So, this one time I thought I'd do a trail run. PFTW.

Last week:
Monday/Tuesday: Nothing; I called this "recovery"
Wednesday: 3 easy miles
Thursday/Friday: Nothing; I called this "lazy"
Saturday: 5 - Trails!
Sunday: 5 easy

Total: 13 easy paced miles

I had this idea recently that I would do all of my summer long runs on trails. I'm toying with some fall/winter plans, and want to get some time in the dirt to really gauge my interest (for real interest vs I'm bored and have race envy interest).

I'd discussed running long on trails this weekend with the H, and we loosely decided to run 8-10 miles at a not-so-local trail about 45 minutes away.

And then I hit snooze a bazillion times, and by the time we managed to be ready to run, it was looking HOT. We hit up a local trail instead, for a 5 mile loop.

Because The H hates me, he said we should run the loop clockwise instead of counter-clockwise - we had hiked it counter-clockwise last time, and his intention was to run the hard part first, and finish with the easy part.

This was a terrible, TERRIBLE plan. The first mile was up an incline, then down a little bit, but then up for 2 miles. It was essentially 3.5 miles of terrible incline. It was HARD.

By the time we hit the ridgeline, it was sunny and hot.

Then, THEN! The descent that I was really looking forward to, was really too technical to even really run. So... thwarted.

Oh well.

 

It was fun. And now I know, counter-clockwise.

 

On Sunday, I ran to my friend's house, picked her up, and then we ran to breakfast. This was a genius plan.

 

Until my car wouldn't start, and her husband had to come rescue us.

  

A jump, a trip to fancy South Coast Plaza in my ProCompression....

and some semi-annual sale shopping....

and a new battery was installed, and I was on my way. My 5 mile run took me 5 hours. That is not efficient.

Plan for this week.....
Monday: Cross training (did arms, core, and glutes/thighs this morning, 30 minutes)
Tuesday: 3-4 miles easy, cross training
Wednesday: Cross training
Thursday: 3-4 miles easy, cross training
Friday: Cross training
Saturday: Volunteering!
Sunday: Long run, maybe on trails, depending on weather

Total mileage: I'd like to get 20-ish?

This weekend, I'll be volunteering at the Harding Hustle - if you'll be there, maybe I'll see you!

 

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The rest of my weekend was spent at a birthday party for some old neighbors who abandoned our cozy apartments for a giant house with a giant backyard filled with a giant tree. So rude of them. Who would ever want to do that.

 



Stupid trees. Stupid tire swings.

Ever since I threw the Dinosaur Party for Gab's end of chemo, I spy other parties like a breeding ground for "Great Ideas I Didn't Even Know I Was Sad I Missed". Like these individual cakes. Delicious, and perfectly portioned, AND you could make them ahead of time.

And then the rest of our weekend was spent outfitting #1 for Cross Country camp, which started today.

Be still my heart.... after trying on a dozen shoes in 4 different stores, she picked these.

Run happy, #1.

Wednesday, heart attack

Before I ever ran, I hiked. There are a network of trails really close to me, that connect to TONS of great places. But with running (or eating...) taking up all of my waking hours always, I never get around to hiking. Trail running seems like it might be a good compromise, but I don't want to do my long runs on trails, and I also don't want to get eaten by a mountain lion in the evenings on my mid-week runs. I know, I'm so needy.

But, two glorious things happened to converge this week: it's staying light out longer, and my mid-week runs are long enough to justify finding a trail. I carefully plotted a route that runs from my local bike trail, to some dirt trail, some single track, and back. It was going to be amaaaazing.

The goal.....

Except that I took a wrong turn somewhere, and I'm not even sure where I missed the turn off to the single track I was hunting for.

Oh well.

It was a good run anyway - plenty of dirt, plenty of hills, plenty of power-hiking up. Hills are hard. Sandy hills are REALLY hard. Dowhills are fun (I'm not joking, for about a mile downhill every single time I glanced at my garmin {a lot} I was sub 7:30, which is stupid fast for me. SO FUN to run fast downhill). I managed to route myself for the last mile to the exact scene of the Spectacular Meltdown at mile 8 of PCRF last May.... and clocked my fastest split of the night at 9:50 (SO FAST... for me on an easy run).

Take THAT, Jeffrey overpass.

