Long Hot Summer

Sounds like an all-around great weekend, Mike. Well done!

So, where did you camp?

Ah, right, I forgot the names of everything. Silly.

Spring Lake park. I think it's a county park. Just to the south of it is Annadel State Park - apparently it's more of a MTB haven than a running one, but it still had its pluses for running.

The wineries were (in order) Jacuzzi Family and Valley of the Moon. Most of the ones we tried at Jacuzzi Family were really good (but a bit pricey for my liking), and Valley of the Moon's chardonnay from the Lake Sonoma area was to die for.

Mike MacLellan wrote:Ah, right, I forgot the names of everything. Silly.

Spring Lake park. I think it's a county park. Just to the south of it is Annadel State Park - apparently it's more of a MTB haven than a running one, but it still had its pluses for running.

The wineries were (in order) Jacuzzi Family and Valley of the Moon. Most of the ones we tried at Jacuzzi Family were really good (but a bit pricey for my liking), and Valley of the Moon's chardonnay from the Lake Sonoma area was to die for.

Nice spot! Thanks for the details. And the wineries sound great.

Not a problem. It's a very convenient campsite and the trails around the lake (both paved and unpaved) are great just for walking or taking a leisurely bike ride. Then you've got some of the best cycling territory in the world at your doorstep.

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One good thing about (minor) hangovers is that they force you to run slow. I say minor because by the time I started my run, my headache was mostly gone, I was almost hydrated again, and most of my GI discomfort had left me. But yeah, still a little hungover.

Fortunately, I planned ahead for this, as I knew yesterday would be a good end-of-the-year celebration. So I just put 45min recovery on the schedule and hoped to get as close to 5mi in the books as possible in whatever condition I found myself.

The sun felt great as I left the door, and as soon as I started running, things felt pretty good, too. So I just moseyed along, not a care in the world about pace or time or any sort of number, through downtown Davis. Really, the entire run was just smooth and pleasant from start to finish. Temperature was warm but not too much, just a slight breeze, legs felt comfortable... and I rounded the corner of my street just as the Garmin hit 45min for a total of 5.26mi. 8:33 splits on a zero effort run? I'm happy with that.

Now... vacation. Taking a couple days to do absolutely nothing and let the stress roll off. Hoping that the school-related dreams will stop soon and I'll be able to enjoy my freedom in no time.

Must've been busy yesterday - hadn't even realized I didn't post about my run, much less the hike.

So, the run. Woke up after a solid 9-10hrs of sleep, exactly what I needed, and ate. Bonked about 1.5hr after eating... great. So I decided that with only an hour run, I'd just munch on the last piece of banana I had from breakfast and gut it out.

Nothing about the run was "fun," but I was able to hit an overall average somewhere in the high 8:20s after the first 3 miles at 8:45. And when I almost got chicked by two attractive young ladies, I even found the strength to hammer it up a short hill to open the gap again. Wait, why am I running from women? Surely having men run AWAY from them is impressive. Derp.

Got home and found a double-yolker from one of my chickens (fortunately, they've both started laying pretty consistently again!), so I cooked it up to go with my post-run smoothie to try and refuel my legs for the hike my brother and I were planning.

So my run started at 10am and the hike started at 2:45pm. Two workouts within 5hrs of one another... and the 2nd one was much tougher than I'd expected.

The route itself is in the Cascade Canyon Open Space Preserve (mouthful of a name) in Marin county. Trail map here. We started at the Cataract trailhead and headed up to High Marsh, down Kent, across Helen Mark, and back down Cataract. According to the map, 7.3 miles. According to the Garmin, 6.95. The difference is because of the Cataract trail, which is essentially climbing steps along side a waterfall in the thick of a temperate rain forest. Gorgeous, but extremely strenuous, and without a sufficient warm-up, both my brother and I were bleeding glycogen from our legs to a quick and miserable bonk. I was able to get them back a bit with the reprieve of High Marsh, but man, it was rough going for both of us.

Feeling a bit more lively today, but I'm just going to take it easy with a 7-8mi progression run. 5mi recovery with Aileen, 2-3mi hard to end it and get my legs ready for a carb-load. Gonna need it, since I'll be backpacking from Sat-Tues.

Will post a few photos from the trail when my brother uploads them.

Sounds like a great vacation, though it might be harder on your body than the usual grind. Hope you survive it!

The whole area around Mount Tamalpais is a great outdoor playground. Cool that you're close enough to make use of it.

