America's Most Beautiful Bike Ride 2013

We have lived in the Bay Area for going on 5 years now, and we have only been to Lake Tahoe a couple of times - once in summer when Matt got sick and we had to go home, and once in the winter. That's all I remember at least. We've been to the Truckee area a few times also but not to the Lake on those visits. I am pretty sure we are crazy. Lake Tahoe is awesome.

Saturday: a little relaxation time at the beach.


Sunday: A 72 mile ride around the lake, AMBBR 2013. The first 40 miles were amazing! The last 30 a little less so, due to my poor preparation and some possible altitude issues. But still amazing.

Still fresh at mile 13, overlooking Emerald Bay.

(Photo courtesy of Laura Marshall)


(Photo courtesy of Laura Marshall)


(Photo courtesy of Laura Marshall)

Somewhere in California (I think):

(Photo courtesy of Joseph Torralba)


(Photo courtesy of Joseph Torralba)

Lunch stop at King's Beach:


Beginning the climb to Spooner Junction:


Finished! (With some speedy friends who arrived an hour before us, but kindly waited for us anyway):

(Photo courtesy of Lais Oliveira)

Sunday: Some more beach time at Zephyr Cove, including track ball and frisbee. And finally, mini-golf!

(Photo courtesy of Lais Oliveira)



Nearly everyone we know who rides a bike was there. We shared a house with three friends, saw numerous others out on the course, had some drinks and laughs with others after the event, and even somehow missed seeing some people entirely. The weather was perfectly sunny and about 80 degrees. It turns out property is actually strangely affordable, so research will begin on our vacation home... Since we can't afford a house in the Bay Area, maybe we can claim it is our primary residence?

Thanks to everyone who helped make our weekend enjoyable, and especially to those who planned it for us. You rock!

Challenges

I was browsing through a teammate's blog last night, when a post about Challenges caught my eye. Like Foodie McBody, I love challenges. They are pretty much the only way I get anything done. That's why I sign up for races. However, sometimes I forget to challenge myself. Now that I've been reminded, here are a few challenges I'm planning to pursue:

• 15 minutes of cleaning (or tidying) every day. I think I saw this recommended on Crazy Aunt Purl before, but I've never implemented it. I hate cleaning, mostly because it always takes so long. I am going to try to make a commitment to do just a little bit every day. I am going to try to figure out an accountability path for this - I don't want to bore you with blog posts or facebook posts about my super exciting cleaning, but maybe I can record it in a sidebar of sorts.

• Complete a Coursera course. I have heard of MIT's open access courses before, but I'd never heard of Coursera until a friend/co-worker told me about it last week. She is taking a stats class with some others here at work, and they have an accountability group so that they actually complete it. This isn't real school, obviously, but you do get a certificate of completion at the end if you do the work. I have found several courses in which I'm interested, and I am currently choosing between two starting this week. (I want to do both but overloading myself probably won't help get the job done.)

• Train for a half marathon on June 8th including at least two days of strength a week (and maybe even one day of yoga). Given that this is only 6 weeks away, maybe I can actually maintain that commitment. Generally strength training shouldn't be part of the last month before a race, but although I do plan to use this race as a gauge of my fitness, I am not too worried about messing something up with strength training. (Note that I have not specified an amount of time that I will spend each session. Gotta start somewhere...)

If you are interested in completing any of these challenges with me, or in trying to hold me accountable (i.e. posting on my wall about whether I've done a core workout this week or what have I cleaned today), your participation would be most welcome! I love to have partners in crime. Since my first season of TNT, I have been mostly a failure in the stick to a schedule department, so I'm hoping to get back into the groove here.

Do you have any challenges I should know about? Or any methods of accountability?

***
UPDATE: Check out my sidebar for a Joe's Goals tracking score. I'm aiming for 1-3 points per day and an average of 2 points per day in any given week. (7 points a week for cleaning, 5 for working on Coursera, and 2 for strength training.) Please yell at me if I'm not achieving these goals.

Sasquatch Scramble Race Report

Several months ago, Matt learned from one of his co-workers about a new racing company, Sasquatch Racing, who would be putting on a trail half marathon in Redwood Regional Park near our house. It was in April, about a month after the marathon, and it seemed like a good opportunity to take part in my second ever trail half marathon in a convenient location. Plus, the event advertised a 9:30 am start, medals that functioned as bottle openers, and beer at the end that wasn't Coors Light (and would be drunk after noon because of the late start).

So on Saturday we headed for the hills. We arrived an hour early because I was afraid of parking lines like the ones at Quarry Lakes, but there were no lines to be had, so we shivered in the fog for a long time. Finally the sun came out - still not much going on; I call this low-key racing:

Here's the start line:

After a short pep talk about following the red ribbons and who knows what else, Marathon Matt, one of the founders, walked us a few feet forward toward the line and suddenly started counting down. From 3. Okay, I guess we're starting!

