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Another training cycle has begun to taper.

Oakland Marathon: 2.5 weeks away.
Leg status: semi-trashed.

Actually, things went pretty well. We basically executed our plan despite the mud and the rain this year, and neither of us are injured. I filled in a lot of the gaps on that graph with either swimming, biking or yoga. We could have done more tempo work and more track work, as usual.

As for what we’re hoping for from this marathon… fun! It’s the first marathon in Oakland in many years and I think the city will respond well to it. I’m hoping for good crowd support as we run though all the neighborhoods that make Oakland special. For a goal time we’ll probably vaguely shoot for 4hrs 30min, but after the past two marathons I’m really disinclined to make predictions.

Marathons are a long way.

Marathons, Running Marathons, oakland, oakland marathon, taper, trashed

I’m officially faster.

All year we’ve been doing trail races, with little standard distances. Today I finally got a chance to put the pedal to the metal (in my still basically slow kind of way) and do something about my 5K time, dropping it from around 26:10 to 23:55 today. Of course I still can’t pace, especially not at sub-8:00/mile, so I went out way harder than my plan, spotting a 6:05 pace on my GPS before backing back to around 7:10-7:20/mile. My first mile went by in 7:10. The next mile was slower, but more like my target, 7:30. The third mile was punishment for my too fast start and my average pace faded off but was still under 8:00. It was only some fast little kid laboring along on my tail that propelled me up the final ‘hill’ to the finish.

That reminds me, when I was a kid the fastest runners could run less that 8 minutes for a single mile that they’d make us do in Phys-ed. I never could. Today I ran 3 miles in a row less that 8 minutes. It’s a small little running milestone in my mind.

There’s not much to say about a 5K. It’s over so fast, but man do they hurt. Back to long slow trail miles for me.

Speaking of which, on the other end of the spectrum, at the least the other end for us, we had a great 17.5 mile run on Christmas day as we build back up to marathon level running. This 3hr 40 min run was at Lake Chabot, starting near Skyline Blvd (high) and running down and around the lake, finishing with the climb back up. Total gain/loss was about 3000ft and by the end I was pretty beat. I guess that’s about my endurance limit right now.

Lake Merritt Joggers and Striders, Marathons, Running, Trail Running

Swim

1 Mile in 36:26

The swim went well, which was kind of a big deal because 6 months ago I couldn’t swim a lap freestyle. Now I’ve done a mile swim in open water. There was a wicked current as you got further out, all the pros ended up swimming up current to get to the first buoy. Successive waves headed further and further to the right. I went around the buoy ok, but ended up kind of far out, not totally out, but I swam further than I needed to (or maybe the current kept pushing me out or something). When I made the final turn it was closer to shore and calmer. No more waves splashing on me and bobbing up and down, which I wasn’t so prepared for. My practice open water swims were calmer for sure. So for the last 1/3 mile I got into a pretty good rhythm and started to take a few places back. Open water swimming is pretty fun actually. It took like 36 mins, which I’m ok with. Work to be done there to stay with the pack, but it’s ok. I think for my level of open water swimming experience I did fine. I was a little surprised how fast everyone was. Not too many people behind me at all! Tough AG!

The bad thing was I cut my foot all up on the rocks getting into the water. Didn’t notice until the transition when my foot was covered in blood. Nice.

T1

Bike

22 miles in 1:48:52

The bike was my worst event by far. People are so strong and fast and because there was 3 laps the pros (and strong AGers) were flying by continuously on their space age tri bikes. “leeefftt!” whooosh! I was doing about 15-16 miles/hr on average (it was really a very hilly course), about the speed I expected. They were doing 22 miles/hr. Most of the rest of my age group was doing 18+ miles/hr. I’m not going in another tri until I think I can ride 18 miles/hour over hills for 1.5 hours at least. And then, as if I wasn’t doing bad enough relative to everyone else, I got a flat back tire on the last lap! After working on that for a while a former Olympian (Victor Plata) came running by on the run course and offered to help. He changed my tire for me! Actually, like 10 people, all top athletes in the midst of their own race, pretty much offered to help me. In a way that was a highlight. Can you tell the guy who rides a mountain bike and never gets a flat?

T2

Run

10K in 1:00:36

The run was the run. It was 10K. I was kind of tired. A little dejected. Not really feeling like killing myself by then, although I could have moved up like 5 places pretty easily. By that time most people were walking and at least I was able to run the whole way. That’s some kind of achievement in a triathlon I suppose. Took me about an hour. It was a pretty run. There were deer.

