Climbs and Crossings

My training week consisted of a silent foggy Christmas morning run plus a handful of 5 and 6 mile runs. Nothing exciting to report. On Sunday, I finally got some trail time at the PCTR Woodside 17k. Yes, you read that correctly. Pacific Coast Trail Runs has been resurrected and is alive and well under new ownership! John and Maureen Brooks announced they were taking the reigns in August, and I think this post by John on the PCTR Facebook page sums up their vision:  It’s a dream come true for me to combine my work experience with my passion of endurance sports. I absolutely love the endurance community. Maybe some of you can relate to this: I really only race to be close to people like you. Endurance athletes are amazing people! We debated for weeks of whether to keep the name of PCTR or to rebuild from scratch. PCTR has a strong, 12-year legacy that was tarnished in the last 7 months before closing. One of the most important factors in retaining the name was reading the ye...

I was born and raised in a magical land where I had my choice of trails within about 15 miles of my house. Flat shady trails, hills through the woods, or up and down along the ridge of tall sandy dunes. I could run barefoot along the edge of the water listening to the sound of the waves. I could run with my cross country teammates or drive up and spend a couple hours out there alone.  This magical land is Indiana. The first ocean I loved was Lake Michigan.  Fast forward 10+ years and I'm now running trails in California from Santa Cruz up to the Marin Headlands and in love with the Pacific Ocean. Well, wait, that sounds too dreamy. I live at least an hour and a half factoring in freeway traffic from the nearest trails. I'm not really familiar with any trails and watch too many episodes of "I Shouldn't Be Alive", so the only time I get out to run them is when I run a race and it's marked and other people are out there or at least know I'm out th...

I used the credit I received from the  Santa Cruz Mountains Race  to enter this one when I heard about the screening of Unbreakable in San Francisco the night before. What better way to get pumped pre-race than to watch a film documenting the Western States 100 and be in the presence of director JB Benna and elite ultrarunners Hal Koerner, Geoff Roes, and Tony Krupicka. Driving into Huddart Park the next morning I saw, off in the distance a bunch of people standing around in what appeared to be a giant line. Look at all the people over there, wait, what are they doing? Is that a line? Is that the BATHROOM LINE? That can't be a line for anything that's way too many people to be a line for something.  It was a line. And it was the check in line for runners to pick up their bibs. The bathroom line was pleasant and only a few people long. I got at the end of the check in line. Fifteen minutes later I hadn't moved and there were about 50 more people behind me. ...

Normally after a race I can't wait for the race results to be posted online. At this point I'd just be happy with an explanation of what the heck just happened. Also, I want my money back. We drove to Santa Cruz on Saturday to spend the night since it was a good 2 hour drive, and I had come down with a cold in a bad way. Fever, runny nose, all of that stuff. I managed a half day at work and we hit the road. All I wanted to do was sleep. So that's what I did. In the car and in the room...later on we ventured out for dinner. We found a great Irish Pub in downtown Santa Cruz. Rosie McCann's. Red wine kills cold germs, right? And Ghirardelli chocolate cake with vanilla bean ice cream definitely kills cold germs.  Back at the room I checked my email, where I found the usual day before the race email from PCTR linking to race day instructions. The 29 and 50k were taking off at 8:30 and the 21k at 8:40. Bib pickup ended at 8:15. (I was going to also link here to t...

The Elevations! Many factors contributed to the fact that today was an all around fabulous race put on by Pacific Coast Trail Runs. My number: All 4's.  This led to a certain annoying commercial popping in and out of my head the entire race. If you don't already know what I'm talking about, it's this one... So I often found that I was saying 444 - 44 44   over and over again in my head. It was kind of an annoying mantra that kept my legs moving...and made me want to offer legal help to my fellow runners.  The scary bathroom line. The bathrooms, not the line.  I had exactly 1 minute by the time I got through the line and exited the bathrooms until we were called over to the start.  Last minute weird looking stretching.   The best thing about this course is the fact that it's mostly single track surrounded by giant redwood trees and ferns. The air has that beautiful smell of mulchy soil and eucalyptus. The temperature is cool exce...

The course was hard. Really hard. Here's how hard it was: The 35 and 50k started at 8:30, the 10k at 9:00, and the 21k...not until 10:30, which meant not having to wake up at the crack of dawn to drive to Berkeley. After getting a little lost in the Berkeley hills, we arrived at Lake Anza in Tilden Park with about an hour until the start. The weather was BEAUTIFUL. At 10:30 about 80 or 90 of us gathered between some orange cones to listen to instructions about blue ribbons and striped ribbons and then we were off. Within 20 seconds we hit the mud. Big mud. And not only mud but the first climb along with mud. So one step sinks your foot down six inches and slides you another foot or so in a random direction. And a rushing river coming downhill. It made the start of the race especially interesting. 5 minutes in and my shoes weighed 50 lbs each. Pretty sure I was grinning through it all. Once the trail dried out, the climb continued. I stayed steady and started to relax and enjo...