Climbs and Crossings

I don't know about you, but that was pretty much the longest summer of my life. After coming off a successful Big Sur Marathon, the  Skyline to the Sea 50k  back on June 10th led to an injury that kept me away from running for the rest of the summer. During that time I rode the highs and lows of life without running. Ok mostly lows. The only high I can come up with is the sleeping in on Sunday mornings. Oh, and no poison oak was good too. I'm not saying I was in a funk, but I was in a funk. A week or so later was an awesome concert at the Mountain Winery. I didn't get to run the 31 miles on my 31st birthday in July like I had planned, but I still got to do a little light hiking and was grateful for that. Pacifica is my jam. Then in August we made our annual pilgrimage to Hermosa Beach where I couldn't take no running for an answer. I did a lot of bike riding, which was great, but normally I start the day with a run on the beach. It might have been too so...

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. ...

We had a time. So 5 awesome people I know actually agreed to do this. GeNene, Staci, Jim, Kat, and Laura got to experience the 12 kilometers of mayhem in the streets of San Francisco that is Bay to Breakers.  The night before the big race we ate at a fancy italian place that was at the fancy hotel across the street from where we were staying (not fancy). We had some concern it might be too fancy, but we could walk to it, that was the important part. Staci and I pre-gamed by each drinking a bottle of wine at dinner. Jim said, "I'll have the bunny" when the waiter was taking his order, and then we all pulled out our iphones to show that we had checked in on facebook earning us free dessert. Also, GeNene may or may not have led our waiter to believe we were restaurant reviewers. We have Griswold class. So delicious and so free.  The next morning we were all up early to find somewhere to park near the finish and take the muni down to the start. It was chilly so w...

Waking up in San Francisco this morning proved to be the best way to tackle my 12 mile scheduled training run. The weather was clear, sunny, warm, zero wind, and zero fog. A perfect San Francisco day. I took off in the general direction of the bridge from near Fisherman's Wharf. After a few hills, and working my way to higher ground, this was my first glimpse of the bridge...the teeny tiny red thing out there. It was at this point, lots of other runners started appearing, seemingly headed somewhere, so I followed. The land opened up, I was closer to the water, and apparently on the right path. A paved path ran right along a narrow beach where TONS of people were out with their dogs, running, romping, frolicking in the sand and the water. Staying on this path, the bridge was getting larger and larger in front of me. I ended up directly underneath the bridge, in a parking lot at Fort Point, at a dead end. I stopped in the middle of the parking lot to survey the scene, wondering ...