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Biking just outside Davis, CA

The last two weeks have seen the high point and low point of training for Boise. I finished up my build with my biggest ever week that finished with a 12 mile run and a 52 mile bike ride. 40 miles in I was cruising along at 18-21 miles an hour. Perceived effort seemed low enough to sustain. Someone else was even drafting off me, the leach. I was getting stronger as the ride went on and I finally felt ready.

Then that all came crashing down! At mile 50 I managed to fall off my bike after Patty and I got tangled up with each other. In a split second my steering was yanked sideways by her bike and I flipped over onto the surprisingly hard pavement. This left me with a sprained left arm, bruised ribs, as well as plenty of road rash. Ouch!

The wrist and arm seem to be getting better each day, and the problem isn’t so much in the wrist but more the tendons that connect up the forearm to the elbow. I’m pretty sure no broken bones. I think I twisted it as I came off, rather than it taking any impact with it.

I’ve tried running and biking. The running is a little painful because it bounces my arm at the elbow but if I orientate my hand to have my palm facing up it is basically ok. Bike riding is possible if I ride on my aerobars the whole time, which should be mostly the case for this course. Now the big question is: can I swim? I’m going to wait a few more days until I give that a try. The water is Boise is currently in the mid-50s, so I might not feel anything anyway. If my practice swim works out I’m headed to Boise Thursday night to give it a go. I’ll just hope I don’t flat or something.

Here’s some more pictures of the Davis bike ride. Actually we rode along a creek for a lot of the way and it was pretty scenic. This pictures are from the part which was flat farmland.

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San Mateo Memorial Park

After visiting the Oakland Museum last week I’ve had the Mommas and the Papas song “California Dreamin’” in my head all week. This past weekend we headed to the hills above Pescadaro for some camping in the redwoods and bike riding along the pacific coast. Apart from a little rain on Sunday, it was California Dreamin’ all weekend long.

Training this past week was going along great until I hit Friday and with a dentist appointment, Kelly’s Egyptian feast and an appointment for her to get her hair cut, converging on a work day when I needed to get out of town for a camping trip early, neither running or swimming happened. It’s also debatable how much work happened either.

Swim: (1hr 28 min) 3700.0 Yds

On Monday my main set was 16×50yds. There’s only so many ways these workouts slice the yardage. If I’m not doing 50s I’m probably doing 100s and if not 100s then it must be 200s and if that’s not the case then it’s probably a straight swim. Then repeat. Anyway, since I don’t really do other strokes, dislike using pool toys and can’t remember ladder sets, I guess that’s what I’m stuck with. And I’m kind of OK with that.

I did notice that when I swim ‘fast’, I swim about 3-5 seconds faster than when I swim easy and concentrate on form. When I swim fast I also use about twice as much energy. In the end, if I can swim my easy pace for 1.2 miles then I’ll be happy with the result. Actually, if I can actually swim 1.2 miles I’ll be happy. Not. A. Swimmer.

On Wednesday I did another 2500 yards, the main set was 4×200yds. I did the first in 1:57 and then the remaining ones in 1:59-2:00. Felt easier to go that long in the pool than last week and I was actually looking forward to Friday’s swim that never happened. Before my last triathlon I was swimming more like 2:15 min/100 yards at best.

Bike: 6hrs 40 min

The two M2 sessions went fine this week, though Thursdays left me almost falling down the steps as I left. A large part of the workout was low cadence/high power strength work which did a number on my legs. Perhaps that’s a good thing since they were apparently shocked by having that kind of resistance inflicted upon them. That maybe also part of how I never managed to get a workout in on Friday.

On the weekend we had what was definitely our best long ride.

Setting out from our campsite deep in the redwood trees we wound our way down to the coastal town of Pescadaro, then headed north towards Half Moon Bay on the Stage Rd through some rural countryside featuring goat farms and two pretty good sized climbs of about 400ft each.

From there we turned onto Hwy 1 and rode south along the coast, flying downwind at more that 20 miles/hr with the sea pounding onto the rocks beside us (and trucks thundering by on the other side). Fortunately the shoulder was pretty wide most of the way. A+ scenery.

At Ano Nuevo State Park we reversed direction and headed north back up Hwy 1. Progress was less speedy going back into the wind, but I tucked into my aero position and kept up 15-16 miles/hr most of the way.

At Gazos Creek Rd, the back road way past Butano State Park and back up into the hills we stopped at a Gas Station. I heard something fly off my bike, but couldn’t see anything so assumed it was nothing in that way that you do. A 1/4 mile later I realized one screw of my left cleat had come off and it was now very hard to get my foot disengaged that side. That’s the problem with biking, there’s always something to fix.

In the end we covered 50 miles and about 4500 ft of climbing.

I also experimented with how many calories I could take in liquid form. I placed about 340 calories in each of three bike bottles, using a mixture of gatorade and carbo-pro. In the end I actually only drank 2 of the bottles because I also ate 1.5 bonk breakers and a Gu. That meant I took in around 1000 calories and 50 Oz of fluid in the 4 hour ride, which isn’t too bad calorie wise, but of course I probably could have drunk more. More experimenting to come, I think I’ll dial back the calories in the drinks, especially the amount of gatorade…

Run: 1hr 35 mins

It amuses me how little I’m running now. Still with 11 hours of training last week I think things will be OK. The one run I did last week was an evening run at Lake Chabot. With the rains and warm weather the area is the greenest I’ve ever seen it. Too bad I didn’t run with a camera.

The run felt strong but I could feel it the next day. I’m losing my trail running muscles.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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