Climbs and Crossings

My first Pacific Coast Trail Run! The sea was angry that day my friends. We had plans to stay in Berkeley Friday night for some music at Freight and Salvage, so I was really excited to see that there was a trail run Saturday morning taking off from Rodeo Beach. Added to my excitement was the weather report that called for 30mph wind, rain, hail, lightning, and general mayhem. Combine that with this elevation profile: READY The 30k and 50k took off at 8:30 in pouring down rain and lightning striking out over the ocean (it was kind of scary beautiful), the 20k at 8:45, and then the 8k crowd took off at 9:00. There were some instructions about colored ribbons and turns that I couldn't really hear and then 3...2...1... get goin The climb was pretty brutal. And steep. And hard. I remembered really liking this trail about a month ago on a  sunny day hike when I was all, look how pretty it is up here, wow, STAIRS ! FUN!  This time, there were a few more ...

Yesterday evening part of the Pacific Coast Highway collapsed into the ocean near Big Sur. Word on the street is, the Big Sur Marathon course may be altered into an out and back course, with the turnaround just before the Bixby Bridge. The online reaction to this news can be summed up in the following sentiments: Hey, will there still be a race? I'm not running if it's not the original course! Can I get your entry if you're not going to run? Hey, let's calm down, the race organizers can't control NATURE. One year, El Nino made us change the course too. I'm coming all the way from Timbuktu for this, can you just, like, build a bridge or something? The race isn't until May 1st, so I'm kind of in the wait and see rather than be disappointed now category. This is my first Big Sur, so I'm pulling for a fix before then, although there is still that matter of now knowing I'm running for hours along a road that has been known to collapse in...

I ran this one last year...they did a downtown festival, the race at 5pm, and then a pub crawl. This year we ran at 8:30 am and nothing else going on. Much less festive. I brought my own festive.  The downtown 5k course heads toward the ballpark, makes a u-turn, heads toward the freeway, makes a u-turn, makes a short side loop, and then heads back to the finish.  The scenery includes the arena, the ballpark, the beautiful Stockton waterfront and, down under the freeway, an exclusive urban campground. Thanks, Officers, for posting up all along the course.  And then, for something that has never happened before in the history of the world... I won my age group. Which makes me realize, four more months and I'll be in a new age group, 30-39. WEIRD.

High on my list of dream runs is the  Dipsea . I've been a little fixated ever since first reading about it and it's history and discouraged because it's extremely difficult to get into. 1500 people are allowed to run. A large number of runners from the previous year's race are pre-qualified for entry the following year. 500 entries are first come first serve, and the remaining slots are filled by auction, lottery, bribing and begging. The only way to enter is to download the application from the website the day it is released and mail it in, which means the closer you live to Mill Valley, the faster your application gets there. Also, more than double the number of people enter than there is room for. And here's the description of the course from the website, dipsea.org: It begins in downtown Mill Valley with a sprint down Throckmorton to the Old Mill Park, then up three flights of stairs as tall as a fifty-story building, and up some more through an old horse ranc...