Clockwise or counterclockwise...it's all good!

The Trail Runners Club, met today to run the Ray Miller trail in Pt Mugu, just south of Oxnard/Ventura and north of Malibu. The trail has been described as such…“if you only can only run two trails in Southern California one should be the Ray Miller Trail and the other should be the same trail in the opposite direction”… I have had the pleasure of running here twice before, last October for an XTerra Race and last November for the PCTR 50k so I was a little familiar with the trail but time plays on the memory and I had forgotten what a beautiful part of the world this is.

The weather was co-operative from a running perspective, not so from a photographic one, call me selfish but I’ll admit to preferring the former over the latter and the clouds were low and wrapped over the peaks like a shawl over your grandmother’s shoulders. The group congregated at the trailhead to make sure we picked up any late stragglers, I stretched everything that had decided to contract overnight, retied my shoes and with an unceremonious “try to regroup at the fireroad” we were off.

The trail, in much the same fashion as last week, went along for oh…about 3 yards and then headed up. It was a single track path the hugged the contours of the hillside gentle in places and more steeply in others pulling us higher and higher, within a mile we were 500’ up and within three just over a 1000’, this section was actually the final 8k out and back for the PCTR 50k and I remember having to walk more than I ran from last year, this year I was able to reverse the ratios and found myself not at the front but within sight of the faster runners, we were by this point pretty spread out but with a few minutes were all together in a sweaty, puffing, gaggle; I am not sure what the collective of runner is. We regrouped made sure that everyone had a rough understanding of where we were heading and set of on the final push up to the highest point, about 1130’ at the 3.25 mile mark, here’s a 20 second panoramic video clip shot just over the peak. From here we were running down through the rolling meadows with bone dry shoulder high grasses I ran with another club member, Jes, through this section and we chatted away several miles with the topic of conversation mostly about running and races past and future, Jes has her sights on running 50 miler and will be racing the 50k here this November, she has also, like me, been working on getting Billy signed up for his first ultra. We left the meadow and started on the section of trail that contours around Mugu Peak and would lead us back to the start/finish, I had run this section twice before as mentioned above but from the opposite direction and it looked familiar and different all at once. We picked up the singletrack again and as we rounded the peak were treated to a stunning view of the coast. I pulled ahead of Jes but she caught me up while I was faffing about taking photos, I grabbed the almost compulsory group (is two a group?) snap, you can just make out the sand dunes behind us and we were off again. The trail wound its away back around the peak losing altitude at every turn, eventually reaching a rocky section that is best taken at a gentler pace as there are some big(ish) drops if you misplace your footing. Once at the bottom the trail flattened out and within half a mile I was back at the parking lot with another 10.79 miles under my belt.

Another great run and while a bit shorter that most it is possibly more challenging than some you may find further south and well worth the drive out to.

As for the rest of the day; with the kidios doing kidio stuff and then we had a good old fashioned steak dinner!

For your pleasure the Forerunner data and photos.

Home, home on the range!

I got back into LA yesterday, a ten and half hours flight, luckily the plane was a little empty so I had an empty seat next to me.

Weather here is somewhat warmer than when I left, it maxed at 107F yesterday and was 84F at 9pm at night; it’s supposed to cool down as the week goes by, fingers crossed. It was great to see my wife and the boys, five days is not long but it’s long enough.

I uploaded all my Garmin data and updated my training logs etc. Last week was not a total write off, I plugged in 25 miles running but no cross training other than dragging two suitcases around with me. My diet was ok and I managed to not go crazy on home treats although my Mum did bake an awesome cake, she’s a wicked good cook and the occasional Jammie Dogder was consumed!

I did manage a 10 miler on Saturday and had no trouble from the ITB, I am hesitant to say it’s behind me and I want to maintain the good habits I have developed. I have to mix things up this week (rest days/training days) to work around the traveling but it should balance out at the end. I also retired a pair Asics Kayano 13s (368 miles) fondly known as "Pair 1" and will introduce a new pair of Kayano 14s that have been calling me from my wardrobe and will be known as "Kayano blue".

Looking at the MotionBased data just made me laugh, for some reason it’s not recognizing London and has, rather appropriately, called it “Cubitt Town”! And so I present to you SLB running in circles!

Have Passport will run!

After a cross country flight and a plane change in Dulles I touched down at Heathrow, a quick train ride into and across London and I am at my friend’s house. They live in Blackheath, a beautiful part of a London which enjoys being adjacent to both Blackheath’s heath, where they start the Flora London Marathon, and to Greenwich Park.

Greenwich Park is the home of the Prime Median Line and of course “Greenwich Mean Time; GMT” and is steeped in history, Henry the VIII (1491) was born here as was Elizabeth I (1533) and it is the home of the Royal Observatory designed by Sir Christopher Wren. The park is the oldest enclosed Royal Park dating back to the early 1600’s.

