An unfortunate weekend off . . .

Well, as the name of the post above demonstrates, it wasn't the most productive weekend. It started great. I ran my usual Friday course in 1:21. Again, this course is about 7 miles and involves about 1300 feet of elevation gain. My previous record was 1:28, so I shaved 7 minutes over 7 miles. Its amazing what you can do when you are climbing well. A great sign that my speed is getting closer to where it needs to be. I think my best case scenario on this course is probably about 1:15 if everything went perfect and I was a little lighter and stronger. But I'm psyched to average 11:30 miles on the course. And I saw snake species number 4, a gopher snake! He even did his rattlesnake imitaiton routine, curling up and striking and hissing at me.

The rest of the weekend, however, did not go as planned. I went up to Seattle and was hoping to do a scout run on some of the trails for the 100. Unfortunately, 2 days before my trip, a storm dumped 3 feet of new snow on all the trails in the Cascades, putting the kibosh on that idea. Because I had family and friends to see, I ended up doing no running whatsoever over the weekend, which is the first time that's happened since Japan. Monday I went to Discovery Park which is a beautiful park with some old growth that used to be a military base. There is a nice 3 mile loop trail, but that connects to several beach trails and lets you go up and down the hill. I also put some street time in, including a run by the locks and the fish ladder. In front of the dam where the locks are located, there is a rope that runs from one side to another upon which one can often see fabulous waterbirds. This time I was fortunate enough to see a belted kingfisher, which are usually somewhat elusive. This guy was pretty determined to hang out where he was, and while he would flit off, he would always return.

Anyways, always good to run in the NW, although I'm sorry I didn't get a chance to do some more, especially on the trails. But it was chilly and damp and the beach had the deep smell of brine that is so pervasive along the Washington shore.

This morning was just the usual canyon run with Gator on my new trail shoes. I'll give a review later. As you may remember, my last pair of fancy trail shoes were a disaster on the GTR. What will become of these, who knows? I'll give the full report on my La Sportiva Wildcats soon.

OK. Interesting pictures

Yesterday, I had a run that can only be described as delightful. I often take forgranted how beautiful San Diego can be and lament that I am not in the Northwest. However, days like yesterday serve as a good reminder.

After work, I went to Mission Trails about 6:15 or so. I wanted to be done running by 8, so instead of doing some hardass climbing, I decided to run Spring Creek Canyon. This is a canyon that runs north-south from Mission Trails, underneath SR 52, and then out onto what may or may not be the Miramar MCAS. I say this because it used to be off limits, but now there are signs which merely discourage use and the use of the area by dogs in particular. Where this nature preserve stops and MCAS starts is anybody's guess. There are a few signs around that warn of live ammo, but often I've seen them on the way back on an out and back with no sign on the way out, so I don't think even MCAS knows.

There is a great run which I've described earlier in which you can connect Spring Creek with Oak Creek Canyon to make a fun loop. That was my intent as I headed out. Once under SR 52, you can either veer to the right to stay on the main path, which involves a fairly easy creek crossing, or you can veer right up a small fire road for about 50 yards onto the single track. I love the single track because it is undulating and has a few small, steep climbs. Either way, the trails are fairly deserted except for the odd super mountain biker who LOVE these trails, so keep your eyes out and, in my opinion, yield the way because these guys need to keep their momentum up to take some of the steep climbs. As you go, there are several spur trails that you can take off to the left. All of these lead up to the series of fire roads that penetrate the hills between Oak and Spring canyons and all of which may or may not be base property. They have official looking gates.

Today, the weather was perfect, in the low 70's, and the sun was down so there was a cool breeze. The trail up the canyon is a slight uphill the whole way, so you always feel you are working harder than you should be, because the grade is not very perceptible, but you can sure feel it on the way back. It being late, I had the canyon to myself. There were bushes bursting with yellow flowers up the slopes of either side of the gentle hills framing the canyon, and every once and a while, there would be a bush with big pink flowers. After about 3 or 4 miles, you hit a "y" junction. The well traveled path for the Oak Creek loop goes to the left. However, there is a fainter trail that goes to the right that I had never taken. Intrigued, I took the fainter trail to the right side of the ridge. This was an excellent choice. The trail meandered through encroaching vegetation burdened with yellow and pink flowers. After about a quarter mile I came up short for a tarantula that was crossing my path. This was the first live one I have seen in San Diego since I first moved here in 2003, although I know that they are around and can be out in force. I took a picture and gave him a wide berth as I continued up the trail. Not 5 minutes later, I pulled up again as another hairy arachnid ambled across the trail. Nothing for two years, then two in 5 minutes! Neither seemed particularly perterbed by me, although in photographing one with my water bottle, he raised his front legs, presumably to threaten me and make himself look even bigger.