8 miles, 1:29:54, which includes stop lights (getting to the trails), stopping to remember how to breathe running uphills, stopping to check my map to see where the hell I ended up.... I told The H 1:30, so. Bam. I wanted to keep it under 12 min pace, considering the hills, so SUCCESS. (Phawk, how creepy are my skeletal hands?!)

Anyway. It was hard. It was fun. It was so pretty. I love the trails. I need to work on hills. I'll do this again next week. It's fascinating to me that all this open space is SO close to me. It never occurred to me that I could.... run there. These trails connect to some of my favorite hiking trails, so... someday, maybe.

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I went to conditioning class this morning. And we replaced pushups, apparently, with wall squats.

Holy HELL, do you know what's hard to do with tired legs?? Fucking wall squats.

Dying.

The end.

Dirty, dirty, dirty

I FINALLY tried trail running.

Before I was ever a runner, I was a hiker. I lived in SoCal alone for months when I got a great job, and my kids were finishing out the school year in Florida. I had a lot of time on my hands, so I hiked. A lot. I loved the trails, I love the beauty of the hills and the way the land changes with the seasons (it's true!).

I even got The H to hike a few times, and it was grand.

And then I ran, and the hiking took a back seat. Such a bummer, because I really miss it. But between work, kids, cooking, life, I just can't squeeze in everything I want to do all the time. It's truly unfair, that there are only 24 hours in a day.

I've been following Lauren On the Run's blog for a few months now, and am always super jealous of her - all galavanting about on the trails, running, happy, shiny. But I have been pretty well focused on training for Long Beach for months...

So here I am. Between races. I'm not in SUPER hard core training mode right now. The weather is pretty much perfect for being out on the trails. Why not?

I wanted to start small, and with a trail I'm familiar with - I always have this fear that I'm going to get lost in the (vast) Orange County wilderness. I'm a moron, because obviously I won't. But it terrifies me anyway. So after much waffling, I decided to try Laguna Coast Wilderness Park, and the Laurel and Willow Canyon Trails.

I meant to get up early enough to hit the parking lot at 8am when it opens, but I didn't. And it's fine, I was freaking exhausted - last week was super busy, and I'd been getting up super early for over a week, so sleeping in an extra hour was like heaven. Plus, unlike my long runs during training, this was only about a 3.5 mile loop, so it would only be about an hour, not 2-2.5 like a long run. Easy peasy.

Obviously, fate was on my side...

The hillsides in OC go all brown during the summer, since we don't get a drop of rain for something like a million and five days, but the trail is so scenic, it makes up for the brown fields of grass...

YELLOW LEAVES!! I'm a sucker for fall.

I'm also a sucker for cool geology, and took a hike on this trail once led by a geologist, who pointed out some interesting (if you're a geek like me) features...

No, seriously. That's a REAL fault line. Like, that cause earthquakes. Pretty neat, right?

The first part of the trail is fairly flat and sandy, through fields, before you head up into Laurel Canyon... then it climbs up to the ridge. I was pretty slow once I got into the canyon, because, let's be honest, I am grateful every time I move that I don't end up on my ass. There's this....

The trail is pretty narrow. And it's about a 20 foot drop into the canyon here... after you go in a bit further, the drop is obviously farther, but the trail widens up and ventures further away from the edges.

I sometimes get the impression The H doesn't care for hiking with me, because I have a ridiculous obsession with taking pictures of flowers. It's a sickness, really. I can't be stopped.

It makes spring time hikes take forEVER.

Anyway, through these narrow paths, between trees, and giant rocks, and hillsides, and then.

And then it goes UP.

The really exciting part, for me, about this is I distinctly remember the first time I hiked this trail, over 2 years ago, with that geology group. And this hill. This hill almost broke me. I was the LAST one up the hill (except for the guy with a cane, and only barely). And there were MORE after this. It was an ugly sight.

I did the hike again about a 1.5 years ago with The H, and the hills were still HARD. There were breaks taken. It was still ugly.

But this time... I ran, probably 2/3 of the hill. And then I hiked the rest, but that hiking was SO EASY. I reached the top and was ready to run.

That was rad.

The views from the ridge are pretty nice. It was a really foggy morning, but I'm not complaining.

I started waaaaaaay down there!

It's so FLUFFY!

Not a bad day, my friends. Not a bad day at all.