Tiny, tepid tempo

Today I drove down, again, to my new running territory as of late around mile 10 on Hwy 167. The goal was to sneak in a tempo, by hook or by crook, since I've been without a real workout for too long now. Time to freshen up the legs. Sunny skies for a change:


My three mile warm up out and back toward Nevada was slightly concerning since, like much of this week, my knee started to bother me before long. But I paused and stretched several times, and afterward, when I put on my flats and did a few strides, I felt good enough to go. Unfortunately, I started out, I'm afraid, at too fast a clip. The first mile was in 5:02, which for me, at this elevation, I think is a bit quick. Made it to the 12 mile marker in a second mile of 5:15. There I turned around, and running into a breeze slowed me down further. I got back to mile 10 in miles of 5:28 and 5:31, for a total of 21:18, and decided to call it a day, considering everything. Not the tune up I was hoping for by any means, but at least I was breathing hard and it wasn't my knee that slowed me down. (I'm tempted to try a longer tempo at a steady, slower-to-start pace early next week to further encourage my legs ... but we'll see).

Tonight, my ITB is feeling the effort, but not much more so than usual. I chilled in Mill Creek for fifteen minutes.

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3 mi, 21 min WU; 4 mi tempo in 21:18 (5:02, 5:15, 5:28, 5:31); 3 mi, 21 min CD; Hwy 167 from mile 10

Thursday, 10/21: 7 mi, 50 min; Hwy 167 close to home

One last snake

Chilly today--raining at times, and no warmer than 50 on Aqueduct Rd--but I ran into my favorite, and likely last, "narrow fellow" of the year. A rubber boa, stretched across the road, moving slowly, blending in. I'd never seen one of these before but I knew instantly what it was.


When I reached down to pick it up, it wrapped into a ball around my fingers, sticking its orange burnished tail out, as if to mimic its head. I read later that this maneuver isn't likely to foil an intent predator--fat chance an eagle, fox, or raccoon would be deterred from gobbling up this little guy. But it does allow the boa to fend off a mother mouse while it eats her entire, pinkie litter. (As result, rubber boa tails are extra hard, and often quite scarred.) I also learned that these snakes are more tolerant of cold weather than almost any other.



An aerial view, after I set it down:


To my college teammates, who, in Oregon, years ago, claimed I couldn't catch a snake--ha!

I'll admit, I finished my run, then drove back to the snake with my camera. The jog went okay, but my leg did bother me 10 minutes in. The same thing happened Monday on Hwy 167, when I tried to run down a slight hill. Both times I stopped and stretched, and was able to go on with my run. I'm hoping its healing, even as symptoms persist. Yesterday, however, I was able to run without incident: 14 on 167 from mile 10 at about 6:30 pace. Go figure.

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10 mi, 70 min; Aqueduct Rd on Williams Butte

Tuesday, 10/19: 14 mi, 130 min; Hwy 167 from mile 10

Monday, 10/18: 10 mi, 70 min; Hwy 167, close to home (back and forth)

Back and forth

Three days without discomfort = reason to be optimistic. I credit ibuprofen, a second, more rigorous and productive massage in Mammoth (I took it as a really good sign that my therapist was working on Meb later in the day--"your competitor," she said--we laughed), and ice bathing in the local creeks. Sitting in the waters (I've tried Mill Creek now, too), I start to imagine myself a boulder or root wad. Creek bubbles bounce around my legs, and catch in my quivering hairs. Yellow cottonwood leaves wrap around and stick to my thighs. If only I could stay in longer than 15 minutes (without fear of hypothermia), I could be all gold in a few weeks.

I have to admit I was pretty surprised/overjoyed Friday when I was able to jog 60 minutes without any symptoms. I started with a mile or so of walking in Mono City, then, to attempt a run, I drove a short ways to the relatively flat stretch of Hwy 167 between 395 and Wilson Creek. Most unfortunately, this stretch is less than a mile long, so I felt a bit like a rotisserie chicken turning under the cold fall sun, as I jogged back and forth. I was also holding my breath, as it were: trying to stay focused on my form, keep from speeding up, and stay alert for any sign of ITB unrest. The ice age tufa that stand in a row across the road, like hulking linebackers, proved worthy distraction--they have for months now. They're such interesting shapes--a natural Japanese rock garden. (Zen football players?) I called it a day after 60 minutes, about 4.5 revolutions, and headed down to Mammoth for a session of "bodywork."