After a cup of tea; quintessentially English! I don my running kit and head out. Greenwich Park is in full bloom, the sun is out, it’s a little hazy and a little humid but it’s great running weather. The park is built on the side of a hill and slopes down towards the Thames there are great views from the patio of the Royal Observatory across the London skyline which is a real mix of old; The National Maritime Museum dating the 17th Century to Canary Wharf dating back to 1988.

An hour later and seven miles of meandering and photo taking (follow this link for the photos) I had managed a haphazard lap of both the Park and Blackheath, had been down to see the restoration of the Cutty Sark and along the Thames Path. There really is no city like London. Tomorrow I head off to my home county, known as the garden of England; Kent so we’ll see what’s out there?

Oh yes and as for yesterday's cross training, well dragging my cases half a mile uphill was what I will imaginatively qualified for that!

Feet to the fire!

Seven days into a 57 day program and I am off schedule, not by much but by some; a classic example of life getting in the way. The cycle started with a rest day, that I accomplished without any trouble, it was followed by a bike/run on alternative days for the rest of the week, I was pushed off schedule by my bike being the shop, this was overcome by shuffling days around; no problem.

Saturday I was due to put in 11 miles but ran out of time and only managed 7.5. This gave me a total run mileage of 21.09 against a target of 25 and a total bike mileage of 65.43 against a target of 50, a 2:1 bike/run ratio so I was happy with the ratio. I have been keeping up the CPE program and the exercises are becoming easier and my form is improving.

My century ride from Sunday was deferred by two weeks.

This week I am overseas, six days away, two of which are spent on a plane, all for a job interview! The photo is from the plane flying over the San Gabriel's range and looking out over the Mojave Desert from about 32,000'.

The upside is I get to see my family for the first time in ten months. Monday was scheduled as rest and I intended to switch that with Tuesday, that didn’t work so I am off by a day and I didn’t pack my bike, don’t laugh it did cross my mind, so I’ll have to come up with some alternative form of cross training. So my feet are warm but they're not quite as hot as I had hoped. The good news is that there I have no niggles from my ITB, although it was only kicking in at around 10 miles at a decent pace, I have a 10 scheduled for Saturday so we’ll see what happens then.

I am traveling around a bit during my trip; four nights, three different stops so I will be able to run in some pretty interesting places and hopefully get some good photos.

Summer Soggi-days!

Part of this years family vacation (or holiday) depending where you read this from was a week in North Wales, specifically in the Snowdon area. Now anyone familar with Wales knows that the weather is typically doing one of three things:

(1) Raining or
(2) Just about to rain or
(3) Just finished raining

This in itself is ok as you always know to pack a large amount of Gortex and other technical fibers however this year was something special; from the BBC Weather website:

"Wales Rainfall Series (series began in 1914). The provisional total for the month is 170.5 mm 205% of the 1961-1990 average. Second wettest June in series.

The weather review for the 25th to the 30th records the following; Persistent and heavy rain on the 25th continued with up to 75mm of rain falling in some parts. Although quieter conditions then affected the country over the next few days with generally lighter and more scattered showers, yet more heavy rain spread in from the west on the 30th."

As with comedy, the crucial element in booking your holiday is; timing! Unfortunatley ours was rather off!

On the way there we stopped at Simmons Yat in the Wye Valley, to break up the journey, the B&B was on the banks of the River Wye and you can really see the effect that the rain had had in washing the topsoil into the river and turning it brown. I managed a quick run along the river before finding the trail had been washed out: Simmons Yat river run

Still it wasn't all bad and we managed to get some decent hiking in, despite the rapidly growing five month bump. The first was a local - out the back door - walk which had us trying to locate a Bronze Age ruin; unfortuanley, to employ a quintessential British term "rain stopped play" as we found ourselves almost mid calf deep in a large wet area; ok it was a bog! and after 4 hours we back-tracked it just to be safe. Our second jaunt was is almost complusory when in the area; Snowdon, this time heading up the Watkin Path and safely made it nearly to the summit which was covered in cloud for most of our climb, prudence being the better part of valor we decided against the "big push", which is essentially along a slate-bed shale path, we managed to make it up and down in around five hours. Our third and final stroll took us up and above Harlech, of "Men of Harlech" and Michael Caine and Zulu fame, for some fantastic views of the Glaslyn Estuary, Port Madog and Port Merion.

Of course I had packed my running gear and slotted in a few runs here and there, with a simple view of getting in some hill training. Anyway in typical British fashion - it's all about the weather! Here are some of the compulsory snaps taken along the way; from both the runs and walks as well as the Garmin profiles for anyone more interested.