Ms. _______

Well, I’ve started student teaching, and so far have been loving my class! I’m with first graders, and they are really sweet. It’s quite the new experience suddenly being “Ms. ___________,” I feel so grown up, though the name feels slightly awkward. It really felt like such a good fit though. I’m finally feeling confident that the multiple subject credential was the right choice and can definitely imagine being in the classroom! My school is great, really nice with a “life-lab” garden and plenty of outside space to play in. I’ll be going in for the full day tomorrow, which should be great. Teaching in first grade really seem like being back in the pre-school classroom, except that the students are orderly, sit at desks, and raise their hands when they want to talk! It’s amazing :)

My running this week has been a little spotty again, with finals and all, but I still managed to get in the mileage I planned. I accidently overslept my nap on Tuesday, and with an evening class, didn’t have time to get it in. After doing that the last few weeks, I knew that I couldn’t let that happen again, and just write off those miles. It is just a little over a month until the 50 miler is here! So, I set out Wednesday after class to do a run of some significance. I essentially did the same run as Sunday, with just a shorter turn around, to do 15 miles total, my longest midweek run ever!

I was definitely a bit tired from the 20 on Sunday, but I was able to keep a 10:44 pace, which is exciting. The trails were, obviously, a lot quieter on a weekday afternoon, which worried me a bit, but there will still bikes going my every so often, and I must have seen a good 30 or 40 people on the trails during my run, so it was never too isolated. My argument is that this firetrail is sort of like a nature highway, which I’m assuming would be unappealing and too busy for a mountain lion to hang around (or for any 2 legged animals to be around). Nevertheless, I did make sure my pepper spray was easily accessible J. It was funny, as I was getting high up, to my turn around point, a woman coming down the hill on her bike saw me and loudly exclaimed “Wow!!!” Now I’m not exactly sure what this referred to, but I’d like to think she was impressed that I was up there, as there doesn’t seem to be a lot of runners who go that high up the firetrail (it’s sort of a relentless uphill for a while). Then again, she could have just been shocked that I was on the firetrail and not one of the beautiful singletracks ;).

Another male biker commented to me while I was on my way down, “wow, you’re up here! Good for you!” I wanted to tell him that I had been considerably more “up here” than this, that I was about 2 miles down from the turn around, but It was still nice to be thought impressive J I suppose the only 2 other runners I’ve ever seen on these firetrails were super buff, scantily clad, men, so I didn’t exactly fit the image of runners that usually visit there.

Something I noticed though, is that the mountain biker community is much friendlier than the running community out there, at least on the weekday. All the bikers, almost, said hi and smiled when I went by, but when I said hi to the runners, they just sort of looked past me like I was weird. Ah, oh well.

Did 5 miles today which was good, but hot! Despite the fact that I didn’t go out until 6:30 at night! (addendum- okay, it was maybe in the high 70s which for most isn't hot, but it's hot for here!)

Celebrating this weekend with hopefully some good long runs (25 miler maybe?) as I’ve made it through the first section of classes (just one paper to write) and have no classes until Tuesday J

And hopefully, with the free time I’ll have, I can finally get up that 50k race report!

Busy Life (and not much running!)

Having fun being a tree-hugger with "The Advocate" a redwood 45 ft in circumference!!! Taken while Hiking in Nisene Marks on Saturday

Well, I haven't been posting much, as the past week has been quite full of non running things. I had to move (housing mix-up) last week, meaning that I missed my thursday run, instead spending about 3 hours lugging boxes down one flight of stairs and up two. Figure that sort of counted as a workout, as I was breathing hard and sweating lots for much of it :D. I'm finally all settled and enjoying my new place, which is essentially the same as my old, except with vaulted ceilings and a nice view of a forested area. I'll post pictures when I get a chance :). The other interruption to my training was the visiting of a very old friend (my childhood next door neighbor). He's just recently moved to Northern California (to work in the Capitol!) and had never been to Santa Cruz, so came down for the weekend. I need to figure out how to better get my runs in when I have out of town guests though, as I ended up with no runs until he left! We did go on a 5 mile hike on Saturday, but that didn't exactly make up for the dearth of running.

