No, you’re not losing your mind. I am writing my September race report already. I ran the LuluLemon Vasona Lake (Los Gatos) ½ Marathon the weekend after the Santa Rosa ½ Marathon.
Initially I thought it was a bit nuts to run a half marathon two weekends in a row. Then I harkened back to my marathon training and remembered that it was a little like normal training. Just because you’re completed the race doesn’t mean you’re finished with training.
Los Gatos is a mere hour south of San Francisco, so the plan for this race was to get up early and drive down. We’d also been told by the race director to be there by 7:15am to pick up our race numbers. The race was set to start at 7:30am. Something told me that a large crowd was not going to be an issue.
We (Colleen joined me on this jaunt) arrived at the prescribed 7:15 time (just – we got a little lost on the way) grabbed our bib numbers, made a quick trip to the porta-potty and headed down to the start line.
There were maybe 150 people there. My guess on the crowd size was about right. The race director had two orange cones on the park path to mark the race start. With his stopwatch in hand he suddenly shouted “Ready, set, GO!” I was standing on the lawn bewildered. Now?
Oh. OK. Go. So I went.
The first half of the race was along the paths along Vasona Lake. Slightly rolling, pretty vistas, it felt like a regular morning run. My only issue was this “crowd” of runners was squished onto the path along with the locals (dog walkers, hikers, cyclists) so setting a brisk pace while dodging bodies wasn’t going to happen. Early on I decided I’d just enjoy the scenery and not worry about pace that day. I had driven myself so crazy on the Santa Rosa race the weekend before; I needed to tap into the zen run.
Happily the pack spread out pretty quickly and I found myself running pretty much alone. This really felt like a good training run. I was in a great mental state and was cruising along at a decent clip. Around mile seven we ducked off the paved path onto a dirt path. The dirt path then quickly shrank to a small one person trail. The little trial wound into the trees and then headed up….and up…and up…and up…and up.
This was no longer a Zen run. We went from around 300 ft to nearly 900 feet in less than a mile. This also included hopping over roots, dodging the odd boulder and navigating the switchbacks. The race had turned into a trail run. A trail run that was so technical and steep that I have to confess, in a couple of places I slowed to a walk.
As I was slogging up the hill I said a little prayer that there would be no downhill running before the turn around point. Basing my knowledge of where we were on the course, I knew it would be close. While I was enjoying the view I was finding the climb hard. As long as we were going up I would get to turn around and run downhill back to the finish line, therefore NO MORE UP.
The race planners didn’t make it that easy on us. About a half mile from the turnaround we had a STEEP drop. So steep, I may add, that I had to pick my way down so I didn’t end up on my ass. Going back up was not much easier. My watch clocked me at less than a 2mph pace. SLOW.
I did get to head down eventually. Running back down the great Vasona Lake climb was fun. I let gravity take over and focused my mind on picking my feet up so I didn’t trip on anything. Hikers were out in full by this time and cheered us on as we shot past them back to the race start.
The surprising benefit of this quite technically hard course was that the section I usually start telling myself “x miles to go” flew by. I didn’t have time to think about how far or fast I was going. I spent all my mental energy on keeping vertical. Before I knew it I was closing in on the finish line.
I finished in 2:26:38 according to my Garmin watch. Timing chips were far too high tech for this event.
Here’s the race according to my Garmin. Cool no?
Click here http://connect.garmin.com/activity/47879321 if you can't see a little map.
I’m off to run in training for my October race. People I’m heading to the SOUTH OF FRANCE! Yeah! That’s civilized racing.
Jojo, wow, what a race! Love the Garmin data - that will be MY prize when I achieve a fitness goal. Speaking of which, I am about to make a suggestion or 2 about YOUR fitness goal (the one with the TV prize ;o)
Posted by: Celia | October 01, 2010 at 06:30 AM