Swim To The Beach

With two weeks to go before Memphis the plan called for a pretty easy week of 19 miles. Since I was on vacation and it was a holiday week I mixed things up a bit.

Monday I ran 4 miles in Bonelli in the morning. I didn’t realize until later that I had overshot the planned 3 miles. Tuesday morning in anticipation of rain forecasted for later in the week, I ran 3 more miles in Bonelli. I took a trail, Lakeview, which I hadn’t run before. It was short but sweet. Thursday morning before the turkey feast, I headed over to Bonelli once again. Tyler joined me for 3 miles on my Sunday loop. We did the 1.5 mile out & back. This was Tyler’s first time on this trail. He “complained” that the trail was one continuous hill, one way or the other. I’ve done it so many times it doesn’t seem that bad to me.

When it comes to Turkey Trots, I’m a purist. To me the only true Turkey Trot is actually run on Thanksgiving morning. In SoCal we have no less than 11 options for a Turkey Trot from the Sunday before to the Sunday after, with 8 of the choices actually on Thanksgiving Day. In the past I’ve run the Dana Point 5K, the grand daddy of them all and the Run for the Hungry twice, once with the younger son and once with the older. This year I broke my Turkey Trot Purity Vow.

Saturday morning, Lisa and I headed down to Temecula to combine two of our favorite past times into one (well at least two of mine and one of hers). The Turkey Trot was a fund raising event for a school in Arusha, Tanzania. The race was unique for me because I was running a Trot on a day other than Thanksgiving and it was a 10K. With over 5 years of running on the logs, I’ve never raced a 10K before.

The race started at the Cougar Winery and headed out onto the back roads of Temecula. It was an out and back course on gently rolling, mostly dirt roads. It wasn’t a huge race and we fell into our paces and places within the first half a mile. I maintained my position pretty well. The first three miles ticked off in 8:33, 8:42, and 8:32. After the first mile I only remember being passed by one person, a lady running with her two dogs. After the turn around I was slowly able to pick off three or four people in front of me. Mile 4 was done in 8:32. For the next 2.2 miles I didn’t lose or gain any ground. I was surprised to see Mile 5 come in at 9:40. The finish was up hill back to the tasting room. I covered the last 1.2 in 11:55 (9:56 pace). I was very happy with the 8:30 early miles and a little perplexed about the drastic slow down in the end. I didn’t feel like I was slowing and based on those around me I wasn’t losing any ground. My official time was 55:45, my new 10K PR.

on the way up the hill to the finish line, me in orange with my usual head lean to the left

After the race we spent the rest of the day in Temecula. We visited a couple of new wineries, Cougar and Frangipani, and a couple of our favorites, Robert Renzoni and Keyways. In between we enjoyed a wonderful lunch at the Smokehouse Restaurant on the grounds of the Ponte Winery.

A nice view of the rolling countryside in Temecula

We are cute, aren't we? (see the Happy Place post)

The next day offered an opportunity to run yet another Turkey Trot. This one a 10K as well in none other than my favorite park; Bonelli. Tyler had planned to run this one with me. When we checked the details of the race we realized that the run was on the roads and parking lots of Bonelli. The race description had mentioned trails and roads, but in reality the trails were only about a half mile of the 6.2. Tyler was none too thrilled with the 7:30 race start and truthfully I wasn’t overjoyed about paying to run where I run for free all the time. I was enamored with the idea of back to back 10K’s though. Before we called it a night we decided to skip the race and just run our own 10K later in the morning.

We got to Bonelli around 8:30. The 10K race was pretty much done, but the Turkey Tri was still going on. We put in a lot more time on the dirt, got to see the bikes go by and the last of the people finishing up the swim. We even wound our way through the finishing area. Tyler hadn’t run this far in a while and because I am technically tapering we used the run:walk method starting with 7:1 and moving to 5:1 as Tyler lost momentum. We had a great run together and saved about $80.00. I’d call that a win-win.

The week that was supposed to be 3-3-10-3, ended up being 4-3-3-6.2-6.2 for a total of 22.4 miles. Next week’s plan is a whopping 5 miles before race day. It will be a short week at work and then off to Tennessee.

(The post title was just to see if you were paying attention)