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

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

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

Waterside

Though I often feel like I'm running along the ocean here in the Mono Basin, I've wanted to try out Ten Mile Beach--an actual beach--on the north shore of the lake, for awhile now. Tonight I finally decided to test its waters, with a second run (no, I didn't swim--you'd be mired in mud, I think, just few steps in). I hiked out with my binoculars, because it's a not-to-be-believed-until-you've-seen-it world of birds out there, a never-never land of the sprightly and winged: Grebes on the lake to the horizon's edge. Phalaropes flickering in handful-flocks over the water. Ruddy ducks beating loudly across the lake, in display I guess. Ungainly avocets, stilted on the shoreline. And, of course, gulls lumbering about on all mediums.



After sitting for awhile, watching the sun burning into the mountains,I set aside my binoculars, swapped shorts, and lumbered myself, to the east along the beach. The sand was fairly firm, for the most part, at the top of the ridge waves had made maybe twenty feet from the shoreline. But I did have to slog through a few sections--how at the mercy of the ground we are! In the distance, I thought I saw lagoon cutting into the perfect crescent of the beach, and chased it for awhile, until it disappeared.

Along the way, I also scarred up a wee-phalarope--they weigh about 5 ounces, I think--with a broken wing. Must have collided with another bird. It skittered wildly down from the ridge into the water, where it bobbed alone, and I was sad to know it would never leave the lake, or this season.

If only the sand were a little firmer, I'd venture back out to Ten Mile for a regular easy run. But I think I'll leave it for the rare, gorgeous double.

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AM: 9 mi, 63 min; Test Station Rd, on the south side of the lake

PM: 4 mi, 30 min; Ten Mile Beach

Wednesday, 9/15: 15 mi, 105 min; Hwy 167-Cemetery Rd-Dechambeau Ranch-Black Point Rd-et cetera

Carrying a torch

It's encouraging to have a practical purpose to inspire a run. Like you need to drop a letter in the post office box a few miles away, for instance. Or ... well, that's pretty much all I can think of.

But this morning I ran back to the house with another purpose. With a message. Last night, my housemate, a videographer, mentioned that he'd always wanted a classic shot of a rattlesnake striking the camera (affixed to a broomstick, of course). Conway Ranch Rd is the place, I said. Then, around 10 am, about three miles in, there a snake was, reclining lazily in the sun on the soft sand at the edge of the road. Heck, I thought, I'll just run back to the house to rattle off an alarm.

So, I drew a line with my shoe across the road's sand--opposite the rattler--to mark the spot. Then I giddy-upped the 3.5 miles yonder to Mono City, finishing my run earlier than I'd planned (only 49 minutes). But I felt like a scout relaying an crucial message (kind of like the fabled Pheidippides, who ran from the Battle of Marathon back to Athens to deliver an announcement of victory ... and then keeled over dead with exhaustion). There was umph to my step. Never mind that the news was slightly ludicrous, deranged. It felt good, too, to run in a new direction on 395, back toward Mono City.

J, I said, rattler! Lickity split, he duct-taped a pink, plastic coat hanger to the end of a spare crutch--the perfect implement for wrangling. We piled into his truck and drove over, noting that there were probably a thousand snakes nearby, and here we were chasing just one.

Of course, it was gone. It'd been about a half hour since I'd seen it. The snake had seen enough sun, I guess, and the chase was half-baked idea, in the first place. But at least I made the effort.

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AM: 7 mi, 49 min; up 395 to the back side of Conway Ranch (rattler!), and back

PM: 5 mi, 35 min; Lee Vining Creek Trail and around town

Wednesday, 9/1: 15 mi, 105 minutes; down old 395 to Cemetery Road, around Dechambeau Ranch, then through it, and on til Mono City

Double take

A day well spent, in two parts, up Lundy Canyon. This morning, huffed almost to the resort at the backside of Lundy Lake (or the front side, I guess ... depending on whether you have a peak or basin perspective). Cruised downhill, with heavy thighs, faster than Mill Creek.