Yesterday, I did the same, but 5.5 revolutions worth. Today, for adventure, I drove to mile ten on Hwy 167, where there's a relatively flat 5-mile stretch. It rained off and on much of the day, so by heading east I also may have avoided a few more droplets. After parking, walking, and starting up, I ran at just under 7 min pace to the "MONO 167 12.5" mile sign, u-turned to the 8.5 mark, etc, etc. Though I haven't been running fast, perhaps psychologically this straight and narrow pavement running has helped prepare me for the long blocks of NYC. And it was stormily gorgeous out there, however chilly. The Sierra was draped with raincloud, but the sun seared through, briefly, in scattered rays and, as I drove away, rainbows.


I think I'll always remember Hwy 167 as my injury runway. When I had a pain near my achilles in late June-early July, I ran out and back on it ad nauseam. Then, I was after the pavement--to avoid sand. I suppose I still am, but I'm more concerned with flat terrain--no rocks, and little grade--and there's not much around the Basin beyond 167, other than 395. Tomorrow, however, I might try a hill or two, and maybe stray off asphalt. I hope to try a workout of some sort mid-week.

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10 mi, 70 min; Hwy 167 from the 10 mile marker

Week Total: 37 mi/4 days

Saturday, 10/16: 10 mi, 75 min; Hwy 167, close to home

Friday, 10/15: 8 mi, 60 min; Hwy 167, close to home

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)

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

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)

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

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

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

In no rush at Rush Creek

Considering the jolt I put my legs through yesterday, they were in decent shape today. Went for a leisurely, ten mile shakeout on Test Station Road around 6pm, then walked about a mile down to the Rush Creek Delta. I've never been disappointed there. Downy, golf ball-size spotted sandpiper chicks were peeping in the salt grass, bobbing their featherless rumps just like the adults. I oh-so-cruelly cornered one, and it calmly hid under a small log where I took its photo.


I also saw a gadwall with sixteen ducklings on a reedy back pond and, later, accidentally surprised the mother. She started doing a broken-wing song and dance routine, awkwardly sculling through the water in a plashy fit to distract me, the menace, from her brood.

Finished my stroll just at dusk--to the elation of the birds, I'm sure. But I then managed to spook three poor poorwills off the road on the way back to town. Almost a complete moon over the Basin. Driving home after ice cream (dinner) at the Mono Market, the mountains and craters were faint-gray aglow. Tomorrow, I'm planning on several late, easy miles beneath the full effect.


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10 mi, 70 min; Test Station Road (a kind of modified Tufa-to-Tufa)

Slight detour

No running today, because Sarah and I climbed to the overlook of Upper Yosemite Falls. Only 3.4 miles to the top, but over 3,000 feet. Good strength work--spectacular views!

Fine desert sand

Squeezed in 12 miles before the World Cup final along the Test Station Road. Running around midday, when the light is sandy (and often as rough as pumice), tends to be unremarkable, mind-numbing. But Rush Creek was pushing 500 CFS, or so, under the road on its way to the delta--a lot of water, a roaring, if not raucous outpouring through the culvert. After I finished, I desperately wanted to drive back and jump in to the wave train (which I hear people have surfed of late). But there was no time; I regret to say (truly) that futbol won out, today.


Adding on the final two miles down Picnic Ground Road, I passed a poorwill nestled into the sand that some tire didn't avoid. How they sit on the road and glare at oncoming death with a bright, reflective eye. Running, I encounter as many passed animals as live, and examining them I've learned something, briefly, about anatomy, or at least its fragility. This poorwill, a night bird, an insect feaster, reminded me of the Western screech owl that I carried like a football tucked in my arms back to my house in high school, only to keep it frozen for one and a half years (beside a DO NOT THROW AWAY index card that my sister finally had the good sense to ignore).


I'd like to think I'm growing out of my interest in roadkill, which is void of what matters. At the very least, now, when I stop to examine roadkill, I make sure to carry it off to the shoulder of the road. But I did pluck a few primaries to hold up to the light: an alteration of brown and black like the shadows in the imprint of a tire on fine desert sand.


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12 mi, 84 min; Test Station/Picnic Ground Road (aka, Tufa-to-Tufa)

Week Total: 70 mi