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Morning swimming at Lake Anza

We’ve been practicing our open water swimming here at Lake Anza in Tilden Regional Park (Berkeley). One day Patty will embrace swimming. Today was not that day. For me, things are going fairly well with it. It really doesn’t bother me to be swimming in the green murk and I’m up to 1000 yards continuous swim in the pool. I’m feeling pretty confident about swimming 400m during the triathlon in a few weeks. The main issue now is sighting. Doing it without using a lot of energy is a problem, which probably means I’m trying to get my head too far out of the water, or attempting to do it at the wrong time. Of course swimming around in circles is not good either. I might need to be able to swim 1000 yards!

Swimming lake anza, open water, swamp monster, swimming, tilden

I’ve been playing around with an iPhone application called Brushes the past couple of days. Here’s a drawing I did last night at Kelly’s request.

Kelly: Close your eyes and tell me what you’re imagining…
Me: My bed…
Kelly: Then draw your bed, with a cute guy…
Me: Er.. Okay…

Cute guy on a bed

More here…

Drawing bed, cute, Drawing, iphone

Yesterday Patty and I ran the Dick Houston Woodminster XC race in Oakland and I feel my interest in running restored. Why? Was it because we got to drive to it in our brand new 2010 Prius? I think so. Maybe. A little.

The other reason was because this is really fun. It was our first Handicapped race, which means different age and gender groups leave at different times. It seems a slightly old fashioned notion, but I guess it’s grounded in some real differences. Anyway, the result for us was that Patty headed off with the 2nd group to leave, while I stood around and left with the 35-45 men in the second last group. That put her 12 minutes ahead on a 9M hilly course. The target was a go.

Woodminster Elevation Profile

By the time it came to our group there wasn’t too many people at the start. I chatted to Francisco for a while, but I knew he was going to take off and there was no chance of keeping up. When they counted down the last 5 seconds I really hoped I’d be okay. My legs were still a little rough since the half marathon two weeks early and it’s probably fair to say I hadn’t had a good run since then. Anyway, it was too late to worry about if my legs were going to have a good run, we were off and the all male crew headed down the trail at break neck pace. Ahead of us was most of the field with between 4 and 16 minutes head start on us, including Patty, and behind us were the fast young men in the final wave. It seemed like we were going pretty fast. When we hit the first uphill I looked at my watch: 7:20 min/mile pace. Yep, a little fast! But the first big hill (400ft in half a mile) took care of that problem as we first trotted up the bottom section and then settled in to a power walk to the top.

Once that was out of the way we pushed on with runners still close behind and in front of me, onto Sequoia Bayview (one of our favorite East Bay Trails). Around here the first of the super-fast group from behind caught me. Amazing! In here I probably could have moved a little faster, but wasn’t ready to commit to overtaking a bunch of people. We crossed over Skyline and was stopped for a moment to let a car go by. Several people charged pass me when it okay to continue, which didn’t seem entirely sporting. At any rate we ran up the Chabot driveway and back onto the trail. At this point the climbing was done for the moment and it was either rolling or downhill for some miles and people were more spread out so I focused on not twisting an ankle, maintaining fast turnover on the downhills and pushing on the uphills. I managed to maintain a 8:30 min/mile pace through all three miles of this section, which was somewhat of a break-through for me on trails. I was catching people, I was flying down hills with recklessness caution, powering up others and missing aid stations. It was great.

All that came to an end at the famous “Woodmonster” hill which rises 800ft in a mile. Needless to say I walked the whole way up. I wondered if maybe I’d been going to fast, but there wasn’t really anyone passing me. Good runners or not, everyone around me was walking and groaning. “I hate this hill with a passion” declared a runner behind me. I’ve blanked out most of the memory of this part of the course, but my GPS recorded some pretty slow progress in here that I’d rather not document.

At the top I was officially tired, but set off to see how fast I could get this finished. I couldn’t maintain the rate of the earlier miles as easily now, but I was still moving along, hitting 9:30 through the Redwood Bowl and Chabot area followed by 8:45 and around 9:00 paces for the last two miles. It wasn’t enough to catch Patty through, who crossed the finish line about a minute ahead of me. My actual time was just over 1 hr 30 minutes, a time I can’t really compare to anything, but that I’m proud of anyway.