I have run many of these trails before, with my typical route being a 7.5 mile loop on West Ridge and Stream  trail. During the race, I got to experience several other trails. My very favorite was a hair-pin near-loop off West Ridge made up of Baccharis, Dunn, and Graham. The trails wound through several small canyons full of Redwoods. It was absolutely gorgeous! I will definitely be heading back to those trails on future visits to the park.

The first couple miles are pretty much straight up hill, and having suffered from a head and chest cold for over a week, they weren't super easy. But I have no shame in walking up hills anymore. After that it starts to get more uphill rollery rather than straight uphill, and around mile 7 there was a nice downhill on Stream. Many parts of the upper trails were sun-baked and felt like running on concrete, which wasn't fabulous.

Then another short uphill on Prince, where at the top, I was demoralized by seeing runners heading the other way, 3 miles ahead of me. I continued run-walking, walking up most of the hills no matter how steep. I had started coughing fairly often by this point, which would continue throughout the rest of the race. (It is physically difficult to run while coughing, by the way.) Finally on my way back down, I was walking up another hill but had pretty much crested it and should have been running again. A friendly hiker cheered for me by bib number. When I looked up I realized it was the TNT hike coach. I promptly started running again and thanked her for the inspiration - I was embarrassed to have been caught walking.

I was feeling pretty exhausted by mile 11 and wishing it to be over, but luckily it was nearly all downhill at that point (although quite exposed), which was nice. Most of it was so steep though that I had trouble running very fast. Here I am, arriving back at the picnic area, at the bottom of the last hill, so close to the finish:

After finishing, I promptly had an extraordinary coughing fit. Poor Matt had to dig out my inhaler as fast as possible, but it didn't help much, probably given that it was likely sickness related and not asthma related. He informed me later that people were looking at me, so I guess I embarrassed him. Alas. Eventually I was able to calm my lungs down and feel like a normal person again.

The race would have been much better had I not been sick, but I still enjoyed it. Running on trails makes me count the miles less; I simply enjoy the scenery. It was great to find the awesome new (to me) trails. At the end I was handed a giant sugar cookie with a picture of Sassy, as well as a medal that does NOT double as a bottle opener, but with a bottle opener attached. Bummer. Maybe next time.

All-in-all, it was a good race for an inaugural race. I would have liked more food at the end besides the cookie, like salty snacks. The Red Hook Beer was tasty though. They did have a signage error on the last turn, marking it with solid flags instead of swirly flags, but hopefully no one missed it. I was also confused about the aid stations because they had changed their approach since the initial course description, but that maybe was my fault.

I would do one again, if priced right, especially the awesomely-named Honey Badger Half for which I still await details.

However, while I do enjoy trail racing, I think that I will not forgo road racing completely. Because every trail run is different, with different elevation gain and levels of technicality, it is hard to judge your performance in comparison to other races. For instance, according to Strava, this race had 200 feet less elevation gain than the one in December. I finished 10 minutes faster. Is this all due to elevation gain? Who knows.

I plan to sign up for a road half marathon soon as a way to judge my fitness level - to see if I'm still making forward progress, or plateauing, or even going backwards. (Ugh, I hope not, but this is my fear.)

In addition, although I like low-key racing, I also like at least some of my races to have more excitement, like the Xterra race, and the Brazen races I did Thanksgiving weekend. I'll just keep mixing it up.

***
I also totally forgot to mention, since I was sitting down while writing this, that my calves have absolutely seized up and I can barely walk let alone go downstairs. I remember after Xterra being shocked about how not sore I was given the elevation gain. Not sure what in the world happened this time.

The American Dream

Sometimes when I am bored, I look at the Trulia app on my iPad. I have it set to single family homes less than $500,000. Usually this doesn't kill too much of my boredom because there isn't much to look at.

This last time I found a beautiful house in the hills for $400,000. This is amazingly cheap for the Bay Area, and it also contains a potentially rentable lower level. Matt and I became somewhat serious about potentially investigating and purchasing this house. In the end it appears to be seriously underpriced just to start a bidding war.

But it has gotten me thinking. I love the idea of renting because you are not tied down. Awesome job in another location? No problem. What if one of us loses a job? Just downgrade. What if we decide to spend a few years in another country? What if my wayward spouse decides to go back to school?

However, I am now intrigued by the thought of actually owning a house, preferably one larger than the 500 sf we live in. At least big enough for a couch. Where we can do projects in the yard and in the house. Where I don't have to worry about when the landlords will kick us out. Where maybe we can invest ourselves in something besides our jobs. Like chickens. (And goats.)

