Saturday, March 03, 2012

Too Long Too Soon

Ugh, this past week my legs have been feeling heavy, rightfully so since I over reached a bit last weekend. I was hoping for a run of 30-34 miles and ended up with 40. It was nice to surpass my own goals I guess but more than that I really had fun. It felt great. Don't get me wrong I was quite tired towards the end of the run. I was crawling along, sore and ready to stop by 30 miles but the work itself felt great, the suffering felt great. I enjoyed the time alone in that exhausted state, self-motivating and self-entertaining myself. It reminded me of all those long races where I ran without a pacer, plugging away by my lonesome being my own best companion.

The day started with a double on the Dipsea trail, 14.2 miles and a good amount of climbing. I then joined two friends who wanted to extend their run to 20-21 miles by running to Muir Woods and back and from there I ran back to San Francisco, an additional 20 or so miles. Long day but a satisfying and fruitful one.

I've got a long way to go before I'm strong again. I felt like the mental was simply babysitting the physical. My mind said "keep running!" and my body said "huff…puff…puff…no way, I'm walking". Ah well there is still March, April and May - hoping to get much, much stronger by then. We'll see.

Have a great weekend everyone and enjoy the pictures!

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This area of the Dipsea trail was washed away in 2006 and it's been finally fixed. No more running on the road. The detour wasn't terrible and it was short but trail trumps road.

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Where's the trail?! The section is attached to the side of the tree.

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Amy providing a scale reference.

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Rachel above Muir Woods.

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With Rachel and Mike as we exited Muir Woods National Park. Both are running the American River 50-miler and wanted to at least hit 20 miles for the day.

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5 comments:

  1. Adelyn2:22 PM

    Sounds like it was a beautiful, full day out on the trails. Love seeing pictures of my favorite place, and I'm glad to see the Dipsea trail section is all fixed up!

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  2. Aileen aka Marathon Maniac #38098:45 PM

    Speaking of the Dipsea, have you ever ran that? I've been thinking about it, but entry is a little bit tricky.

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  3. Aileen aka Marathon Maniac #38098:47 PM

    Speaking of the Dipsea, have you ever ran that? I've been thinking about it, but entry is a little bit tricky.

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  4. Rick Gaston12:04 PM

    Entry is totally tricky. The Dipsea is my favorite trail, I've run the Double once and participated in the Quad Dipsea 8 times. The single Dipsea and the Double are organized by the same people and they have a handicap built in based on age. I believe the Single has about 1500 runners and the Double about half that. What that means is that you have a lot of people passing each other on such narrow and hilly trails. After completing the Double I've never returned because of the crowd factor and I can't imagine running the Single with so many more people on those tricky trails. The Quad on the other hand is only around 250 entrants and it spreads out quickly, especially during the course of four crossings.

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  5. Jenny3:28 AM

    Nice stuff! I'm enjoying reading your blog here!

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