Saturday, November 26, 2005

Yorba Linda Discovery

This morning I met up with a group of running buddies that call themselves the California Cruisers. We meet in various places throughout SoCal and trade off you who gets to bring the post run goodies. That person also gets to choose the route. Today we met at Tricia' house and ran the horse trails in Yorba Linda. The discovery part is that I have not run these trails before. I just recently hooked back up with this group since my local training partner is suffering from the stress fracture.

We all start off together then get spread out and finish back up at the goodies that await us. The usual run is 10 miles with increasing distances depending on who's training for what. Today I was thinking I might run about 8 miles and try to take them nice and slow. I ended up running with John. John is my inspiration for attempting the 50 states marathons. The group was planning 10 miles on an out and back course so I figured I would run 4 with John and then turn around and go back alone. Running with John was supposed to force me to take it easy. At the 4 mile mark, I was feeling good and enjoying the pace so I decided to keep going and make it a 10 mile day. Here comes the next part of the discovery. John decides he wants to figure out where the trail we are on hooks up with another trail. So my 4 mile out run turned into 5.8. We spent the return trip trying to catch the others who had turned around at 5. We never did catch them. My final mileage for the day was 11.7 based on John's Forerunner GPS.

Another cool thing is that I met Tricia's husband, Dan. It turns out he is an Ironman. He completed the Ironman Florida, Panama City Beach, the same weekend I was in NYC. I was impressed to meet an actual Ironman. Dan ran with us today as well. He stayed with us for about a mile and then we never saw him again until the end!

The 10-day forecast for Vegas next weekend calls for an overnight low of 40, with a daytime high of 58. A little cooler than I'm used to but it should make for good running conditions. Taper big time this week.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

A 10 day forecast for Vegas is probably pretty accurate with its climate/location. I've got my $1.19 toss-away gloves ready to go and trying to taper, but the legs want to keep going. Sounds like yours want to do the same.

As for 9 Trails, my boss (the one who talked me into signing up for Vegas and said he'd run with me and then flaked) wants to run it next year. I know Stu Sherman, the guy with the broken ankle. It's way out of my league at this point, but we do have another race called the Pier to Peak Half Marathon which goes from the beach to La Cumbre Peak (which you can see on the 9 trails map). I want to do this next labor day weekend.
4:13:34 and counting down!