Napa Valley Marathon - accomodation
Hi
After a long time searching for a hotel at reasonable rate for the marathon niught, we bumped into The Chateau Hotel And Conference Center on 4195 Solano Avenue, which is 1.2 miles from the finish point. AAA rate is $119 for the night of Match 5th, and $89 for March 4. See
http://www.napavalley.winecountry.com/cgi-bin/new_mont_frame.cgi?return=www.napavalley.winecountry.com/lodging/hotel_motel.html&target=www.thechateauhotel.com/
See you there, and stay in touch if you also run Napa.
Cheers,
Arnon
Eh bien, what's up for this Saturday?
It's awfully quiet on the Sissie-front. What shall we do? The 'trickster' is off to a sinful partying lifestyle in (yet another) foreign country... do we dare try to run with Arnon and his high mileage training program? Then there is the weather factor... looking a little inclement, I'd say. Let me know what you're up for, Sissie. Me, I could do Meridian and back.
Saturday's foggy 14 miler
Dayle and I agreed to run a long 14 mile run on Sat. I arrived 8am at the school as usual and chatted with the fitters that were hanging around the parking lot. I noticed Arnon's car and was informed that he had headed out at 7:30 (on his Alma triple as we now know. :)
When I had left my house it was foggy, but I had expected it to clear up by the time I got to the south bay. I guess so did Dayle, as we stood there, me without gloves and dayle in a thin long sleeve. Runner's are ever the optimists.
Checking with all the fitters, some were out for 9 or 10, but happily David said he was scheduled for 14 as well, so off we went. While we ran, David talked about running the London marathon. This will be his 4th or 5th time running it, and apparently the difference between a small marathon like Sacramento and London couldn't be greater. People come from all over England to line the course, 4 or 5 people deep the entire way. You start at the 0 meridian line and end up at Buckingham palace. The energy just sounds incredible. 45,000 people running together.
I also found out that David qualified for the elite masters at London, that he ran his first marathon in less that 3:30 and that was with walking the last section because he overdid it. He also gave me the great traveling tip, bring your running shoes as carry-on, and during your 2 hour lay-over, put them on and walk around the airport. BTW, did I mention he broke his ribs a couple months ago, tripping on a broken part of the LG trail? There he was still running his 14.
So about the run, I won't lie, it was tough. I started to feel that same hotspot on the inside of my foot, just behind the big toe, where I always get blisters, and my feet definitely took a pounding. Luckily I had Iron Dayle to keep me entertained with tales of asparagus in germany (ask her, it made me crave fresh asparagus.) I hope I distracted her a little, or at least didn't bore her to death with my endless patter on topics of no import. :) The fog was kind of cool. Actually it was cold, but it was also cool, if you know what I mean. Running through the mist, seeing the wisps float across Vasona lake was very picturesque.
One last bit of advice, get the small coffee at the LG coffee shop. Go outside and strech, and by the time you're done, you can get your free refill and be on your way. More coffee, and cheaper!
Alma Triple Bridge (17Miles) ++
Yesterday we had a 19Miles run, of which the last 17 earned the above name. It's simple: run to Alma bridge. Continue straight at the bridge junction. The road goes up for about 0.7 miles into Aldercroft Heights, passes through the village, narrows down to a single lane road, rolls down in a long descent back to the river level, passes two little bridges and hits a dead end at 2 miles from the Alma bridge. Take a sip of water, turn back, and by the time you arrive to Alma bridge you erased 4 miles and some pretty good hill work. From Alma bridge we continued around the lake and back to LGHS (btw, the single trail next to Hwy 17 was muddy). Oh, the way back looks much longer after the extra 4 hilly miles.
Together with a two miles warm up on the LG creek trail, it made a nice 18.5-19 miles run in 2:57 hours (including any short breaks). The fast pace was inspired by Less (an ironman) who joined us on the way with his friend, and by Tom (Herzel's friend, 2:55 marathon time!!!) and Phil, who always find extra energy on the way back, when I start to count steps. Overall it was a great hill work towards Napa Valley Marathon.
We plan for a similar 21 miles in a couple of weeks.
Nice Wednesday run
Today was foggy and chilly but we climbed (via Chamise) up to the sun and felt the warm rays. It's always a great feeling at the top of the climb, knowing you did it, you got out of bed to run and will feel the benefits for the rest of the day!