After he took off around 1:30pm Sunday, I realized I needed to do some kind of redeeming run, even though it was already pretty late to be starting a long run (at least in my book). After reading about Andy's Nisene Mark's experience, I decided to head out there myself for a similar 18 mile run. I ran from outside the park to the overlook, plus a little extra loop for what I think was just about 20 miles (the garmin, again, didn't work, so I went by the posted trail measurements that I saw out there. I've gotta to send that garmin in. It hasn't successfully worked since Mt tam!). It was really cool, though, to be so low key about running 20 miles. After the 50k last weekend, 20 didn't seem all that long :). And, once I got about 3 or 4 miles in, it just got gorgeous!!! So many beautiful redwoods. Plus, it was mostly uphill on the way out, meaning a fabulous 2nd half of over a 1/2 hour of really great downhill running, and then relatively downhill after that.

It took just about 4 hours, including the 20 minute break I took at the overlook chatting with a few bikers. There were 4 bikers hanging out there when I left. I felt half naked without a bike of my own! Not too many runners were all the way up at the overlook (actually, I didn't see any) which I thought was sort of cool. I finished just before 7pm, which is definitely the latest I've ever finished a long run, and was proud that I never felt scared while I was out there alone. There was lots of traffic on the trail, and it was all just so beautiful. I'm actually getting more comfortable with the idea of exploring out there alone now, especially now that I've been given a great site to access free maps of the parks (www.virtualparks.org).

As I've now had 2 low mileage weeks in a row, I'm thinking trying to step it up this week with 2 long runs on the weekend. Of course, I'm starting my Student Teaching Placement today (Ack!! scary thought!) and have finals this week, so I'm thinking just getting in my runs will be a challenge :P I'll do my best though!

Track? and good running :)

(the 50k report is still coming, probably this weekend! I have to move tomorrow to a new building due to a mess up by the housing people so I've been busy packing and such, and of course doing school work since finals are already upon me! But I will write up a *hopefully* steller report eventually. bear with me :D)

This week I've been trying my best to really be a social runner and find some good people to run with, which, in Santa Cruz, seems to mean going to track workouts!

Monday night I joined some TNT alumni, invited by my new running friend Mimi, which was lots of fun. We did a 'grab bag' workout, meaning lots of drills were written on pieces of paper, and we drew one at a time to find out what we were doing. I finally learned track speak, and can now, with some confidence, tell you what an 800 is (or can I? Is that one lap around the track, or two? I'm going with two?!?). Anyways, we did some sprinting, which was ridiculous for me, as I've apparently forgotten how to do that. I thought I was going to fall backwards as I couldn't seem to make my upper body move along at the same speed as my feet. We did just fast running around the track, step ups on the bleachers, crunches balancing on the bleachers (I kept falling for this), and 10 minutes of hills. Plus some other fun stuff. Doubt I ran more than 3 miles total, but it was a good workout! It's so fun to be with people again, and it's really good that I'm finally doing hill repeats, since I've been meaning to do those and just hadn't gotten around to them.
After the track workout I did my usual (well, what I did after the last time I went to track) and ran around the campus track while watching the sun set over Monteray Bay. It was absolutely gorgeous up there again, and there were six deer hanging out on the grass having a late dinner. A baby deer was less than 5 feet from me when I walked past, but spooked and bounded a few more feet away. How nice! Even better, my legs just felt great up there! I was amazed at how well I was feeling just 2 days after my fast 50k :)

However, it started getting pretty dark up there, and when the frisbee guys turned in, I thought it might be time to go as well. Didn't feel all that safe with just me and the deer hanging out in the dark. Did 2 miles on the track, so ended up with about 5 for the night. What was cool was that when I went back to my car, there was a deer about 7 or 8 ft from the stairs heading up to the parking lot. I stopped there to stretch, and watch the deer. It would periodically look over at me, looking a little scared, but then would start foraging for food again. It seemed somewhat wary but accepting of my presence :) Eventually I left it to its meal and got into my car to go home. Pretty cool :D