Typical stretch of upper Spring Canyon trail.

Thirsty little buddy?
Tarantula 2! Both these guys were smaller than the ones I remember seeing in Tucson.

Leaving my hirsute friends behind, I headed up a beautiful switchback through knee high grasses and gained about 400 feet to the top of the hill. As I traversed around the hilltop, in front of me lay 3 quarters of a mile of gorgeous double track downhill. This was what trail running was all about. As I watched the sun set over the verdant hillocks separating spring canyon from oak canyon, I let my feet lead me through gentle undulations, rocky enough to keep my attention on the path snaking through the grass leading me back towards the canyon. After about 6 minutes of trail running heaven, I flew down the steep, loose, rocky last 200 yards back to the canyon floor and followed the wider main trail not towards Oak Creek, but back down Spring Creek Canyon and towards the car. I raced only against darkness as I put miles quickly behind me, taking advantage of the slight downhill camber of the trail.

On the traverse. You can see Glorious Ridge (as I've dubbed it) runing from top right to left in the picture.

I made it back to the car just as dusk was reluctantly fading into night, the entire run taking about 1:40. However, I had very little climbing in the last two days that meant . . .

Monserate! Followers of this blog (of which there are 0 as far as I can discern) know that this is one of my favorite climbs because of its sheer pointlessness. It is a 2 mile, 1200 foot rocky climb to nowhere located directly next to Interstate 15 in the hottest part of the county with a lot of burned out vegitation (although it is recovering from the fires finally) and no wildlife to speak of except for biting flies. However, its a convenient stop when returning from Riverside court to take a break and get some miles in, and it certainly makes you feel hard just being out on its slopes.

Today was a double ascent, a first for me. It took 28 minutes the first time up and 29 minutes the second. That is in line with my climbing from earlier this year, and also in line with my climbing times from Kway Paay (19 min to go 900 ft over 1.1 miles). I'm encouraged that my climbing is going well, if not spectacularly. What is most encouraging is that I can climb at the same rate for 2 climbs with only about 12 min. of active recovery. And less than 24 hours after a well paced 1:45 run the night before. I even had some wildlife as I spotted two striped racer snakes about 2 minutes apart darting off the path and into the bush. Its getting to be snake time of year. YES! (Oh, and another rattler on an hour hike Tuesday with Erica and Killer on the west side of Mission Trails).

Stock footage of a striped racer.

My plan is to run tonight after softball and to take Killer since Gator is pretty tired from her earlier runs this week and has been feeling off. Killer has yet to do a run more than 45 min, and this is two hours of mixed trail and pavement with some busy roads and big hills. Its an experiment. We'll see . . .

More boring words, no interesting pictures

I know, I need more pictures. I didn't bring a camera with me today, and if so, not sure what pics I would have taken. Nothing special, for sure.

No interesting stories to tell, so you may as well skip to the next entry. Ran in the canyon this morning. It was 45 degrees at the start and 60 by the end, so I was too warm in my vest and long sleeve. Bad decision. Took me 1:37, which is pretty close to my best time, and that included a bathroom stop, so that's a pretty good sign that my "speed" is staying where it is.

The big disappointment this week was that I missed the earthquake. It happenned while I was out running and didn't feel a thing, but some of my books were out of my bookshelf and all my pictures at work got knocked down (although someone put them back up again. No idea who. Just noticed that. Weird.)

National championship was last night. I wasn't too interested in which predominantly white school's upper class fan base would go home happy, but I have to admit it was a good ending. I was frustrated the last two weeks with all the Hoosier references. ARGH! Butler is in the same league as Gonzaga and has been either in the top 10 or on the cusp of being in the top 10. They have a future NBA starter and likely another NBA draft pick after that on the team. In fact, 5 years from now Hayward will be a starter in the NBA while the Duke guys will be on the bench in the NBA or will be playing overseas or making money with an MBA somewhere. So enough with the David and Goliath references. Butler was a very good team going in who got a lousy seed (should have been a 4 seed or even a 3). Congratulations to them on a great season, but lets view them in the proper light, and not in the light a story hungry media feeds us, OK? Great.

Odd week

Well, it was a good end to the week, but it was an odd one. Thursday, I split my time, doing a very lame hour in the morning with Gator to take advantage of the muddy conditions.

Trying to make up for it, I did a run Thursday in Cuyamaca, going up Cuyamaca peak. It was a fun winter climb and super spooky. There was a thick fog and a light mix of rain and snow. Visibility was about 5 feet, and I had to scan my light side to side just to see the edges of the trail and stay on track. It slowed me down, taking 51 minutes to make the climb, but it was good to be back at altitude and the spookiness of the dead and dormant trees looming over the trail with the fog floating through them provided a spooky backdrop.

