a night's sleep and the warm feelings from a very sweet family.

We stopped at a Baja institution, Mama Espinosa's in El Rosario, for lunch. The lobster burritos and fish tacos were really quite good. Leaving ER is supposedly leaving "civilized" Baja for the wild south.

We finally started to make some time on our drive, even though it was much hillier than expected. It was a landscape filled with rocks and cactus. There were no gas stations. No ATMs.

We weren't sure we were going to do it but we pulled into Guerrero Negro just before dark (now about 6 since due to the time change as we entered Baja California Sur). GN is a bustling place, or at least it was Friday night of the New Year's weekend. The town itself was hard to deal with-a busy divided road and it seemed like we were always on the wrong side. We selected a hotel to try and secured a room which was kind of natty Spanish but clean enough. Of course a group of rowdy young men checked in next door but they left around 9 and we had ear plugs to help when they returned very late. On our way to the bank we spotted a pizza place so decided to try pizza in order to break up the relentless "Mexican food". The Hawaiian pizza we got was actually quite good, though we still went to sleep feeling a little sad-GN is not a very picturesque place.

28 December 2006 - First day in Mexico

2006-12-28T21:54:00.000-08:00

We drove into Mexico with plenty of expectations of what it would be like. Only 20 miles south of the Peets we sat drinking coffee earlier in the morning we entered Mexico (without having to stop for anyone) and most of those ideas proved wrong. I thought that being so close to San Diego -- to the US border -- at least the first part of Mexico would be more American than it was. Perhaps more american, in reality, translates to more crappy. But things around it were instantly Mexican. The cinderblock constructions of half completed buildings, the roadway with fast moving trucks and woman with grubby children running across it.

But initially, or at least for the first hour or so, we were isolated in our car and its sealed windows. Tijuana passed by on the left, the multiple walls and fences of the border to the right. Our first contact with anyone was the toll collectors as we took the 1D motor way south to Ensenada. We paid for the tolls in US dollars.

ENSENADA

At Ensenada we swung hard right and pulled up down the road from Immigration office to get our tourist card for travel south. It turns out that either every piece of information we had about what we needed to do for our card was wrong, or there was a good local scam going here. We had to pay a fine ($5 each, but not Kelly) for not getting our card at the border, and pay another $5 each for the forms needed to pay our fine! In addition we had to pay for our cards ($25 each). The worst part was the 2 hours it took to get the forms, pay our fine at the bank (of course the fine needed to be paid in cash) and get the authorities to stamp it. And there were only about 5 others trying to do the same thing.

We drove around Ensenada looking for a bank for a while until finally finding some place to park. The scene was pretty crazy. Out of the car we walked down the street to find a restaurant but soon entered the touristy zone (you could tell: it was labeled with a sign, it was full of bars with thumping music, and people started to beg or try to sell us necklaces) so we beat a retreat to what looked like a nice enough little restaurant a few blocks back.

We ordered and Patty and Kelly headed to the bathroom. I sipped my bottle of coke. Then suddenly I caught some movement out of the corner of my eye. A rat, a big fury one, came flying by and headed towards the back of the restaurant. Right then Patty and Kelly came out of the bathroom and stepped into its path. It stopped. They stopped. Patty considered whether she was going to have to kick it. Kelly looked it straight in the eye then leapt up into Patty's arms. The rat spotted an opening and headed left (with the restaurant staff in hot pursuit), Patty and Kelly headed right.

SAN VINCENTE

We drove south, no longer with a toll road, and the progress slowed. One town after another brought the speed limit down and suspension busting speed bumps made sure you kept to them. It seemed we'd never get anywhere.

With the sun setting low we decided we'd had enough for the day so decided to find some place to stay. It happened to be San Vincente. The hotel owner was really nice and had three little girls. We checked into a pretty bare room which seemed to not have hot water, but was basically clean and cheap. We walked across to the local park. The frontage roads to the highway were dirt filled with activity, children, stray dogs, pickup trucks coming and going.

We picked up some yogurt at a market, Kelly ate a hotdog from a roadside stand, and I had one of the best tacos I've ever had a taco sta

27 December 2006 - San Diego

2006-12-27T18:20:00.000-08:00

We woke up in San Diego to pouring rain as a fast moving Pacific storm blasted through the area. Once the rain finished the wind remained. The beach seemed unlikely. As did getting a run in.

PEETS

We often seek out the local Peets when traveling. If there is one. This has worked out pretty well as it both gets us our coffee and has often led us to a more interesting area of a new city. Today's excursion took us to the Hillcrest area of San Diego which is an area which actually has a little soul: filled with interesting shops and appealing restaurants. Plus, we found a secret route between the back of our motel and the area, so we've hardly had to acknowledge the fact that our motel is on some horrible hotel circle alongside a freeway. We just duck out the back, head up the hill past some UCSD parking lots, and we're in a different world. Fun.

REI

Our other favorite place is REI. After Peets we drove out to one of the REI's in San Diego to grab a few things before heading into Mexico tomorrow.

