A return to winter

Monday, my calves extremely sore/tight from the race, I got into the car and began the drive back to Mono (I'll spend 3 more weeks here before heading east in time to race the ING NYC Marathon on Nov. 7). It wasn't until Oakdale at the edge of the foothills, however, that flashing signs warned me that Tioga and Sonora Passes were closed due to accumulated snow. Sheesh.

So I drove through the town of Sonora, heading north in a gamble toward Monitor Pass, which I hoped was still open. I stopped in the evening at Calaveras Big Tree State Park for a shake out, jogging out and back slowly along a fairly hilly road, then finishing on a beautiful ~1.5 mile loop through a spectacular grove of sequoias. Boy I'd forgotten how wonderfully big--big is just right, but still understatement-- those trees are. I found myself staring up, hardly watching where I was going. I wished I had more time to spend there, but around 6:30 drove on.

After a winding, dark, laneless road on the backside of the Bear Valley Ski Area, I made it to the top of Monitor Pass without a hitch--jet black, but no snow--and slalomed down the eastside all the way to the Travertine Hotsprings in Bridgeport. Along with the trees, the soak made the longer drive almost worth it. When I arrived at Mono City, I filled the bathtub with cold water and kneeled in it to ice off the lower legs, which are pretty brutalized from the half-marathon--my first real effort in flats, instead of trainers.

Since then, I've tried to encourage my calves to come around as quickly as possible with some double runs. Meanwhile, as you might have guessed, winter has arrived, or at least made an appearance, in the Basin: the Sierra are entirely white above 8,000 feet; the crowns of the Mono Craters are wreathed in snow; and the White Mountains, in the Nevada distance, are once again themselves. Tuesday and Wednesday, when the peaks out my window were capped in low-slung, brooding storm clouds above the colorful aspen, I bundled up in running tights, long sleeves, gloves and fleece hat, reminding me of many miles earlier this year on the Western Slope of Colorado. But today the clouds have mostly cleared--Tioga Pass has reopened--and it was warm enough for short-shorts! Whoo hoo! Not quite a second summer, but I won't complain.

Yesterday, I ran a solid, steady 15 miler tufa-to-tufa on the Southwestern edge of the lake, but today I was a little tired--and the calves were still complaining--so I held off on a workout, which I plan to do tomorrow instead.

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10 mi, 71 min; Decambeau loop; + strides

Wednesday, 10/6: AM: 15 mi, 105 min; Tufa-to-tufa, on Test Station and Picnic Ground Roads

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

Tuesday, 10/5: AM: 10 mi, 70 min; Hwy 167-Cemetery Rd-Mono City

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

Monday, 10/4: 10 mi, 77 min; Calaveras Big Tree State Park, CA

Full circle

Made it, mentally refreshed, but awfully sore. As the poet A.R. Ammons so eloquently wrote, "firm ground is not available," as true here, at Mono Lake, as at Corsons Inlet. I'm always amazed, after a good long hike, how apparently different the muscles are one uses for walking versus running. Throw in a lot of additional stabilizing muscles for shifting, boggy terrain, as well as backpack, and you've got the makings for several stiff mornings. A gloss of the trip, with photos, is on its way, in some form.

Yesterday, I ran twice, just to push the blood around. Today, I ventured into town in the late afternoon for a tempo run that went relatively well, considering my hike. I ran 5 loops of about 1.1 mi, starting once more at Mono Cone: 5:33, 5:44, 5:46, 5:44, 5:46 = 28:34. The first was little too fast--the initial stretch, not surprisingly, is downhill--so I backed off a bit. By the end, I was feeling taxed, but was glad to hold it together.

I would have delayed another day, perhaps, but I'm gearing up for a half in San Jose a week from today, and wanted to get this safely under my belt. Won't help me next Sunday--the consensus, of course, is that fitness gains from any particular workout take a couple weeks to materialize. But it won't hurt, in terms of confidence, considering my last tempo (which I neglected to write about, but may still) didn't go as well. I'd call this back on track.

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3 mi, 21 min WU; ~5.5 mi, 28:34 min tempo; 4.5 mi, 31 min CD (13 mi total); Lee Vining

Saturday,9/25: AM: 9 mi, 63 min; lesser Dechambeau loop

PM: 4 mi, 28 min; Mono City sagebrush ramble

Week total: 58 mi/4 days + 45 mi backpack, Circum-Mono

Islets ahoy!

I returned to a windy Eastern Sierra yesterday afternoon, and squeezed in an early, easy morning half-marathon, heading out around 7:15 am in order to catch a boat to the islands at 9:30 (to help with the yearly California gull chick mortality count--"mort," for short). Brisk, fall run, low pallid light streaming through my salt-smudged sunglasses. The legs felt recovered from Monday's hour-long "marathon pace" effort, but they'll have a day off tomorrow, as I'll be marooned in the middle of Mono for two nights. According to the schedule I'm (loosely) following, this week's to be a recovery week, anyway, so I'll just go with the flow.