santa cruz deer hanging out on campus

Tuesday I took off, because I was surprisingly sore from Monday! Those hills and bleacher step ups certainly hit me hard :)
Tonight I tried to meet up with the Santa Cruz Track Club and, again sort of failed, through my own fault. Traffic was unbelievably bad getting to the track, and a 14 minute drive ended up taking a good 45 minutes! By the time I got there, I was already 20 minutes late, and didn't want to barge into a practice in progress. However, I had made the drive and certainly didn't want to head home just yet. Carol, a woman I had been emailing who is a fabulous ultrarunner (just did Headlands 100!!) said she'd be doing hills on a hill above the track, so I ran/walked around looking for this hill. Finally, I found what I thought might be it, and decided to just do hill repeats myself and hope that she'd show up. I did one, running about 1/2 and walking the rest, then running down and around a field at the bottom to rest. When I got back to the hill, I saw a woman with short grey hair in front of me. "Carol?" I called. It was her. We finally met, and set of up the hill together. It was great talking to her and hearing about some of her recent ultra experiences. She's on the slower side (from what she's said) so it sounds like we might be a good fit for long run buddies! I'm excited :) We did the hill 3 more times, and she called it a day, since she was still recovering from a few weeks ago. Hopefully we'll run together soon!
After that I was still itching to get in some more running, so I headed down to west cliff to do a nice flat 6 miles or so. It was nice without headphones or my garmin, and I just sort of tranced, listening to the crashing waves. My calves were doing a weird pain thing about halfway (I think I need new road shoes- these have 500 or so miles on them) so I turned back. I thought it was 6 miles since I turned at the 10k turnaround for the SC race, but I realized I cut off about a half mile becuase of where I started, so I think I ended up with less than that. Oh well, probably about 6 1/2 miles total, and a great evening :)

Tomorrow I might try to hit the Poginip trails solo, since Andy provided me with a nice map, and can hopefully get in 8.5 or so.

Carol told me the details for a Sunday run with SCTC, so hopefully I can finally get in my first official group run up here :)

My Dad's 1/2 Marathon!

My Dad completed his 2nd 1/2 marathon this morning in San Diego, at an incredibly hot and humid race, and I couldn't be prouder! He's been doing awesome with his running, hitting more than 20 miles a week for weeks now, and getting in great shape :)

He's going to be at PCTR's Big Basin running the 25k, which will be his furthest distance ever! I'm running this as well as a few other people from OCTR (including e-rod). Since it's just a few days before my 22nd birthday, it's been deemed a bit of a birthday run, and what better way to celebrate than a 50k with friends and family :D


Dad before the race and after, with his tech shirt and medal :)

We'll be running 50ks together before you know it! (right dad, ;) )

50k number two :D

So, for my first 50k last month, I was incredibly nervous, telling everyone about it and posting for weeks asking for advice and such. This 50k, the Psychedelic Climacteric, I barely thought about it until it arrived. Of course, getting ready to leave I was a bit nervous about taking it on, but without things like bibs or a super race-y vibe, it didn't exactly feel like a race.

It was a very low key 'race' just put on by my running friend Mike Palmer as a sort of early birthday run. He marks the course (and takes down the markings) himself, and writes out directions to follow as well. This year 6 people did the 50k, with a handful of others doing 16 miles, 20 miles, and 24 (I think).

It was a hard course, with about 7000 ft of elevation gain (and 1300 of that in the first 3 miles) but it was spectacularly gorgeous! I'll write a full race report when my body doesn't hurt so much, but I was super pleased with how I did (especially considering the back to back long runs last week). For the total distance (exactly 31.2 miles, or 50k) it took us 7 hours and 46 minutes!!! A good hour and nineteen minutes off my Tahoe time (though this course was .8 shorter). Still, breaking 8 hours was amazing! I owe that speedy time to Ernesto, a wonderful man who stuck with me the whole time even though he's super speedy himself (just did The Headlands 50 last weekend with PCTR and qualified for Western States!).

So yeah, I can now say unequivocally that I run Ultras in the plural form, not just, I run ultra ;). I've also never done two hard weekends in a row, so this was super good training (I hope!) for Dick Collins :)

Thanks so much Mike for such a fantastic run!

A Weekend of Running- Part II: Lake Chabot

In an effort to have a bit more readable post, I'll try not to write a novel this time :)

Sarah and I decided that we had to get 8 hours of sleep, so we slept in until 7am on Sunday, before starting our adventure. Sarah had previously emailed Jasper to get advice on an "easy" 20 miler in east bay, and he recommended a nice loop course around Lake Chabot. Of course, easy for Jasper doesn't necessarily mean easy for the mere mortal, but we still figured there wouldn't be anything like Steep Ravine around the lake, so we'd probably be good! We got to the trail around 8:30 or so, and parked at what has to be one of the safest trail heads ever!

The start was a nice downhill, which was pleasant, but a bit worrisome, since we'd have to get back up at the end of the run! It was a bit chilly, and since I was once again in a tank top, it was good that we were moving!