But here in the Bay Area, that is an enormous and scary monetary commitment. And it makes, by default, so many decisions about our future. Will we ever be old enough to make these adult decisions?

Boston Marathon

Last Monday, I spent my first hour in the office watching the women's finish of the Boston Marathon. A few hours later, I took a brief glance at facebook only to find numerous posts linking to the explosions at the finish line. I was glued to my computer, trying to learn about what had happened, shakened by the random violence on the marathon spectators. Though I didn't know anyone running the race this year, I know many people who's dream it is to get there. And I can't imagine the guilt a runner would feel when their family and friends, who had come to watch them finish, ended up in the hospital instead, or worse. It was shocking; how could this happen to one of America's great institutions.

That same week, 14 people died in a fertilizer plant explosion, 7 died in election protest violence in Venezuela, 2 Richmond teenagers were shot in front of their homes. Probably some ungodly number of people died in countries where war and terrorism are a common occurrence.

At the Boston Marathon, while more than a hundred people were wounded, many severely, very few died. So many fewer than in Newtown, Aurora, Tucson. And yet, our lovely Congress failed to enact meaningful gun-related legislation that same week. Because a background check? God forbid.

I remained glued to the news throughout the release of the photos, the search for the bombers, the killing of the MIT policeman, the grenade launching, the manhunt in Watertown, the blood on the boat. To find one teenager.

I am complicit. We are all complicit. We live in a world where traditional terrorism freaks us out enough to shut down an entire city for an entire day, while more frequent mass shootings appall us, but not enough to do anything about it. Where we fight regulations, the kind that might keep a fertilizer plant from exploding and flattening a town. We are confused.

Last Thursday, I participated in a run for Boston and a candlelight vigil. It was lovely; it was a celebration of running and unity. While I will continue to run marathons, I certainly can't ask anyone to spectate. That's why terrorism is insidious, making us second guess our actions. But are random mass shootings and giant explosions really all that different?

Oakland Marathon Race Report

I was nervous and anxious for about a week before the race. I tried to keep myself busy so I didn't think about it. When I showed up at Inspiration Lunch on Saturday, my coach told me I was breathing awfully shallowly. So that was fun. Day of, I was ready to get it over with:

My pre-season goal had been to finish in 3:55, based on a race equivalency chart from my half marathon PR in October on a similarly hilly course. However, I lost about 3.5 weeks of running due to a mysterious foot ailment everyone thought was a stress fracture, but did not show up in x-rays and eventually went away. Then I got a cold for a few weeks. When I made the mistake of looking at my training logs a couple days before the race, I realized I had averaged only about 2 workouts a week during my training season. Gulp. Only part of this is attributable to my injury and illness; I also just didn't have much commitment. It might be time to take a season off. In addition, because of the injury, I only had 3 "long" runs: 14, 17, and 20 miles.

Anyway, I basically didn't know how fast I could expect to run on race day, and therefore how to pace myself. I knew I wanted somewhere between a 9:09 pace (which would put me just under 4 hours) and a 10:00 pace (which would put me around 4:25 or so). I am super good at pacing myself in half marathons just by how I feel that day, so I figured I would do the same thing. And therefore ignored my coach, who told me to have a 20 mile warm-up run followed by a 10k race. He said the most important thing was to set a goal for the last 10k.

Well, I felt pretty good going out, and was running between the 4:00 and 4:15 pacers. I saw Matt at mile 5, right by our house. The 900 feet of elevation gain is between miles 6-11. I enjoy hills. Turns out I didn't have an over-10:00 mile the first half of the race, despite these hills. Oops. After 11 it is all downhill and then flat.

By mile 12 I was starting to get a little bored. I was having trouble with my nutrition. I was not sure if I was hungry, full, needed more water, needed more salt, or needed nothing. I hit the half-way point in 2:03. I was reassured that I could easily run the second half in 2:27, and thus still feel good about finishing under 4:30. I didn't plan to run that slow of course.

I'd also been feeling a blister since about mile 6. I kept having an inner conversation about whether I should stop at a medical tent to get taped up but never did. Miles 14-16 have no turns and run straight down a boring street in which you go from 34th to 4th and therefore can see with each street sign how far you have left to go. I knew at mile 17 I would be merging with the halfers, see Matt, and see my housemate playing Taiko, and that did give me a little pick me up.

Merging with the half had its downside; I was merging with runners who were slower than I was, so not only did I have to dodge them, I had to avoid being sucked in running at their pace, which was a little challenging at that point in the race. I was thinking I'd like to be done. There were more spectators there and entertainment, which was nice. I finally hit mile 20. I decided that instead of the outrageous 9:00 mile goal I was thinking for the 10k earlier, I would go ahead and shoot for 10:00. I hit 20 miles at 3:09, so this would give me a finish of 4:09, or a 9:30 pace, which I felt good about.

