As mentioned in a previous post, whenever Payro and I get together we try to plan as many running adventures as possible. Thursday was our epic evening trail run. Today, we woke up early, said goodbye to the kids (April was kind enough to get a sitter for the morning) and headed over to Angel Island (hit the link; its a very interesting place and visible from our backyard deck) via the Tiburon ferry. First time I've ever gone to a race via ferry; it was pretty cool. I was surprised at the number of runners - expected it to be much smaller. It took us about 10-15 minutes to get to Angel Island, which is where Zevan happened to go to camp last week. "Survivor" camp based on the TV show. Damn kid has such a great life it's not even funny. ANd of course, it's completely lost on him. Kids. But I digress.
The Angel Island race featured four distances: 50k (31 miles), 25k (15.3), 16k (10 miles) and 8k (5 miles). Payro's foot has been bothering him and I am not quite fully back to speed, so we opted or the 16k. Normally, though, we'd likely be looking at the 50k.
Our race had two loops (the Island isn't that big); the first loop had one monster hill right att he start and about 2 miles in total of climbing to kick things off, before leveling off a bit. The second loop was pretty brutal; we repeated the first hill and then climbed to the Summit of the Island. The picture of Payro with his arms raised was taken at the top of the mountain; believe it or not, the grey backdrop is fog. It was a very overcast morning which is really a shame, because the views are spectacular. Normally what you would see beyond that grey wall is a sweeping vista of San Francisco and Sausolito.
For the most part, our pace was somewhere between moderate and easy for the first seven miles but we found another gear for the last three miles. Though these last three miles were downhill, we were working veryhard; I'd guess we were probably going at around 6:40 pace or so - maybe faster. And effort like this requires pretty intense concentration because the trail is rutted and if you go down, you're going to go down hard. We were FLYING and found ourselves passing people who had upwards of five minutes on us. We finished in around 1:37 (note: we *very* rarely run trail races for time. We save that for road races. These trail runs are a different breed altogether and are run entirely for *fun*) which is half decent for a hilly ass trail run such as this.
They had a great food spread at the finish -- trail runs are ALL about the food -- and in the one picture I'm holding a hot bowl of chicken soup. There is nothing better in the world than hot chicken soup and/or chili (the race had both) at the end of a tough trail race. Ok, there are in fact some things that are better than that, but I'm trying to keep these pages relatively family friendly.
So there you have it. Fun times.
Last word: if you like to run, try a trail run sometime in this lifetime. It's a great experience in many different respects.
5 comments:
i,ll stick with trail mix. GS
Nothing better after a race than CHICKEN SOUP?!!!##@???
Are you out of your mind? Perhaps Pitching Campbell's for some business??? Or, looking for sponsorship?
C'mon.... nothing better than pizza and beer after finishing a race (no matter what time of day). Unless, of course, you are chilled from racing in the cool fog/rain. ;-)
Soup rocks!
We were damn cold about 10 minutes after the race - wet from sweat, foggy, windy and cool.
But the race was just fantastic - trails races are always a good time. We really did bomb downhill - I think we passed a good 15-20 people on our way down.
Why didn't you swim to and from the race?
FUnny you should ask Kaiser - we talked about that. There's actually a world famous swim that goes from Tiburon to Angel Island. It's supposed to be really difficult -- rough water, gnarly current and COLD! I'm giving it serious consideration.
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