Definitely going to be a bit of a grind, Mark. We're planning ~10mi/day. I expect to be wiped and ready for a few days of rest afterwards. But it'll be great base-building and do wonders for my quads

Ran with Aileen in Antioch this morning. She did 5, I did almost 6. We ran together until halfway where she turned back and I went another .25. Then I finished the 3rd mile at recovery pace, the 4th easy, the 5th just sub-7, and then half at HM to 10k effort to catch her. Finished with a few minutes cooldown. Paces felt fine, but weren't exactly flowing or smooth. Makes sense. That fartlek on Monday is still with me a bit, I guess.

8-10 tomorrow on her half marathon course.

Bit of a change of plans after another late night. Woke up, made banana pancakes, lounged around and drank a ton of coffee, then headed back to Davis for a short run (3.8mi with Aileen) and some grocery shopping for the backpacking trip. I'm trying to figure out how to squeeze an extra 400cal per day into my menu, but I'm pretty much out of ideas. Oh well. Hopefully 2600/day will be enough. I have been carb-loading, after all.

Mike MacLellan wrote:Bit of a change of plans after another late night. Woke up, made banana pancakes, lounged around and drank a ton of coffee, then headed back to Davis for a short run (3.8mi with Aileen) and some grocery shopping for the backpacking trip. I'm trying to figure out how to squeeze an extra 400cal per day into my menu, but I'm pretty much out of ideas. Oh well. Hopefully 2600/day will be enough. I have been carb-loading, after all.

Pack some nuts - great calorie-to-weight ratio, and yummy, too.

Enjoy the trip!

Whew. Out of the wild and into the real world again. And boy, does air-conditioning feel good.

Yes, we're a day early. This is due to three things:
1. Poor planning with the number of iodine tablets brought, leaving us with minimal water for a 4th day (brother's responsibility).
2. Chip (my brother's adorable Catahoula mix) burned/tore his pads up pretty good on day two, making a 4th day impossible.
3. Brother got bored on the 2nd afternoon when I settled in for a few hours with my book... despite me writing out a list of things we should each individually bring and "book" being one of them. Just sayin'.

But I can't completely "blame" him; we were both just ready to be done. With no real destination in mind - and having found that our tentative destination trail was so overgrown that hiking through it was miserable - we didn't need that last day.

So, day one started with a very pleasant 4hr drive down from Davis to Big Sur. We started off with about 35lb in each of our packs (8lb in Chip's, if we're keeping count here) at just after 1pm. The trail more or less immediately pitched upwards and climbed over a thousand feet, then yo-yoed along the side of a mountain ridge before dropping down to an intermediate camp, climbing out again (up a very hot ridge), and descending into Sykes camp, home of a hippie commune (or so it seemed) and 3 hot spring pools.

The place was pretty crowded, so we held off on taking a dip until the next morning, instead opting to just cook up some dinner and enjoy the camp. The next morning... we found that the hot springs weren't exactly that hot. Maybe low-90s in ours? Still, hot springs are always pretty fun, so we warmed up for about 20 minutes before going back to camp for breakfast. And, as a bonus, there was a couple who decided to bathe in the nude in one of the other tubs while we were waiting for one to open up. I say this in jest, of course, but I do enjoy how all kinds of social taboos are thrown out the window when you're camping. Everything becomes more primal, stripped down (har har), etc. And no one seems to care. It's nice.

Day two was a bit discouraging. After a beautiful climb up onto a ridge (with amazing views), we came to Redwood camp but decided to head on further. We'd originally planned for days 2 and 3 to be a big (20-25mi) loop bringing us back to Sykes on the third night, but as we headed for the lower leg of that loop, we quickly found that it wasn't going to happen. The trail was majorly overgrown. We crested a saddle and lowered into a jungle of California coastal shrub. Not fun. After a half hour of descending through that shit, we got to Cienega camp, one of our proposed stopping places. Unfortunately, the camp was two clearings with small fire rings in the blazing sun. With flies and mosquitoes swarming. And it was only 10am. Sit here all day? No. We took a small handful of trail mix before shouldering our packs again and heading back to Redwood. We may or may not have uttered, "Fuck that" as we did.

An hour later, we dropped into Redwood camp, beautifully shaded, with a large creek running through it, and not a soul in sight. So we set up camp, rinsed off (both our legs covered in little hives at this point from all the plant nonsense), and started a fire to keep away the mosquitoes. By this point, we both needed a nap, which was blissfully nice until the sun came directly overhead at around 1:30pm.

So, of course, we decided to go for a dayhike around 2pm. We headed back up the trail towards Cienega, but instead of going right at the junction into the jungle, we went left up towards Pine Ridge camp... And we climbed. And climbed. And climbed. Chip was pretty much done for the day about 25min in, to the point where my brother was getting a bit worried. Just couldn't cool him off, even in the shade. So we turned back - the hike wasn't that great anyway - and let Chip soak in the creek.