Friday was a poker game at Greg's, so it meant trying to slip in a run some other time. Fortunately, the office closed early, so I was able to slip out and grab an hour and a half in Penasquitos. Nature's call brought about a handful of leaves and chafing problems, and the single track was very overgrown and difficult. But the flowers were out and the creek was flowing, so it was pretty, if nothing else. A funny sidenote when I got back was I was talking to Kate, a new attorney at work, who asked if I would be interested in running with her friend Ryan when he moved to San Diego. Well, after a few moments of conversation, it turns out her friend happens to be Ryan Hall. Yeah, maybe I'll go show him the ropes, teach him a thing or two. Or not.

Saturday's run went much better. I put the Michigan State game on and took Gator to Mission trails. We did a double ascent of North Fortuna from Oak Creek. The first trip up took 19 minutes, and the second one took 18 minutes. Both of those were encouraging (900 feet over a mile and a quarter on loose DG). My new downhill running is going pretty well too. I like the cycling tip of turning over and gripping the downhill with my feet that I got out of a random trailrunner letter to the editor. It works pretty well for me, but takes concentration. Anyways, spent a total of about 2 hours at the park doing some flat stuff after the up and down.

Sunday was the new modified loop (6 climbs, including Grasslands, Powerline, North Fortuna, Shepardson Canyon, South Fortuna, and Kway Paay). I need to figure out some exact distances, but it seems like its about 12 miles with about 3000 feet of climbing. Did it in about 3:10, and then did 50 minutes of flat running that went pretty well, if a little slow. Didn't feel too sore, so probably had a little more I could have given, but fairly satisfied overall. In two weeks, I'll do a double loop to see how that goes. If I can go 6.5 hours, I'll be pretty psyched. That puts me right on track for a good performance in Jemez.

More soon with some pics, I hope!

Wednesday ultra encounter

Had a good run today. Did my new modified loop, with 4 climbs, grasslands, telephone pole, north fortuna, and south fortuna. If I had time, I would have thrown a Kway Paay at the end as well. Its about 2200 feet of climbing, and it went pretty well. At the beginning, I saw my first rattlesnake of the season, as you can see below. He was a baby sucker, about 8 inches. I got him off the trail so he could have a chance tonight, when its supposed to get cold and rainy. On a lark, I ran the first 2 climbs entirely and about a quarter of the way up North Fortuna. Interestingly, it only cut a minute or so off my total North Fortuna climb (about 22 min). So not sure of the benefit of running unless you are really trucking it. Anyways, came down from North Fortuna and worked my way into the wash where I ran into Erica and Killer. coming out of there, ran into another ultra guy, Don, who was on a recovery run from a 50k about 1.5 weeks ago. He was pretty strong, and it was work keeping up with him on the way to the top of the South Fortuna stairs. He dropped me on the little rollers up to the peak, but I was able to catch up on the descent. He seemed like a careful descender who still had some lactic acid saved in his quads from his last ultra. I had no such handicap, and I had a nice descent back to Oak Creek Canyon.

Total time was about 2:20, which wasn't bad considering the walk in the wash and the snake pit stop. Listened to the Lakers get thrashed by the Hawks. They are clearly in a malaise and need the playoffs to start. They really miss Bynum's shot blocking inside. Hopefully the rain comes tomorrow . . .

First rattler of the season! Still messing with my new phone and trying to figure it out. I hope to have some better pictures soon.

First snake of the season! This was from Sunday, I think, at the top of North Fortuna. A California King Snake. It was a great wildlife run as I also spotted a road runner and a the biggest horned toad I've ever seen, who was as wide as he was long. They are fairly rare in San Diego County, but I see them every once and a while in Mission Trails. I think they are doing OK there.

Not much to report

Easy run this morning. Did my Tuesday canyon run. Took about 1:50 or so, probably not that fast. Didn't have any energy, but managed to push through. Don't have too much else to report. Rain comes tomorrow, which means good running, and maybe some snow on Thursday AM. Hello, mountains!!

Blogger's back!

Well, its been a while, but I read somewhere that if you are going to blog, you need to be consistent and need to stick to a theme. OK, I can handle that. I'm sure I will ramble, but lets talk about the "offseason" and what I've done in the last week, now that training has officially begun.

The fall was a lot of shorter runs in the canyons, with just running anywhere that sounded good with no particular goal whatsoever. The only run that was consistent was my Friday speed run over the two Fortunas and my Sunday longish run which was 3 to 4 hours throughout the fall. Then, the winter trip to Japan brought a 3 week hiatus to running, but I hit the ground refreshed and ready to go for the New Year.

