Four weeks to go

On Friday, I jogged down to Cemetery Rd for another bout of intervals, trying to simulate ~1000m repeats with 3 minute efforts. The temperature was just right, and aside for a car with a male driver that passed me going way too fast (even after I tried waving to get the jerk to slow), throwing up a cloud of dust, it was pretty smooth. The roads by no means flat, so going out I felt faster than coming back. Yet the luxury of running on time, not laps or miles, is that its effort that counts. My track:


Today, I put in a good 20-mile long run--not super long, but at a relatively brisk pace. I'd intended to go another mile, actually, but was feeling rather dizzy/drained by the time I got back to the house--perhaps I started out too fast--so I called it a day. Also, early in the run (from about 1 mile in to mile 5), I was feeling an occasional twisting/pain on the side and back of my knee (sciatica?), especially on the downhills, which is worrisome. I thought about aborting the run, and perhaps should have, but decided I could always hitch back along Hwy 167 if it stayed with me through 10 miles. It disappeared, for now--I'll have to monitor it closely. Possibly it stems from my hips being slightly out of alignment after the hard half-marathon effort/Friday's workout. We'll see ...

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20 mi, 135 min; Cottonwood Canyon loop

Week total: 97 miles -- this will prove to be my highest weekly total for the year

Saturday, 10/9: 10 mi, 70 min; reverse Conway Ranch loop

Friday, 10/8: 4 mi, 28 min WU; 5 x 3 min hard, w/ 2 min rest (~ 4 mi); 4 mi, 30 min CD; Cemetery Rd (12 mi total)

The sound of water

Shook the legs out today. Seems like the effects of the hike for the most part have dissipated, and I'm looking forward to this weekend.

I went down to Cemetery Rd as the light lifted from the sage, and everything went smoothly in the cool air. (I also made a point of glancing at my watch less.) I tried to concentrate on relaxing my arms, and turning over my legs (rather than over-striding, which I think I sometimes tend to do).

Before the workout, after warming up, I stopped on the road to stretch more and do some strides (unlike my first interval session this training cycle ... which went less well). And suddenly, with no breeze around, I was hearing what sounded like water. I paced back and forth, and looked off into the sage, and then realized it was flowing underneath me. I imagined it was natural tunnel, pumping water to a gushing spring near the lake's shore. Through a lava tube! Maybe I was the first to discover this astounding, unseen waterway, coursing through the desert like vein!

More likely, it was the pipe I've heard diverts water from Wilson Creek to Dechambeau Ranch, which wouldn't be one, otherwise.

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4 mi, 28 min WU; 5 x 2 min hard, w/ 90 sec rest; 5 mi, 35 min CD; Mono City-Cemetery Rd (12 mi in all)

Tuesday, 9/28: AM: 9 mi, 63 min; Poole Power Plant Rd

PM: 5 mi, 35 min; Mono City sagebrush ramble

Wind delay

When it comes to running, there's little that ruffles me as much as wind. Perhaps it's because I'm a tall strider, not a squat stormer (to offer an awkward phrase). All extension, instead of middle-distance power. I'm lanky. I admit it.

In any case, wind sometimes renders me nervous, jumpy, when the day's run is still before me. And today was awfully windy, though "awfully" might not be extraordinary here in the Eastern Sierra. By ten it was a more-or-less steady 20 mph, with gusts into the 40s. So I spent quite a number of minutes over the course of day staring out various window, like a (small, toy) dog that wants to go out, but hates a stiff breeze whipping through its coat. I was supposed to do a 23 mile long run, and per my usual route, that meant 10-plus miles of running, trudging, directly into the wind. The weather forecast confirmed that it wouldn't let up.

Finally, I decided (in consultation with the Internet) to save my long effort, which I want to run a pretty good clip, for tomorrow. So, that's to come.

Tonight, however, I ventured out at the last minute and ran 9 miles. From the start, I felt solid about the decision to postpone, since I couldn't hear a thing, and my face felt like it was alternately being pummeled and massaged. Every so often, I'd take a step in which my lifted leg would fly off into the one planted, almost tripping me up. Two and half hours of that frankly would have blown.

As I sailed down old 395 toward County Park, the lake reminded me of a conveyor belt, at a baggage claim, say. Even from a distance, swells were moving fast to the east across its surface (but they hadn't really broken into all-out white caps, for some reason). The day had cleared out the haze from a distant, unknown-to-me fire that had lingered around the Basin this week. And when sun disappeared, the wind quieted a bit, making my ascent back into Mono City easier. The blooming rabbitbrush quivered bright yellow in the dusk breeze. I was glad to be out, finally.

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9 mi, 63 min; Old 395-Cemetery Rd-Mono City jeep trail

Week total: 87 miles -- less than the 100 I'd anticipated, due to a delayed long run

Saturday, 9/18: 9 mi, 63 min; Aqueduct Rd and Lower Horse Meadows at twilight (then to the Tioga Gas Mart for a burger and short films, courtesy of the Telluride Film Festival)

Stealing glances

The view from Krakatoa

I came off the islands around 11:30 this morning, having picked up more dead birds in the last 48 hours than I ever have before (I mean, than I ever have over the course of one day). After spending a few hours lazying about, I geared up for a makeshift fartlek session around 3:30 pm. It was surprisingly cool--I guess it really is fall--and my legs felt pretty good considering I'd spent much of Thursday and Friday on my feet, helping to mend the gulls' chicken wire corrals, or walking slowly around the islets, doing my best to spot mortality. E.g., a rare white pelican:


Anyway, I jogged down to Cemetery Rd, then out and back toward Black Point. Then I went straight into an interval on Cemetery's long, straight stretch. The goal was to do 6 x 1:50 hard (i.e., approx. 600m, at 4:40-ish pace), with 90 seconds rest (i.e. jog) in between.