At the finish line Kelly ran across with me. At least one person doesn’t think I suck, though she thinks I’m crazy.

Post race

Total time: 3 hrs, 34 min

Not my greatest event, but at least I finished as people keep trying to tell me.

Triathlon Biking, marin, olympic, race, Race reports, Running, swimming, Triathlon

It’s been a pretty good year in terms of running. We started the year by giving up plans to run a marathon, deciding instead to run a lot more trails and spend far less time on pavement. We also started to run by time and not distance. We made our goal be the East Bay Triple Crown trail series, hoping to get through the three tough trail races in 6 or 7 weeks without serious injury. In the end we did that and threw in a fourth, an Xterra trail run for good measure. It was really a big success. During this time neither of us had a running-related injury and our base endurance really picked up. Running three hours at a time on the weekend became the norm rather than the exception. But during this time, I wondered if I was getting faster or just stronger at running trails. The problem was there was no real measure of speed. Those races were fairly random distances, and the terrain is crazy hilly trail running. Not the place for PRs.

Fast forward a few months and our disastrous-for-training trip to south east Asia. With little motivation for running when we got back, a drop in fitness, and with Patty slammed with her first year teaching, we needed a goal. We settled on the Bizz Johnson Half Marathon, a fast trail run in the forests east of Lassen National Park. It combines the best of both worlds: fast running, a measured half marathon course, beautiful scenery and soft surfaces. What was not to like?

The only problem was it’s in the middle of nowhere. After pondering the accommodation situation for a while, we found ourselves Friday night in Reno, at the Super 8 across the road from the U of N football stadium. On game night. Don’t worry the woman at reception said, they’ll all head up to ‘The Wall’ and be drinking and playing loud music all night. I’ll put you in a room a little further away if you’d like. Um… “The Wall”?

Fortunately the noise level wasn’t bad at all where they put us and we got to bed fairly early. However, by 3am Patty was complaining how cold it was. She was wearing everything she had. I was complaining how hot it was. And the heater wouldn’t take “Off” for an answer, it just kept coming on with the sound and heat of a jet engine. Oh well, 3am is sort of like 4am when we planned to get up anyway. So we got up.

In Susanville, about an hour away from Reno, all was quiet, dark, and freezing cold (Google maps had said 2 hours, hence the early arrival). There was just the occasional pickup truck loaded with hunters headed somewhere to shoot something. The former logging town itself seemed a little in reclining fortunes with the more interesting businesses along the street having For Sale signs on many of them. Perhaps that’s just how it is in the Fall. At least the Walmart and the Guns n’ Ammo seemed to be doing well. We headed to the cute railway depot where we were basically the first ones there. We could see the trail, a former railway line, head into the darkness. We parked and used the un-used port-a-potties. In the dark, Patty managed to drop a whole roll of toilet paper into the hole. Oops, sorry!

Back in the car we noted how we could have slept in three more hours and still made this race. There were hardly more people than at our local Lake Merritt races registered for the half marathon on Saturday. There were no lines to negotiate, no large expo to take in, just a volunteer handing out t-shirts and bib numbers in the little historic train station, with runners huddled around a wood burning stove. I again noted that at these things there are always the following characters: woman with makeup, a little plastic surgery and too much tanning; a man who tells stories of past marathons from around the world to the poor stranger next to him the entire bus journey; the young guy in the military / coast guard / Carson City fire t-shirt who is going to kick your butt later and he knows it and you know it. Other than that, there was a decent sized group from a running and fitness club in Reno and assorted other fit and nervous (or shivering from the cold) participants.

At 7:45am or so the buses loaded up (nice fancy tour buses) and headed up to the start. It was like being airlifted into combat. Deploy! Deploy! Get out there private and RUN! Fortunately 13 miles isn’t a distance I have too many concerns about these days. We got off at a dusty campground and trudged over some pine cones to a small set of wobbly port-a-potties. It’s hard to imagine something more disconcerting that a wobbling port-a-potty. Waiting around it was pretty cold, almost exactly unlike Hanoi. Our heat training wasn’t going to be much of an advantage. We discarded our outer layers, stashed them in our sweat check bags and then shivered in the sun until it was time to start. I was looking forward to getting going by then.