Turns out that didn't go well. Miles 20-23 were rough. I walked a few times, with the excuse of getting food out of my race belt and eating it. Or walking through a water station. It was hard to get started again. Hitting mile 23 was awesome. It's at the beginning of the Lake, near the Finish, so tons of spectators are there and it was full of energy. Matt was there also. I had a momentary feeling of joy, which was soon diminished, as I headed onto the lake path and realized there would be very few spectators the rest of the way. Around mile 24, I stopped to walk again, getting out my last gel packet. I couldn't force it down, although I needed it. Forcing myself to start running was hard again. That mile was also tough as the lane got narrow, and I had to dodge a lot of slower half-ers. I did run into some teammates, which was nice. I knew at mile 25 I would finally have the mental fortitude to pick it up, and I did. I was given an extra surge part way through when the 4:15 sign holder caught up with me - I knew I wanted to beat them. My coach picked me up with .2 to go, which was awesome. And I finally finished at 4:14:11. 

I can't say I had fun at this race, even in the first half. And then I ran a positive split, finishing the first half in 2:03 and the second in 2:11. I couldn't even meet my 10k goal. I ran four of those miles at a pace significantly higher than 10:00. I had trouble keeping it together. Starting at mile 18, all my paces were 9:50 or higher. Perhaps if I had run the first half more prudently, I would have had more fun and more left in the tank in the second half. I guess I'll chalk it up to a learning experience. Even though I am disappointed I couldn't mentally get it together for a 10:00 pace in the last 10k, based on my complete exhaustion and mental confusion at the end of the race, I'm pretty sure I left most, if not all, of it out there.

My friend had told me that she had a time goal for her first marathon, and that while running it she was totally okay with not making it. I didn't believe her, but now I understand. Even by mile 1, I was thinking, I'm running a marathon! Who cares how fast I am. But I do think my desire to meet my goal did push me too fast in the first half.

Here's me with my awesomest spectator at the end, probably 30 minutes later. I still look awfully shell-shocked.

And here's the bib, medal, and the 26.2 and ROCK STAR additions to my TNT collection. Thanks to all of you, I became a rock star by raising $2000 more than my minimum. Thank you so much!!!

When I saw my coach after the race and thanked him for a great season, he proceeded to talk about how 4:14 was great for this course, and after we get my foot all taken care of, I should think about CIM or Chicago, because those are great qualifying courses. Really? Oh Coach...

The problem is, I did get injured this season, but I took time off to let it heal. And I'm sure my super minimum mileage contributed to my relative injury-freeness and my ability to finally successfully run a marathon. To get better I need more mileage, and for me this is often counter-productive.

Also, I have to say, I think half-marathons are more fun. Even if you are trying to PR, the first 10 miles are still quite pleasant, and only the last 2-3 are kind of awful. That's a much better ratio than I experienced in the marathon. I do run some halfs just for fun, without trying to run super-fast, so I guess maybe that is a marathon option as well.

There were definitely a lot of miles during the race where I wished I weren't there, but I'm not as dead set against ever running another one as I thought I might be. The cross country ski marathon (40k) is still the hardest event in which I've participated. I'm still unclear how much of that was due to sickness, but I was on the verge of tears for a long time after that one. It did take me a good 1:30 longer than the marathon though. I still think I should be able to ski faster than I can run.

Here's my stats.

Oak Ness Monster Part Deux

The other day I was discussing Lake Merritt and the Lake Chalet with a colleague, when for some reason I felt it was a good idea to note the existence of an Oak Ness Monster. After telling me I was crazy, said colleague finally agreed that it was indeed a cool art project and maybe it did exist. This prompted me to do a bit of internet searching, at which time I discovered that my previous post about the monster has nearly 300 page views - by far the most I've ever had.

Since the publication of my blog post in March 2011, a UC Berkeley publication contained a serious albeit likely tongue in cheek article about the monster, apparently on the author's last day.

In addition, you can now purchase a t-shirt with a 1940's era representation of the monster.

Of course, the Lake Merritt Institute has been touting the existence of the monster since 2006, but given that they also discuss mermaids in the lake, they really can't be trusted.

In 2008, the Oakland Tribune picked up the story, and the monster was apparently named Merrittzilla in a poll. (I prefer Oak Ness.)

Still, I'm rather flummoxed by the lack of information on this monster. If you do a google image search for the Lake Merritt monster, my picture is one of only three apparent real photos. Why do more people not see this monster? How long does it sit on the bottom of the lake? And most importantly, will it rise from the depths to support me during the Oakland Marathon on the 24th?

***
Have you seen the monster? Please tell me.