Then, in the late afternoon, S and I drove past where I had turned around to take a short hike into the Hoover Wilderness. The wildflowers had mostly passed, but there were still lots of larkspur, monkshood, columbine, paintbrush (scrophulareaceae galore), and one lonely tiger lily to be seen, the final flame of August:


The canyon must have been unbelievable with color earlier in the season. In any case, it's a good thing beavers don't gnaw down wildflowers. The aspen (and, as result, the creeks), in Lundy Canyon aren't so lucky:


Also went for an easy double round the city at dusk.

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AM: 10 mi, 70 min; Out Lundy Canyon Rd (or rather, up), nearly to the end of the lake, and back

PM: 5 mi, 37 min; Mono City sage-167 ramble; plus a short hike up Lundy Canyon

Monday, 8/30: 9 mi, 63 min; a ramble that included Conway Ranch (past the fish ponds and cross-country for a bit near Wilson Creek), the Goat Ranch Cutoff development, a utility road, and Hwy 167

Instead

Driving home from Lee Vining after a dusk run at South Tufa, the rising moon--two days past full--seemed a hilt, and its reflection, a sword that came straight through the window into my chest, or onto my shoulder, I don't know which. I should go for yet another run, I thought, to the chant of the trilling crickets! I should stride out this minute, with the soft-spoken poorwills that flutter after the glowing moths as they ascend! I should let my eyes widen, and widen, and feel my way humbly, confidently across the pale washboard sand!

But here I am, instead.

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AM: 10 mi, 70 min; Hwy 167-Cemetery Rd-Mono City Jeep Trail

PM: 5 mi, 35 min; O+B on Test Station Rd from South Tufa

A dip in the Poole

I drove forth from Mono City this morning intending to run Aqueduct Road, the Williams Butte traverse. But rounding the lake, I could feel the heat at 10am (oh, if only I was a real morning runner...)through the dusty, bug-spattered windshield, and the air conditioning wasn't cutting it, yet. So I drove up to Poole Power Plant Road instead, which is an oasis of sorts, for me. A break from the sage, a homecoming to shade--a plunge into the mountains! Quaking aspen are always reassuring, and not being able to see around a bend is a novel, welcome distraction, when you're not used to it. Plus there's coming upon pint-sized tumbling waterfalls--seldom bad. I parked at Moraine Campground, ran the approx. 3.5 rolling, upward miles to the humming power plant (it's kind of exciting to reach it), and doubled back several miles in the shady section to make it more-or-less 10 (i.e. precisely 70 minutes).

Much later, at 7:30 pm, I doubled back once more for 5 on Test Station Road from South Tufa. As I strode, the lake fell into that vibrant, ice blue rife with wind-borne stripes (like cracks in a glacier) that arrives, from certain angles, just after the mountains have become dark, abyssal shapes. Nice evening for plodding, as ever.

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AM: 10 mi, 70 min; Poole Power Plant Rd

PM: 5 mi, 35 min; Test Station Rd from South Tufa

At last, not one, but two

At the modest hour of 9:30 this morning, I drove up 120 to Poole Power Plant Road, parked at Aspen Campground, and jogged through Lee Vining Canyon to the dead end at the Southern Edison generation station. Oh shade, I always forget how I had miss thee amid the base, groveling sage! (That's not fair, I know.) I felt downright stealthy slipping along in the mottled lee of aspen and a jolt of delight climbing the cool, prostrate, drawnout shadow of a humongous ponderosa up the pavement. It's a stellar stretch that follows Lee Vining Creek--full of Pooles, indeed. (The anglers knew.) Hard to believe I've never fished around up there, really, til now.

It was only two miles to the power plant and back, so I kept going the other direction past Aspen Campground on PPP Road before turning around to make it nine miles ultimately.

And then ... ten hours later, I went for my first "double" since college. Now, that's saying something. That's ambition, for me. I toured/tooled around the sage roads and gravel pits beside Mono City, which is first rate second run/add-on ground. Suitable dirt biking territory makes for an engaging run--it's only the pace that's different. Tonight, I encouraged the sand to encourage an easy pace, and the nighthawks meep-ing and sweeping low in the faint light made good company, if not decipherable conversation.

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9 mi, 63 min, AM: Poole Power Plant Road, in Lee Vining Canyon

4 mi, 28 min, PM: the sagebrush ramble beside Mono City

Also: A blog post, In Defense of a Rock, for HCN.