–

The start was uphill in the wrong direction for 1/2 a mile, then a U-turn and back down the trail the way we’d come. After that it was 12 more miles down the trail into Susanville. Easy. The guy in the yellow hat from PCTRs counted us down and off we went. Immediately I felt both a little stiff (it was hard to take off so cold), and a little out of breath (the altitude). The beginning was kind of a shuffle and that mile took more than 10 minutes. At the turn around Patty was 30 yards behind me and I thought that would be the last I saw of her so I settled into a pace that felt good. About half a mile later I glanced back and she was right behind me. We finished the second mile in a little over 8:30, I was impressed she was holding on. At that mile mark she suggested we do a walk break for 30 seconds on the mile markers so that’s what we did. We had our own bottles and Gu, so didn’t need the aid stations. That strategy worked well, we cruised along with each mile marker coming quickly, each being in the 8:30 range.

The scenery was nice, mostly like running along a pretty smooth dry and dusty fire trail up in the forest. The runners had spread out so it was more peaceful than half marathons usually are. Nobody around us was talking. Footsteps on the gravel. Breathing. We’d catch up to a few people, take our walk break, then catch up to the same people again. That was fine. Having the bottles let us sip fluid every mile and take our shots when we wanted, plus the short break let the legs flush out a bit before the next mile repeat. It was a good way to break it down and give us something to look forward to.

At mile 7 there was a burned out bridge that caused the trail to dip down into the valley and up again the other side. It wasn’t serious by trail running standards, but it was like the people around us who we’d been catching each mile slammed on the brakes and we ran right by and never saw them again. That also marked the beginning of the really nice part of the course as the trail followed the Susan river more closely. Bouncing shimmery water cascading down between rocks and the fall colored aspen trees. It really was beautiful. We crossed 12 bridges and ran through two tunnels. Patty said she thought she was having a religious experience as she hung in there with my pace. It could have been the location, or how hard we were running, or both. We started talking about doing the marathon here one year.

Credit: Flickr (matthigh)

Credit: Race website

By mile ten I was starting to feel it and our pace was trending upwards. We’d probably gone out a little hard, but the first half of the course is easier, so overall it was going okay, we just needed to concentrate and bring it home without posting too many slow miles. With 3 miles to go, I was mentally pushing much harder but not running any faster. My heart rate was certainly up although I didn’t have a monitor on. My legs were tiring a bit, but felt like they could still run. There was less downhill, the temperature had managed to rise to where it actually felt really warm and exposed out running and there was probably the usual onset of dehydration. About what we expected.

It looked like we could make two hours, we just had to keep it up. There was the first slow mile. There was the mile with the missing bridge which took around 10 minutes. Off-setting that was mostly 8:30-8:40 miles. It was going to be a little close. And then we posted a 9:30 mile. Yikes, we needed to push. It hurt. As the last couple of miles went by, we kept looking at our watches. I’d look down at my watch and think “this will only be another 7 minutes or less” and keep running as hard as I could.

Finally the course took us off the main trail down nice single track into the finish area at a place called Hobos camp. I slowed down a little and Patty came running alongside me and we finished together in 1:58:51. For Patty that was a 10 minute gain over the Big Sur Half we did last year and for me more like 6 minutes. She came 3rd in her age group while I came 5th. We were around 71st and 72nd out of 188 finishers.

–

After the race we took the bus back to the depot and then headed out of town. We spent the rest of the day in Lassen National Park, visiting a few of our favorite places there but not really up for much of a hike. At a spot just past the peak trail we pulled over at a meadow, threw our blanket down and fell to sleep in the sun. At summit lake we soaked our feet in the cool water. Every hour or so we’d make another turkey and cheese bagel. We stopped in Redding on the way home for dinner and coffee and were back home by 8pm. An awesome weekend!!

Race reports, Running, Trail Running

The soon to be torn down Transbay Terminal. I’ve been trying to take photos of it before it’s gone. So far I’ve been commuting through here for four years.

More photos here.

Photography Photography, transbay terminal

On Saturday we completed our first triathlon in the non-competitive, Tri for Fun series at Shadow Cliffs Regional Park in Pleasanton, CA.