And off we go:


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13 mi, 91 min; Dechambeau loop plus O+B on Cemetery Rd toward County Park, and an add-on in Mono City

Wednesday, 9/8: 9 mi, 63 min; early morning run around PV, including Deer Path Trail

Tuesday, 9/7: AM: 10 mi, 70 min; to Woodside and back, a classic PV run

PM: 5 mi, 35 min; Hidden Valley Rd and Georgia Ln

Fire above the hills

An atypically dramatic day in the basin. Around 4:30, I walked out onto our deck to see smoke spiraling up into the sky from across the lake. The fire quickly grew to 500 acres. Sarah and I drove around for a few hours in search of the best vantage point from which to photograph the blaze, whose smoke lifted into a shifting funnel braiding north with the wind. Helicopters and tankers dropped water from Grant Lake and vermilion fire retardant.


In the evening, I drove up the rough end of Black Point for yet another thrilling view. It was as if the Mono Craters, after 650 years (when Panum Crater let forth), had come alive again. Smoke unraveled to the east, and up. I imagined an octopus, with waving tentacles, holding against a rock in a pool (the basin) as the tide went out.


I descended just about at dark, and having been distracted from my run by the blaze all afternoon, set out at about 8:45 pm. I parked by Wilson Creek on Cemetery Road, and ran the ~ 6 mi loop around Dechambeau Ranch. As I started out in the dim light, poorwills hopped off the road in front of me, some lighting into the sky after moths. They would flutter up, short-tailed, then the circle around and land on the road, becoming rock again (as members of the goatsucker family seem to), in an enthralling game of touch and go.

Then, the moon rose. I had fire on the mind, so when it came up--a brilliant, smokey orange over the ruffled edge of the clouds on the east side of the basin--I thought the White Mountains were burning, too. My God, I thought, what a conflagration--those mountains are doomed! It took me a moment to catch on. When it came clean of the clouds, the moon was just a few days passed full, so for the rest of the loop I ran with my shadow (a strange feeling to have it fall to the West, after noon). The crenelated sage on the side of the road let through slants of light across the sand before me, but I felt myself leaning forward more than usual, hoping to strike firm ground. Running in the dark on an uncertain surface can be like feeling out the end of a stairway at night. (My hips concurred, come morning.)

I added on to the loop by going out and back to the Black Point parking lot from my usual left turn. Along that stretch, the moon's reflection lit the lake where it's broken by a reef of tiny islands between the mainland and Gaines Island. The long buttress roots, then stump, of Negit, were sharply defined as well by a luminous halation that moved with me.

Every once and awhile, a rodent scurried in the sand or scrub nearby. But the only time I was fearful was passing two trailers on the bluff between Black Point and the Dechambeau Ponds. No doors flew open. But humans are unpredictable.

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8 mi, 56 min; Dechambeau loop from Cemetery Road and Wilson creek, plus O+B add-ons to the Black Point parking lot and toward County Park

The pineapple

Put off the run until evening, because, for the first time this summer, the basin threatened to storm all day. Gray, curling clouds came with the light, and lightning came from them before long.

But at last, before dusk, a window cracked, the lightening acquiesced, and I strided over firm pattered sand to Dechambeau Ponds from Mono City, straight toward the arc of a rainbow not quite bridged at its height, for the clouds truncated its color. First the bow was more (most!) vibrant to the right of Black Point (to the west), then the column dissipated and what was left, to my left (to the east), glowed stronger, as if it had absorbed all that energy. It appeared as if the rainbow was shifting, softening, but it was me, maneuvering it. Erelong, I hope to research the science of rainbows (beyond the basic middle school experiments), so I can really chase them.

I will say, though, that there's something about an arch ahead--a tunnel, an entrance to forest--that quickens the step. I can't explain it, except to theorize that a frame does for a runner what it does for a painting: contains, focuses, draws forward. This, I reason, is why races often end below an arch of balloons or a metal scaffolding (the clock atop helps, too). When I was in college, my team used to race in practice toward "the pineapple" (actually a pine cone, I think; we debated this point often) hanging from a patinated arch on Federal Hill in Providence whenever we took that route. I don't think it was the fruit, but its stem, that was the catalyst. (Thoughts guys?)

Anyhow, it was a tad more arduous on the return tonight. Could be because the rainbow had disappeared. Could be because it was uphill. Added-on a smidge at the end.

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12 mi, 84 min; around Dechambeau Ponds from Mono City (a good keyhole loop)