I didn't take a break to stretch and run some strides before the intervals, like I would have for a workout at track. Perhaps a poor idea, because picking it up, hard, after 4 miles easy, was startling, and maybe hard on the legs. No idea how fast I was running to start, but I suspect I started too aggressively--such an interminable stretch of road eggs you on. After 2, I was feeling it. After 4, I had to take an extra minute, I'm afraid* (Cemetery Rd kind of has my number). The last 2 intervals I tried to just keep steady and strong, though they undoubtedly were slower. After about 3 miles of fartlek, I'd felt like I'd just worked out in the OMAC back in college (and let me tell you, the air is drier out here than it was on that indoor track). The usual top-heavy, light headed sensation--you know? But I went straight from my last interval into a cool down to make it a continuous run (minus that minute-long break ... ug).

I could be disappointed in this session, but nah. The idea was simply to throw down finally, get the wheels turning for more to come. Hopefully they will eventually be on the mark (I think I'll measure one out next week). But I'll admit, I made it more painful by glancing at my watch at least once mid-session, instead of waiting to hear the beep. That's a gesture that implies feebleness, that cries out half-ashamed, When will this ever end? Sometimes I'd resist that glance until about 30 seconds left, but once I was shocked to still see 1:10. By the the pagan gods of Mono, could it really be? Argggh! It's not often that time seems as long as the road before me.

Anywhooo, I cooled down 28 minutes more to Mono City. The legs were super tight, leaden, by the end, but they'll wring out just fine.

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4 mi, 28 min WU; 6 x 1:50 hard, w/ 90 sec easy jog between (~3 mi); 4 mi, 28 min CD; to Cemetery Rd, for the workout, and back (11 mi, 78 min total)

Friday, 9/10: -- (stranded on a desert island)

* (to use the sage)

Several erratic thoughts, as usual

Tired today, after a late long run last night and an early-ish morning in town. Took a nap in the afternoon before an evening jog. Some days the legs are simply content to rise and fall (all I do is lift), and this, to my mind, is the difference between a run and a jog. When you run, you push forward, purposefully, with each stride; when you jog you lift your legs and let them end up where they may, which tends to be forward. Runners usually try to finish each run at the same pace or faster than it began, and, as one maxim goes, to finish at the same pace, it has to feel like you're speeding up.

But, I pretty much went jogging today. Let gravity carry me down the old 395 to Thompson Road, to Cemetery Road... I noticed the ants busy around the cracks in the retired 395, and wondered what kind of kingdom they've built below those fissures, with old pavement for a roof. I thought then of the fissures atop Black Point, which I've explored, which were formed when Black Point, a volcano, erupted under the ice age lake; and of how the earth's crust, just like our roads, breaks down, and things descend, or push up from below. Up the hillside, meanwhile, lay the moraine south of Lundy Canyon, buggy-sized erratics--granite boulders with flat faces, left at the toe of the ghosts of glaciers--speckled over the hillside. Mini monoliths, they reflect the western light amid the sage, creatures beached far from the deep from which they came. Later I found myself looking at the lip of rocks and sand the glacier-esque Mono County graders/machines had created at the side of the road--a mini moraine full of fist-sized erratics, and who knows what small bones.

I'm not sure what it is about this place, or running--maybe the views--but I'm often sucked into a bottomless whirl of scale-play (just as I'm often sucked into word play here). Forgive me. At Cemetery Road and Wilson Creek, I ran out and back on the Black Point Rd 10 minutes to make it an easy 10 miles by the time I got back to the house in Mono City.

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10 mi, 70 min; Old 395-Cemetery Rd-Mono City Rd loop

Gunning it

Roads out here often gun straight to the horizon. Take 167, which beelines what must be 20 miles from Mono City to Nevada with hardly a swerve in a horizontal direction. A more average road can, without warning, go a mile no sweat without a curve. Perhaps these cuts through the sage feel drawn out because there's nothing to contain them on either side--no shopping center, city block, or buffer of green to give the overall space a cupped sensation. The basin is a broad platter. Or it could be that lines on this landscape feel narrower, longer, because so little else around conforms to the edge of the yardstick humans are habituated to wheel.

I thought about this tonight, kind of, because my first tempo run on Cemetery Road (great name for a workout arena, right?) included a long straight stretch. Of course, I was hardly thinking about anything at all during the effort, except smooth breathing, an easy arm carry, and an efficient stride (not even how I eventually aim to go faster for 26.2, not 4+ miles). I started at the Mono City-Wilson Creek-Cemetery Road junction and headed northeast, covering at least a mile of dirt before a bend. Since it was my very first workout (of what will be about a 4 month buildup to a marathon), I did it on feel. It felt like a clip, but who knows really--perhaps I'll measure the route later. Figuring I'd manage at least 5:45 pace on average, I planned to go 11:30 out and back. There were some gradual declines (on the way out), and some inclines (on the way back), and by the finish I was feeling it, but still steady. I returned exactly at 23:00. I felt strong, and I'm pretty sure I covered more than 4 miles. A solid first wake up call for the ol' legs.

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10 mi, 65 min (3 wu, 4+ tempo in 23:00, 3 cd); O+B on Cemetery Road from Wilson Creek past Dechambeau Ponds turnoff