—

It was 7:25am and I stood knee deep in a muddy lake. Around me I was surrounded by nervous people. Minutes earlier I’d kissed Patty goodbye, in case one of us drowned. She’d left with the earlier group which, as I stood there, was rounding the first buoy of the course. I couldn’t spot her, so hopefully she was in the mix somewhere doing fine. I turned my attention back to the guy standing in the water with the microphone. We were the final wave, and he was making jokes, mostly. “If you don’t know why this is like water polo, don’t be near the front.” I think that part was serious. I looked around and I was sort of near the front as many people had joined my wave. I tried to move sideways, but it wasn’t going to be enough. There was way more people in this wave than I expected, maybe a hundred people had joined it behind me and there was 20 seconds left. Oh well, I’m going for it. I looked down at my watch and it was ready to go, pulled my googles over my eyes, took a deep breath, and thought this is it, I’m finally facing my swim fear for real. The horn went off and we all started to move forward…

—

Our alarm would have gone off at 4:30am, except both of us had been awake for some time. I’m so used to running races that it’s barely exciting to think of one that morning. This morning was different. When we watched the tri for fun #1 there was a lot of people being rescued from the water, even in the supposedly experienced and elite wave. While my swimming has been going well (I’m up to swimming a mile straight in the pool, though not fast), the open water thing has remained hard with the various added stresses like sighting that seem to come along with it. Added to this was the uncertainly of doing it with other flailing humans in the water. Maybe it would be better having someone to sight off, or feet to draft behind? Or maybe I’d be run over, kicked, punched, semi-drowned, fight to the surface in a panic and not recover. Or maybe I’d simply be blown off the back of the pack and I’d watch everyone disappear around the course while I tried to go back to swimming like in the pool, the best I could. All these seemed like real possibilities. I simply couldn’t know what would happen once I was in a swim race.

A swim race! That’s so unlike me. I hated swimming as a kid. I couldn’t do it. It was all horrid chlorine and water up your nose and people yelling at you. Several months ago I couldn’t freestyle 25m. But, if I’ve learnt anything from running it’s that if I set my mind to something I can do it. Anything. Even swimming. So, this race was all about that. If I made that then my whole goal for the year to ‘learn to swim’ would be a success. I didn’t really care what happened after that, I was determined to make it round the swim course. Then I’d go for a bike ride with Patty. Then we’d do a little run.

We packed our mountain bikes with their nobly tires — it would have to do –onto the back of the car, along with our transition gear stuffed into a bag we got from some race, and headed out as the glow of the approaching dawn appeared to the east. Just before 6am we pulled into the parking lot at Shadow Cliffs.

The racks were already filling up quickly so we decide to grab our bikes off the back of the car and head right to them to get a spot. That strategy worked well because by the time we returned from our car with the rest of our gear and our bike pump space was almost gone and people had started to claim trees or picnic tables or just random pieces of grass.

We got registered and body marked. Patty showed me her ‘corrected number’. “I can’t believe she wrote my number wrong: it’s an omen, my whole race is ruined,” she sort of joked.

We walked down the the beach and listened to a ‘first timers’ talk. She ended by saying she hoped to see us crossing the finish line of an Ironman. Whether people like it or not Ironman and triathlon are inescapably linked. The question I’ve got twice now: did you do a half or full? Still, though this was short, it wasn’t that short for a previous non-swimmer. And on top of that, a 5K can hurt a lot more than a marathon. It’s just shorter and different. And it’s a place to start, anyway.

After the talk we did a little swimming. It was already 75 degrees, so getting into the water wasn’t very hard. The water was warm and the air was warmer. It felt good in the water, gliding along with the sun rising across the far side of the lake. We watched the first few waves go and then headed over to the start area. Patty would go in her age group wave (40+ woman) and I’d take the wave after that which was basically anyone who’d not already gone.

—

The Swim: 400yds in 9:28 (2:22 min/100yd)

… and so I dove in and the world filled with green bubbles and disembodied limbs. My head would surface and there’d be heads all around me. Some looking at me. I’d go back under and there’d be bodies and suddenly a foot from nowhere would come at me and I’d come up and tread water or throw in a little breast stoke because there was nowhere to go, and wait for a spot to open up. Back under with some freestyle. Back up and looking for space or a direction that might be clearer. Green. Bubbles. Random feet and hands. If I think back on it it’s surprising how fast we made it to the first buoy, our tangled mass was at least moving along.