Before long we hit lake level, and crossed a fun bouncing bridge. I'm generally not a bridge person, but since this one wasn't high up, I had fun bouncing across it :)

As it was still cool and overcast, the lake was a shimmery grey color in the early morning light. Now that we were running on flats and some slight uphills, my legs were letting me know that they ran the day before. Soon we came to a large uphill, and my legs no longer were willing to complacently sit by. They started to burn. At about this point Sarah turns to me and says, "You know, I"ll probably regret saying this later, but I don't feel at all like I ran 18 miles yesterday!" Funny, because I really did :). Hoping that I'd be able to keep up, we trudged up the hill.
As we got further up, we could look down and see the trail we had been on shortly before (on the left), which was fun. Views always make you feel like you've made progress! As I discovered later, this first part is almost exactly the beginning of Dick Collins, which was exciting. The next few sections were fun, rolling hills, and beautiful. Of course, my legs weren't really feeling the uphills, but none of them were too bad at all.

Soon we reached one of the main trails that we'd be on for quite some time (it had a boy name, Johnathan, Matthew, Benjamin?) This was great, mostly downhill running that was fun. I heard a booming and jokingly asked Sarah if those were gunshots or just sounds from the freeway, fulling expecting the latter answer. "Actually" she said "there's a firing range in the hills!"

Oh

As we started running in that general direction the sounds got louder until, *bang* *bang* *bang* It sounded like the bullets were being fired directly at us! At this point we were walking up a hill, but Sarah argued that one really can't walk when they're under fire, so we started moving again. Now, obviously we were never in actual danger, but it did honestly sound like the bullets were heading straight in our direction.

After about an hour the sun started coming out, turning our chilly grey day into a beautiful warm blue one.

We finally reached one of our 'landmarks' the stone bridge, which was exciting. That meant we were making progress!
The next section, to the meadow, was beautiful and very green. One thing about this course is that almost the entire thing is runnable (probably the entire thing is runnable for good runners like Jasper). As such, there weren't a ton of walking breaks to be had. We were making great progress though, and that was exciting.

Once we reached the meadow, we were 9.5 miles in and getting ready to make the turn onto the lower part of the loop, heading back to the cars. We spent a few minutes here trying to actually find the trail until finally it appeared. The next section was through a cattle grazing area, complete with a warning sign, but no cows ever appeared.

After a fairly flat section, we reached Ranch Road, which was steep switchbacks heading up to the ridge. At this section I started fantasizing about my "magic legs" combination, taking caffine and tylonal, and promised myself I'd have some at the next break. My legs were definitely hurting! The good thing about running with Sarah, though, is that even though I felt like walking lots of sections, I had to keep up with her, so it kept my walking breaks short. She's agreed to pace me for Dick Collins, and I think will be fabulous at getting me to the finish!

The trail up on the ridge was beautiful and as we got closer to the lake,things started becoming a bit more familiar. We'd both run a bit in this area, and it was fun to get back to things we knew.
After not too much further, we finally found the lake again!

This meant we were well on our way to the finish. The next trail, Columbine was a new one to me, but Sarah had been on it before (though going the other direction). She remembed it being difficult with lots of ups and downs, so we were mentally preparing ourselves for a diffcult journey ahead.

I snapped this shot as we headed up onto Columbine, and it was here that I realized my zoom on the camera was broken! Not sure how that happened, but now it really is time for a new camera. I guess I just put too much use on in this weekend :(

Columbine was surprisingly great, and after taking my magic mix about a mile before, I was definitely feeling a bit better. Not like new, unfortunately, but at least a little more able to keep up with Sarah (she broke down and had some magic towards the end, revealing her mortal roots). Once we got to the end of Columbine, it was all familiar territory heading back.

A nice downhill, flats, and then, the up! Sarah turned to me and asked, "do you think we can do 3/4 of a mile in 13 minutes?" Sure! We jogged up the hill (even though I really wanted to walk) and it just kept going, and going..."How much longer?" I gasped? "about a third of a mile" Gosh, this hill would never end. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine I'd be running (well jogging more like it) up a hill at the end of a 20 miler! We kept pushing and pushing though, and, finally we saw the cars. "We'll hit 20 before we get to that water fountain up ahead!" Sarah exclaimed, so we pushed some more, and suddenly, we were done!

Sarah had just completed her first 20 miler, and an epic weekend. Our time: 3:56, a full 37 minutes faster than the 18 miler the day before, and a 11:50 pace!!!!


Comparing our lovely dirt tan lines. And so so glad to be out of the running shoes!
And speaking of shoes....my new ones, no longer so clean :)

Thanks Sarah for a great weekend! I never would have been able to do this without you :D Here's to lots more great running in the future!


Well, I think this was a bit shorter :D Thanks for reading guys!