We stayed around for the trophies to be handed out (none came our way), then headed back to the Prius to proudly initialize its floor mats with some hard earned trail dust.

Race reports prius, race, Trail Running, woodminster, xc

Kelly headed to summer camp for the first time this week. She is now an Engineer and a modern artist.

Kelly's bridge design

Kelly modern art

Kelly bridges, camp, engineering, Kelly

Last night Kelly took part in her 8th grade buddy’s graduation ceremony. This mostly involved walking with them up to the front of the stage.

8th grade graduation

Kelly and her 8th grade buddy Simone

This afternoon Kelly’s class had a small moving up ceremony where they showed a self portrait they’d drawn at the beginning of the year and then at the end. Then the kids walked (or bounced on their knees) up to the teachers to get their certificates.

Kelly moving up from Kindergarten to 1st grade

Kelly graduation, Kelly, school

Two down, one to go. Yesterday we ran the Lake Chabot Trail Challenge, the 2nd race in the East bay triple crown.

This half marathon was written up in runner’s world a couple of years ago as the best off-road half marathon in the country. I’m not really sure about that, but it’s nice.

The course is a very demanding, hilly loop with some technical ascents and descents. You won’t set a personal record here, but that’s precisely the appeal. The dirt trails you’ll cover are part of 315 beautiful acres surrounding Lake Chabot, about 25 miles east of San Francisco. You’ll run among giant California redwoods and fragrant eucalyptus trees. And each torturous climb comes with its own reward: some of the best vistas in the Bay Area.

In a way this race was a home coming. We ran this on the way to our first marathon two years ago, and it was a our first real trail run. We were shocked at how hilly it was, and how brutally unprepared we were, but at the same time completely elated with our result. This time, much has changed. I finished about a minute per mile faster than that last time, and felt in much better shape afterwards. The course was beautiful as usual and the weather was cool enough this time. The new organizers of the race, the Castro Valley Track Club, added a new level of organization to the event too. Here’s a few random thoughts about what has improved since I ran this two years ago:

1. 13 miles is not a long run these days. I had plenty of endurance left at the end of this. Not enough to catch the guy who ran by me on the final hill, but enough to run the final mile in less that 9 minutes.
2. Hills: I almost love them! I ran or walked by a lot of people on uphills this time.
3. Downhills have gone from weakness to relative strength. You can make up a lot of ground on a steep downhill if you don’t crash, but you can’t be shaky legged from the previous uphill.
4. I passed two people with ironman gear on (really, isn’t that just showing off? see Rule 13), the woman with the purple singlet who taunted me the whole way through Tilden Tough Ten only to beat me, and the crazy woman with the fake tan running with a rat dog.
5. My HR was much lower than it has been in the past for most of this race. In fact, my HR data would tend to indicate I wasn’t actually that stressed running this.

Course Profile (+/- 2350ft)

I’ve been contemplating this race a lot over the past day, however, and here’s what I keep coming back to: the lack of elation. Crossing the finish line this time didn’t seem particularly noteworthy. There it was, its numbers ticking up, the time low enough to reflect two years of running and the effort of the past two hours. There were people clapping and someone yelling my name. How did I feel? Glad to not be running anymore, a little like throwing up, and generally wondering why I do this.

Patty didn’t have a very good run either, which is starting to become the norm rather than exception. I lost contact with her walking up the huge hill at mile 3-4.5. When I looked back she was nowhere to be seen. At the top of the hill was the first aid station where I waited for a bit, but she wasn’t coming, so I continued on even though I felt like I wanted to run this race with her. In the end she finished in basically the exact same time she did 2 years ago. Afterwards she declared that she’s given up running, though I might be able to talk her out of that. Even for me, with my list of things which have obviously improved in the last two years , shouldn’t there be some excitement associated with finishing a race? Perhaps those days are gone.

Anyway, while we ponder out motivation levels, we have another race in two weeks, the Woodminster race, then it’s on to try a tri in July.

Race reports lake chabot, Race reports, Trail Running