At the buoy I breast stroked wide and then found some space and got myself into some sporadic freestyle. My sighting was going well and I kept thinking I’d get on someone’s feet and let them tow me along. But I’d do that and then next thing they were stopped in the water figuring out which way to go. So I’d go around them and start the process again. My heart rate was up for sure, the initial washing machine took a lot out of me, but it was under control. Breath, relax, breath, relax…

Also quicker than I imagined I reached the final buoy and rounded it with a clear sight to the shore. I’m almost there I thought. I was getting a little tired and was glad it wasn’t too much longer. This section dragged, but soon I was looking down at the bottom and the weeds growing there. I wondered if Patty was looking down at this too, the thing she hates most about swimming in the lake. The weeds gave way to sand and I put my feet down and started walking up the shore. I stopped my watch and stared at it disbelieving for a moment. It about a minute faster than I’d swam that distance in a pool. I’d done it! I looked back and there was a lot of people still out in the water, so I wasn’t the slowest either. The day was already a success. The months spent in the pool were a success. I could swim!

T1: ~5:30

I made my way up into the transition area. Patty was sitting by our bikes pulling shoes on. I grabbed my towel and dried down a little then sat down and washed my feet off with a bottle of water and pulled on my running shoes. Overall T1 was sort of a mess, but we got out of there eventually with our bikes and helmets.

The Bike: 11 miles in 41:15 (16 miles/hr)

The bike leg was the surprise fun of the race. We thought we’d be passed a lot because of our heavy mountain bikes, but that didn’t turn out to be the case. We just applied some of our trail running muscles to it, as well as relatively high fitness (for us at least) and started passing a ton of people. It was fun! There’s nothing quite as fun as riding past someone on a fancy tri-bike with your mountain bike. By the end of the bike course I was getting a little tired but was okay. I figured I could use up a bunch of energy on the bike and then tough out a 5K run.

The course too was nicer than I imagined, running either around the perimeter of the regional park or past vineyards.

We pulled into T2 something like 15 minutes faster than our test ride of this distance.

T2: ~2:15

This transition went much faster because we already had running shoes on. The only problem was the rack next to us started to topple and so we helped get it back up and everyone’s bikes back on it before we left. Otherwise it was just off with the helmet and gloves and on with a visor. I took a Gu and sucked down a little more fluid. It was pretty warm by now and the run course was nothing but exposed dirt fire trails.

The Run: ~3.2M 28:06 (8:49 min/mile pace)

Running wasn’t the easiest. My legs felt heavy and it was pretty easy to get a burn out of them. I settled into an uncomfortable 8:40 pace or so. It felt slow. I felt slow. But it seemed like a reasonable effort given it was baking hot and I’d used most of my legs propelling a mountain bike around the course. Plus, the Gu wasn’t sitting right.

At some point I looked back and Patty wasn’t with me. I decided to keep going and see if I learned anything by trying to keep up my pace under these conditions. My race thoughts were down to basics: how far to go, what’s my pace, is my HR too high? Occasionally I’d try to ponder how it felt, what I could compare it too. It was different from running alone for sure. Less pounding, more tired. Fatigue without the swelling maybe? And on top of that there was also the heat, which felt reminiscent of the Tilden race a few months ago. Cooking.

I tried to concentrate and keep going strongly. I passed people all over the place. The course had some hills and each one had a lot of people walking. Hills I could do, and so I ran right up them all, while I walked through the aid stations where I mostly poured the water on myself.

The finish was great with lots of people cheering. While hot and sort of hellish the run went pretty well. It wasn’t my fastest 5K but it certainly wasn’t my slowest. I felt proud of myself for not letting up during this run and pushing to the end. It’s always good experience to be suffering and endure past that point when you’d rather just stop and walk. That kind of pain is temporary, you can keep running.

Total: ~1:26:30

After I crossed the line I circled back and watched Patty cross too, not too far behind me. She was glad to be done.

—

In the end, this race was all about the swim and as I think back on it I still can’t imagine that it was me out there doing that, mixing it up in a watery brawl. It wasn’t really pretty as I never got truly clean water to swim in, but it’s all about getting around the course and I did that. I can’t help but wonder what a longer course would be like, if I could just get into a rhythm out there.

I was also pretty excited to get across a triathlon finish line for the first time. Now we have to figure what’s next. Our goals for this year have been met and for much of August we’ll be on vacation in South East Asia where training will at a minimum. That will make it hard to ramp up to something bigger this year on the triathlon front. But we’ll see.

Race reports, Triathlon Biking, fear, hot, swimming, tri for fun, Triathlon, washing machine

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…

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.

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 bridges, camp, engineering, Kelly