Trail dues!

This weekend I had planned to go back and cycle the Ojai Century ride, I had technical failure last year and only managed to complete 80 odd miles. But instead I headed out to the San Gabriel Mountains to get my trail maintenance ticket punched for the AC100, a days work is required as part of the entry and it was a good opportunity to see some of the trail up close and personal. An early start and I was at the meeting point by 7:00am surrounded by other runners and several Parks department folks who are associated with the race, all holding travel mugs of coffee and chatting away. It’s always easy to insert yourself into a conversation and it gave me the opportunity to actually talk to some Facebook friends with whom I had only said hi to on race day.

We sorted out some car-pooling and I took two others in my Expedition; hi-lift was recommended for the drive up. After a short journey we hit the trailhead and the large metal gate baring our way, after some finesse with a crowbar it was open and we were driving up the trail. The cloud was low and thick as we drove through and I wondered what lay in store at the work area. We drove for about 30 minutes eventually topping out above the cloud and were presented with some amazing views of the surrounding peaks.

After parking the cars we shook out into five workgroups of 6 people and were equipped with McCleods, Polaskis and snips and given our directions. The group included a fellow Brit (yeah we’re everywhere) as well as several other familiar faces that I know from the “scene” but had never had the opportunity to talk to. We walked down and the conversation obviously touched on the usual topics; races run, race bucket lists and the like. We had a 2.5 mile walk along the trail to our section which was only .75 of a mile long but needed some serious work on overhanging branches as well as widening and clearing along most of the way, it’s amazing how long it can take to clean a section 30’ long and the 6 of us worked hard through to a 15 minute lunch and then through to about 2:00pm. We all had a vested interest in doing a good job as this section was around the Mile 85 mark which we would be climbing between 26-28 hours into the race.

We had been told to return between 3-3:30pm and we had a mostly uphill walk. The cloud had lifted off of Mt Wilson (5710’) and I was told that it’s peak was around Mile 75 after which runners dropped down its side and back up Idlehour Trail, (the one we were working on) to an Aid Station at Mile 90.

I reached the top and shared some cookies and coke (detox over!), after a dusty drive down I dropped off my car-poolers and headed home.

All in all a good days work which will benefit not only me and a some good exposure to the race terrain, albeit only 3% of the course. It's a reminder that the San Gabriel’s are big and beautiful and, I am sure, unforgiving!

Here are some photos from the day.

Nutritional Science 101...well more like 99!

A little bit of Friday fun for you with a serious edge.

Ok with all the healthy eating going on in our house we have taken to buying our fruits and veggies in bulk; TGF Costco, Trader Joes and the local farm (yes we have moved so far out of LA that there are farms around here!) is all I can say!

While in Bed Bath and Beyond the other day this caught my eye; Debbie Meyer’s Green Bags, always willing to try something new and have a bit of fun I am pleased to present you the:

How Yellow is Your Banana Experiment.

Introduction; Bulk purchase of bananas have precluded them from being consumed before they become too ripe, the objective is to extend their fruit bowl life as long as possible (in fact they live on a banana hook, they don’t play nice with other fruit)!

Research; I read the back of the box and was totally suckered in by the advertising.

Method; One banana volunteered to be the test subject and was detached from a bunch. The volunteer banana was marked with a thick point sharpie to distinguish it from the rest. The remaining bunch was placed in a Green Bag, the remaining household scientists were instructed to “Do not touch the bananas”.

Equipment; well just in case you missed it, a bunch of bananas, a sharpie pen and a Green Bag.

Results; the results are visually documented below:

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

Day 4

Day 5

Day 6

Day 7

Conclusion; Visually the ‘bagged’ bananas freshness was extended (they look purty longer!), however with the exception of the obvious softness from bruising the actual consistency of the two bananas was very similar, the bagged bunch were not as firm as their appearance suggested. I will be trying them with other produce but as far as bananas are concerned, the Green Bags results were a FAIL!

Bloomin’ lovely!

Sunday I headed out to run a section of the Backbone Trail. I’ve run bits of it before; more by luck than judgment and I wanted to recce’ out as much of it as I can for when I run the whole thing in August. The trail crosses several main roads that run east to west as it runs itself north to south along the spine of the Santa Monica Mountains, what this means is that there are places to park and you can run sections. The plan was to park my car at Kanan Dune and run south, I was hoping for around 13 miles in total; which puts me a couple of miles short for next weeks start of training long run; 15 miles. The cloud was low and the weather was cool – perfect.

After a short sharp up the trail leveled out and then dropped down and then climbed up and then down and then up; this became a regular feature of the trail as there was very little “contouring” and mostly the trail assaulted the climbs in a full frontal manner, it was nothing too serious and gave me ample time to practice my walking!

I also managed a first for me, which is not bad considering all the miles I’ve covered; a faceplant! No harm done, more shock than pain and fortunately I landed on the side of the trail in the shrubbery! Of course what I tripped over was...absolutely nothing!

One nice feature was the continuous change in running surface; hard packed mud, to sand to trail dirt to bare faced rock in parts not only did the surface change but the environment did; literally you would round a bend and it was like being in a completely different climate; from thick woods, to meadows, to rocky desert it really was a case of if you don’t like something run a quarter mile and it’ll change. One noticeable feature was the riot of color from all the spring plants and flowers that are in bloom, yellows, oranges, purples and whites and of course accompanying the flowers was multitude of butterflies, at times it was like running through a butterfly garden.

Two and half hours of running and thirty minutes of taking photos and I was done and heading home.

For anyone local this makes and excellent and rewarding run or hike there's plenty of sign/mileage posts to tell you you're on the right trail, and if you have a buddy with a car you could easily set up a point to point rather than an out and back run. Here’s the MotionBased data and the photos.