The closer we got, the more suburban it got until I would officially describe it as suburban hell. Giant single family homes popping up in clusters of monopoly houses. The REI itself is across the road from the Walmart in the 'town square'. The town square was in fact a mall with one of those pretend streets and a bunch of stores you'd never need.

Is it just me, or has REI sunk to new levels?

Inside the REI itself was fine and the man working the trail running shoes really knew what he was talking about. The two of us talked motion control.
We got what we needed and a few extra 'Life is good' hats and got out of there.

CORONADO

We drove from REI to Coronado Island, taking a freeway within fleeing distance of Mexico. We saw out first watch out of illegal immigrants running across the road sign. We drove by the amphibious base, home of the Navy SEALs including a rather fun looking obstacle course. Its a pity they don't have demonstrations, because that would be worth turning up for. Perhaps one lucky member of the audience could get their throat slit. Seems, though, that San Diego is a pretty cushy place. Do you want to reward the best by stationing them in paradise, or send them somewhere more brutal to toughen them up?

We parked by the Coronado Hotel and walked around. Kelly played gamely on the beach for a while in 50 mph winds wiping sand at her as she tried to use her little plastic shovel and bucket.

FISH

For lunch we hit the main San Diego waterfront for the major tourist spot: Anthony's Fish Shack. With the waves and gale force winds, plus it being the holidays, the tourists were down and it was actually pretty fun. The seagulls still lined up the beg, and the fish and chips were still pretty good.

26 December 2006 - Lost Hills to San Diego

2006-12-26T21:11:00.000-08:00

We woke up at a place called Lost Hills, which is basically a few motels and fast food restaurants on one side of I-5, in the middle of nowhere. The view was unremarkable.

LA

We got back in the car and headed south and didn't stop until LA. We took the Santa Monica freeway and headed into Venice to hit the Rose Cafe. Pulling up into a parking spot we realized we were parked in front of Digital Domain. Now that is strange, since I didn't even know where it was! Is the universe telling me something.

We got some much needed coffee and food there. It was too late, a headache had already set in thanks to a morning without coffee and driving right across LA.

LA JOLLA

We returned to the 405 and rolled south to San Diego. We walked around La Jolla to check that out. It was sort of like Pasadena, only on the beach. I'm not sure we exactly liked it. It was also swarming in tourists. Fat ones. Ones that smoke and say "I don't think I can go in there" "Why?" "Because it's California". It was true, the mall walkway was too narrow to get the required distance away from the doorways.

We ate at a diner called "Harry's". When we walked in we felt like we'd been in many places like it before. That we'd sit down and some haggard old waitress named "Angel" would call us "Honey" a lot before taking our order. Most of all the food would be horrible. But it wasn't like that at all. The food was good and I wasn't called "Honey" once.

Once back in the car Kelly fell asleep. She was toasted. We drove around looking for the Salk Institute to see the Louis Kahn building. Patty and I took turns looking around it while Kelly slept. I would have liked to have taken the tour, it was truly an impressive masterpiece.

From there we followed to coast down to Mission Beach and watched the sunset. It was so spectacular that it seemed the whole town had stopped what they were doing to watch it. Every access point to look out over the ocean had people, standing still and silent, looking out to the sea and sky filled with color. Finally we parked and watched it too.

GAS LAMP DISTRICT

Later we found our hotel and had dinner at a pizza place in the Gas Light district. Tourist central, but not too crazy being the holidays. The brick sidewalks and gas lamps are a new addition, but the buildings themselves are old and some are not like anything we'd seen before. Our restaurant was basically ordinary in every way, except the service, which sucked when it filled up with large groups of college basketball girls. (Patty and I had pizza with weird artichoke hearts and cheese on it. Kelly has angle hair pasta with butter.)

Bed couldn't come too soon.

This is a test. Repeat. This is a test.

2006-12-23T20:25:00.000-08:00

Did I mention it's cold here? And starved for daylight. But then I'm spoiled by living in North California. Really it's not cold or dark at all. It's not like I'm out running in 3 degrees. It just feels that way.

This is really a test. You can type a document in Google Docs (formally Writely) and then post to this blog from there. Somehow that seems like it could be useful. For one, a dedicated word processor should be a better environment for composing text. And for another, it keeps my postings with my other documents.

However, adding images could be easier. Once I download an image from my D70, it's a huge 3k image. Just as well I don't have a 12 Mega-pixel camera, or there'd be even more pixels to deal with. Then I need to add it to the text. But I can't just drag and drop it, and the browser for mechanism is docs is pretty basic. Resizing needs to be typed in as pixels, both x and y. No way to fix an aspect ratio that I can see.

I'll try the same process from Blogger and see how that is.

Heading down south

2006-12-23T15:30:00.000-08:00

"What are you doing for Christmas?" asks my co-worker.
"Heading south."

Truth is, we plan to drive south until the water temperature is over 80 degrees, or we run out of time, or land. We're headed to Baja California, leaving Christmas day. We have two weeks total, including 10 days of Mexican car insurance to play with, a 2001 Toyota 4Runner to get us down there, plus an almost four year old to entertain the whole way.

And we're not stopping at no Lego Land.