This is where I picked up my book to kill a few hours before dinner and my brother started to get extremely bored and develop cabin fever. Felt bad, but really, we were both exhausted and no amount of socializing would help. It was around this time that we decided to leave the next day, too. The afternoon was nice - despite not having eaten nearly as much food as I thought I'd need, I wasn't hungry, so dinner was kind of just shoving food onto a full stomach, but I knew I'd need it for the 12mi the following day.

Yesterday was long. Not bad, just long. Almost 5hr with the pack, putting along at a steady rate. The last .5 to .75mi of the trail, unfortunately, kicks up mercilessly before dropping down to the parking lot. At this point, I was very glad for my marathon experience. You know, when you hit mile 23 or 24 and know you only have that last 20 minutes to go, so you can tap the reserves, grit your teeth, and gut it out? Yep. The soreness, fatigue, and pain all disappeared for 10 glorious minutes as I just charged that last hill. At the same time, I realized this whole trip started just under 5 weeks after Boston. 5 weeks! I was glad to realize how much I'd recovered and how much fitness I was already regaining.

The drive home was long (7hr), but a brief stop in Santa Barbara to get a Peanut Butter smoothie from Blenders in the Grass - if you haven't had one and you ever find yourself in SB, GET ONE - definitely helped. Plus, I got to sleep about half of the drive. Then came home to few White Russians and my bed. Ah, home sweet home.

All in all, some 30+ miles of hiking (yes, the GPS says it's shorter, but I'm going by the trail map), ~13hrs, and ~10k' climbing/descent (GPS says 17k', but I know that's off). Oh, and about 45 mosquito bites. Yeah, I'm itchy today. And tired. And taking the day off.

But I have to admit, I really want to run some trails again. And after watching the Tour of California and seeing so many cyclists on the Coast Highway yesterday, I really want to ride some centuries. Hmmmm...

Pictures to come soon.

Man, I can hear the crickets! You're a fickle bunch, eh? Okay, here's some photos.

First, Santa Rosa/Sonoma:
Camp

The Essentials

The View


Wine

More Wine


Race


There are some videos of the race, but I don't have them yet.

Next, backpacking in Big Sur:
"Hot springs be thataway."

Me and my shadow for most of the trip (Chip)

The view early on, day 2

Brother and Chip (from between my legs while walking!)

How do you get a dog that's terrified of water to dive into a creek? Cause it to overheat by hiking up 1000' mid-day in the sun.

Camp, night 2

Looks cooler than it really was. maybe it's the A/C I'm presently sitting in. Yes, Chip looks like he lost his fear of water.

Were the overgrown plants due to budget cuts or just timing?

Ounce - parts of the trip were nice and cool with an ocean breeze. When climbing on the exposed sides of the mountains, it was hot. The lack of trail maintenance I believe is due to the fact that it's in a national forest rather than a state park, so regulation and ranger patrol is much less prevalent... As well as the fire they had in 2008 that the area is just now coming back from. I think they're trying to encourage growth. Slash just lazy. I don't know. But I have the hives on my legs to prove it. Thought they were mosquito bites, but they're pretty hive-y now. Fortunately, they don't itch too much anymore. Just 1cm dark red blotches.

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Oh, I ran today. An hour and 1 minute. 45min easy, 15min moderate+, 1min cool down (then a 5min walking cooldown, but that wasn't timed). 7.66mi total.
Oh, and I passed a guy riding a bike during my "moderate+" interval. At that point, I was probably around HM effort, but going up a hill. And yeah, I zipped by him. Took me most of the hill (2/3mi long) to catch him, but I did. Was running a 7:20 pace on a 5% hill. Felt good.

2ish hrs tomorrow, one of which will be with my brother.

Ooo! Pretty pictures!

See? It's all about the visuals, Mike! We're not fickle. Just demanding.

That sounds like a memorable adventure, even though it wasn't exactly 100% pleasant. Those coastal mountains are pretty rugged, and just far enough inland, or high enough, to miss out on the cooling ocean breezes. That equals some pretty hot weather. Gorgeous terrain, though.

Chip looks like the happiest dog on the planet, once he got up to his neck in water.

Mark B wrote:Ooo! Pretty pictures!

See? It's all about the visuals, Mike! We're not fickle. Just demanding.

That sounds like a memorable adventure, even though it wasn't exactly 100% pleasant. Those coastal mountains are pretty rugged, and just far enough inland, or high enough, to miss out on the cooling ocean breezes. That equals some pretty hot weather. Gorgeous terrain, though.

Chip looks like the happiest dog on the planet, once he got up to his neck in water.

