Trail Running Blog

No Dumping on a Trail Run

Note: It feels kind of weird jumping from races that happened the year before (2000) and then training on the trail a year after(2001), but I don’t really remember runs from when I first started cross country, and the only reason why I remember the runs after is because I kept a log. There aren’t that many races in a season, so I should catch up to more present time (even though the logs are still from 6 years ago). Hope no one is too confused.

Sunday, December 30, 2001

Work-out: 4 Mile Recovery/Easy to Camino
Time: 25/26 Minutes, Weather: Cool with Small Drizzle

I was pretty sore from yesterday, especially my calves (which is a good thing because that meant I was running on my toes, which I don’t think I do that often). Frank called to play basketball so I decided to run before at about four. As Ha was parking, we saw the Roosas and Fernando on the trail, so we ran with them. Coming up was alright, pretty fast for an easy/recovery run, but the rain made it easier. Just before we got to Camino, Ha decided to pick it up and tried to win it, but I didn’t let it happened and ran with him and outkicked him in the end. While resting at Camino, Fernando saw a “No Dumping” sign on the other side of the fence. He took it and ran back (pretty fast if you ask me) with the sign in his hands. Stealing that sign just made the run a little more interesting, and I still don’t know how he did it. His form must have been really bad and holding a sign like that would be pretty tiring. Anyways, back to running: again as we were finishing to the water tower, there was a pick-up. There usually is, just because it’s the end of a run and as runners, we have a tendency to finish runs (especially races, ie the kick) really fast.Whatever it was, we finished the last half mile at a much faster pace then the rest of the run. I out kicked them with not much effort, probably because it was an easy run and I had a lot of energy left. Check out the post for the previous run that I had..

Trail Running Blog: Day 1

This is the first entry in my running log that I kept from high school and even though a lot of details are skipped, it was a pretty intense workout. The End is about 10 miles back and forth, and since we warmed up and cooled down to and from Live Oak (1 mile), it was still a hard 8-mile workout. This is one of the more difficult runs that we had.

Saturday, December 29, 2001
Workout: Warm-up to Live Oak, Hard to The End & back to Live Oak, Cool Down
Time: 48:27, Weather: chilly with light rain

I missed this work-out a couple of weeks ago because of my mistiming of arrival, but I made it to this one. Recently, James Hake had been running on the trail (with us) and I guess he helped us out a lot. There was not much of a turnout due to the rain, but the ones who showed up began the work-out. The warm-up to Live Oak was cool. The rain helped keep us entertained. Fernando kept stepping on puddles that splashed on us. Just before we arrived at Live Oak, we saw Felipe. So he turned around with us. We stretched and talked a little at Live Oak and then we began. The first half mile to mile was pretty comfortable.

After what seemd like hours, I got to the end. But just before we go to the end, James Hake was coming back and he said to me “you can hang!” referring to Ha and Felipe who were just ahead of me. This seemed to help me a lot coming back. What also helped was when Felipe yelled to me “Come on, let’s go!” at about Foothill. I caught him at the Park and as headed towards Ha. It took a while but I caught him at the Railroads. I was OK but, if Ha just gave one little surge and caugt up to me, he would have easily broken me, but he didn’t. The rest of the way the fear of getting caught caused me to surge constantly.

I finally finished at Live Oak and was really happy. I beat Ha and his time from lasts time. Also I have had really bad workouts until today. I actually did the whole workout, The End and back, nonstop. Cool…