The Spring was more of the same, trying to concentrate on faster speeds on flat trails. I would say I was mildly successful at best, but I had a lot of fun on a lot of different trails.

So why start blogging again? Well, I have a race suddenly in my focus. On a whim with Scotty's pushing, I signed up for the Jemez 50 miler. I will post more on this race soon, but it looks like an asskicker. My goal on this one is to use it as a training run. It has 12,000 feet of climbing over 52 plus miles. Actually, the climbing all seems to be in the first 36 miles, with lots of fallen trees, scree descents, gnarly switchbacks, cross prarie gopher hole jumping, boulder field navigating, and double diamond ascents and downhills mixed in for good measure. My goals are pretty simple:

1. Climb hard and steady. Get a good pace and stick to it and be able to climb the last climb with the same speed as the first. And no breaks.

2. Downhill speed. The goal race, as I will discuss in later posts, is White River in July. I would like to break 12 and get closer to 11. A huge part of that is going to be the ability to effectively run downhill, which requires guts, training and quads, baby, quads. Jemez has a lot of big, long downs, so it will be a good testing ground, especially with a few hours of flat/rolling downhill on the last miles to simulate the trail at the end of White River.

3. Pacing. I want to be in the 36 mile aid station between 11 and 12 hours and be done in 15 hours. Those are pretty modest goals, but it will require pacing to get there. I'm going to try not to go out too hard.

4. Gear. I want to start talking to others and seeing what gear they are using. I'm guessing I am missing a huge chunk of it because I don't shop anywhere other than the local big 5/Walmart for shoes, clothes, etc. So I've got my eyes open for ideas.

5. Bear sighting. Someone last year saw a bear. I want to see one.

Pretty modest goals, but remember this is supposed to be a training race. I don't want to be out of action for 2 weeks before and 3 weeks after. I need to be able to recover from this quickly, as its only about 8 or 9 weeks out from White River. Focus!

Pics and more discussion about White River soon. But a quick recap of last week's training. Canyon run with Gator in the AM. 1:45. 20 min of relatively easy work in Mission Trails in the evening followed by about 1/2 hour of hiking. Wednesday was a run home from work. Long day, about 2.5 hours of road and trail mix. Thursday I skipped due to technical difficulties. Friday AM I ran the cayon with Gator, again in about 1:45 or so. Friday night I set a 2 Fortuna record from my new starting spot with a 1:28. That was a surprise, but I've been finding that I can almost run faster with tired beat legs once I get a little warmed up. The other helper was this old hardass who I met at the saddle between the Fortunas. He had run all the way up from Oak Canyon and was headed all the way up to North Fortuna. He was slow, but steady, and while I beat him to the top by a good minute to minute to two minutes, he never stopped and was a steady churn. It was his first time, he claimed, to try the climb in 3 years. Well, he sure looked like a hardass, and it spurred me on to a big finish.

Saturday was a double ascent up Kway Paay. That's about 875 feet climbing over a mile. I did it twice with two harrowing trips down. Things I learned? my climbing rate is still good but with plenty of room for improvement. I also have been working on my downhill technique. I've found on the loose Dg stuff, quick steps are key, and let the momentum take you to a degree, and just go with the flow. Don't let your foot stay on the ground, or it will slide out from under you. Other good advice I read was to run with your hands slightly forward and to picture your legs like you are biking, saving some jam on the ol' quads. Generally, I think it works, but I have some trails to test it on pretty soon that will be hard to beat.

Sunday was 5 hours in Mission Trails, or the length of time for the elite eight to play out. I also wanted to maximize climbs, so I did the 900 foot climb up the wall, through the saddle, and then to the summit of North Fortuna. After that, down through Shepherd's canyon, up the short steep climb, back down into the Wash, up South Fortuna (700 fet in 1/2 mile or so) then back to Kway Pay for another 1 mile 900 foot climb. I was pretty wasted by the time I got to the top, so I took about 5 min up there, then ran back down to the car where I took another 5 min in the air conditioning. Then headed out again for the second half of the Duke game. Basic grassland running with a climb up half of Kway Paay to finish the day. And then a grape slushy reward.

All in all, not bad for the long run. I could have been stronger and will be stronger, but given my successful Friday and Saturday runs, I can't say I was shocked to not have a great time. But a copious amount of wildlife. Saw a road runner, BIG san diego horned frog, a beautiful California King Snake about a foot long getting a taste of Spring, a giant alligator lizard I'd estimate was a foot long at least including tail. Anyways, a good end to the week. I'll put some pics up later this week.

Rain and snow coming Wed. Bring it.