Things I Want to Try
http://www.hypoxictent.com/
But of course, I had to go read the following, just to balance out the craziness of purposely wanting to deprive myself of oxygen.
http://www.princeton.edu/~oa/safety/altitude.html
Patrick cross-training for the San Diego Rock 'N' Roll
Training calendar
Here's the (somewhat lame) first draft. Awfully translated from word into html gifs and here presented as separate images. I'll work on something better ( I couldn't make a pdf, even though I have the "create a pdf" button. Doh.)
February Calendar
March Calendar
April Calendar
May Calendar
June Calendar
Christmas morning
At the dish ...
We met at 8 o'clock and all the buns were cold. I mean the cinnamon bun Christmas trees, of course. What else? We started at Sharon Heights to emulate the noontime run I do from SLAC (making it close to 7 miles), but even so, once at the top, oobe doobe asks: Is this it? Is this all the up? Are we there already?
Tempted by this kind of encouragement to up the distance (snide laughter), but simultaneously swayed by Patrick's wish to possibly arrive early enough to watch nieces/nephews open some gifts, we had to subdue oobe doobe and say, "Yes, that's it" and get back down. By down the ambient temperature had risen from our initial 33 deg F, and the buns were slightly warmer.
mile marker 26.2
Rock 'N' Roll here we come
They have a very nice website, the course looks beautiful. I've taken our training schedule from last year (yellow) and put it on our calendar. If we start from Feb. 5th its 17 weeks of training, and since we have a good base already, time doesn't seem to be an issue (so get better first Dayle.)
I added an extra 21 miler and pushed the 30k back, so that would be on April 2nd. With 2 rest weeks in between the 30k, 1st 21 miler and 2nd 21 (23?) miler. We can see how we are in March, but the 25k isn't such a milestone, so I just left it out. The key will be getting in the track run during the week sometime. We're still considering Monday nights to be the best, but I haven't been able to find an indoor track. Treadmills?
sub 3:30 marathoner for new role model... a girl, even
The story
highlights: age 40, 5 kids, only depends on her dog as the must-have accompaniment, ran 3:22 in Boston marathon
Wednesday morning runs
Today Sissie and I ran at Rancho San Antonio like we do every 7:30 am. Dayle called in with an injury and we hope its not serious! Sissie saw Arnon's car, but since we started a little late, he might have gone on without us.
http://www.bahiker.com/southbayhikes/ranchosa.html
This website has a lot of nice pictures of the trails, although its a bit wetter these days :D This morning it was really nice out, even though it was cloudy, it was broken up enough to really make the sky pretty. We stuck to the rouge valley trail all the way out and up to upper wildcat where we completed the first half of the 8 mile out and back. The trail was only really muddy in a few spots and considering its been raining so hard lately this is great news. We didn't even have a life threatening incident, I guess Sissie is just being extra cautious.
*wink*
No matter how tired I feel at 6am when I wake up, once we start running that all goes away, and I'm just happy to be out.
A grim smile
Sissie, Patrick, this is a fantastic mind blogging idea !!
Herzel and I are up for Alma bridge, Saturday, 8AM - anyone else?
Here is a report - it will surly put a grim smile on a few faces. The Saturday before, Phil joined us to Alma Bridge. "It is my first run to Alma," he said. When we arrived at the dam - "Oh, that's a tough climb - are there any more hills like that ? " (2.07 miles on his wrist GPS). Later around Soda Springs "oh, this is a hard course" (none of us had the no whining T-shirt, so it's legal). "Hey, don't worry, we're almost there" (but you can't cheat Phil's GPS). We finally arrive to the Bridge (6.3 miles on the GPS) and turn back. On the way back, well, Phil shifted gears and dissapeard! He has had to wait for us a few times... and it's not that we did not try hard enough - we actually think we ran damn fast (sub-2hours)... gee, I should not have told you about it. I can see your grim smile from here.
Arnon
First an Apology
Sissie came up with the idea of a runner's blog, and I thought it would be a great addition to our motivational curriculum. I'm sorry I stole the name for this blog from our Coach Tom and his most excellent running crew. Someone else can come up with a better title and we can change it.
Let's have lots of great posts about fantastic runs, the kind of things that will make those of us who weren't there want to come out next time!