And once you post pictures (including the little woman), you've committed yourself to a new level of entertainment. I don't know how to post pictures, so my readers have to put up with my ability to articulate and paint pictures with words about my cockamamie nutrition schemes and CrossFit.

Okay, fine. Visuals. And entertainment. Here's a video of Aileen and I on the trails in Annadel Park, Santa Rosa. For those of you who are astute and realized that I'm speaking to a deaf girl and she's understanding me perfectly, it's because I'm sim-com-ing. Meaning signing with my free hand while voicing - for the benefit of the viewers. Enjoy!



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Yes, I've been running again, too. Can't let this blog stray too far from its purpose, right? Did a trail run this morning with my brother - forgot how much elevation change is involved in that little 4.25mi loop and how the first mile of it is pretty strenuous. So it took us a good 45min to get that loop done, at which point he was good for the day, and I continued for another, extended loop. Once I got to the top again, I was around the 1.5hr mark, so I just cooled down the 2.5mi home. Total of 1hr48min, 11.6mi. Slow but very pleasant. My hip flexors and hamstrings are still feeling the backpacking, anyway, so probably for the better that I'm taking it easy.

Just a quick note, since this is making me crack up... Aileen is officially experiencing taper madness.

Exhibit A (Skype conversation):
[6:15:40 PM] Aileen: and came up with a few rules
[6:15:47 PM] Mike M: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
[6:15:49 PM] Mike M: i love it
...
[6:16:42 PM] Aileen: so rule 1) I need to be happy
[6:16:49 PM] Aileen: 2) you must be beyond excited
[6:17:19 PM] Aileen: 3) you must actually make me think that YOU think I can do it and that I am champ
[6:17:41 PM] Aileen: 4) no talking about anything other than the race during the race
[6:17:47 PM] Aileen: 5) no questions
[6:18:09 PM] Aileen: 6) you must remain positive even if im not
[6:18:16 PM] Aileen: thats it
[6:18:17 PM] Aileen: i think

Exhibit B (her Facebook status):
"Instead of running affecting my mood, my mood affects my running. So everyone needs to make me really happy until after 10:30 a.m. on June 2nd. Thank you."

Exhibit C (her easy/shakeout run today):
3.5mi, 8:4x average pace. Her race pace is 9:00. She said this felt easy.

Love. It.

I don't know, Mike. I think Aileen's first answer to "Why are we running?" pretty much sums it up.

Great video. And what a gorgeous place to run!

And if you know what's good for you, do EXACTLY what Aileen asks for/in taper. She looks dangerous.

Yep, I agree with Mark. Follow all of Aileen's rules, and keep her happy.
Sounds like she's ready to rock her race!

And it could be an indicator of how she'll act, when she's asking for pickles and ice cream.

ounce wrote:And it could be an indicator of how she'll act, when she's asking for pickles and ice cream.

Or ITS-ITs with J. Lee Roy's Dippin' Sauce... (got any yet, Mike?)

Mark - Don't worry, I've got all those rules covered. I love seeing her taper, actually. It's hilarious to be on the other side, and really exciting to see her so amped about this race. I have yet to purchase my required items to be considered a northern Californian. I know. I know.

Kathy - Yep, she's going to do great. She keeps telling me to be a bit more of a "rough" coach instead of so nice when she's flagging at the end of hard runs. I don't know how to do that. So that should be funny.

Oz - Knowing her, it'll be donuts and fish tacos. I treat her pretty much like a queen already with regards to food and beverage - fancy myself a bit of a good cook - so I doubt it'll be much different on that front.

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Another hour in the books today. Celebrated my last night home with my usual White Russians and Oreos indulgence which meant a slow morning getting on the roads today. The drizzle and overcast skies didn't help push me out the door, either. Still, it was nice to take my time.

Ended up staying close to parks/home in case I was feeling drained or having GI issues from the backpacking/yesterday's run/last night... but no need. Felt pretty good, though heavy legged, during the run, and ended up averaging 8:18s at an easy effort level. Just what I wanted for the day.

Aileen's last long run before her race (next Saturday!). We went out for a planned hour, but I told her we'd just turn at 30min and be happy with whatever time we finished in.

First 30min averaged 9:44 pace. She apparently felt like this was boring, because the next 28min we averaged even 9's with some stretches at 8:30 or below. The girl is ready.

6.2mi total, 58min.

Very exciting!

So, what race is she running... and can we expect a race report from her? Hope so! I bet it'll be great.

She's running the "Nitro Trail Half Marathon" in Point Pinole. It's a small opening loop and then 2 10k loops. The first half of the 10k loop is more challenging than the 2nd - there are some 30-50' hills - but she's not very fond of steady effort, so the surges will keep her motivated. I'll ask her if she's planning to write something up, but I doubt it. I'm the writer in the family