Nina, Rob, and I set off to Rancho San Antonio to do the PG&E Trail: about 8.5 miles with a 1000+ foot rise overall. Since it was Daylight Standard Time, it was nice and light out at 7 when we got there.

We headed up. Pretty steep. On the second major hill I said, “Are you guys even breathing hard?” They weren’t. We agreed we would all meet up at Vista Point, the halfway point in the trail, after which we’d start heading down the hill.

Puff. Puff. Puff.

I managed to keep running for a while…but not the whole way. Eventually I stopped and started hiking up. At one point I saw Nina and Rob off in the distance — at one point I was only 20, 30 meters behind them. But then they started running up the hill again and I just puffed along.

We met up at Vista Point, and Nina and Rob seemed to be surprised by my appearance. My appearance so close behind them, not my appearance-close-to-death. We started down the hill and Rob began explaining to Nina that I am fervently, hopelessly competitive.

Which was roughly when I felt a sharp sting on my scalp. That grew into a sharp, terrible pain. I doubled over and yelled, “Is there something in my hair?”

Indeed, there was. A yellow jacket had just stung me on the back of my head. I don’t know what happened to the yellow jacket. Nina pulled out the stinger. (She said, “This is going to hurt.” I said, “Go ahead. Can’t hurt any worse.” And it didn’t.)

We had to walk all the way back to the car. Jostling my head hurt too much.

Can I just say that getting stung on the scalp is one of the more surprising things that’s ever happened to me?

I was bummed that we had to walk half the way, but the downhill portion of the PG&E is gorgeous: looks out over Santa Clara Valley to the Bay. Really is a pretty area we live in. And the weather was absolutely perfect: about 70 at the highest (which, if you are climbing 1000+ feet, is just what you want).

At Rob’s house Nina got out a sting kit and Rob gave me an Advil and some coffee, so I was good to go. The sting still hurts, but apparently I’m not allergic to yellowjacket bites (this would be my second one in the past four months). I am worried about taking a shower and washing my hair though. Oooch.

For some reason, I can never sleep the night before a longish run. I don’t fall asleep for the longest time, and when I do have very bizarre dreams that wake me up a couple of times during the night. Dreams not even usually about running.

And I always wake up 15 minutes before the alarm goes off.

Which is a bummer when I’ve forgotten to reset the clock and get up at the old 5:45.

If I go back to bed, I’ll just sleep right through my run, so I guess I’ll surf for a while!

Digby, as always, is on the mark:

Libby Indicted

This is the first time in 130 years that a sitting White House official has been indicted. The last time was in the Grant administration.

Honesty. Integrity. Honor. Dignity.

Let’s put it this way: after one reading through Hot Chocolate by Michael Turbeck, I wanted to have sex with this book. Not with the author. With the book.

The Amazon page says there are “more than 60″ recipes in this book, which probably means there are 61 or something. It’s a thin book, with a wide range of chocolates for every taste: the thick chocolate from Cafe Angelina in Paris, spicy Aztec-inspired chocolates, a hot white chocolate from Sweden, Frrrozen Hot Chocolate from Serendipity, alcoholic chocolates for adults, side dishes of tuiles and little cookies, coconut marshmallows…

Seriously, depending on how this winter goes my entire running program could be for naught, because I seriously want to try half of the recipes in this book tonight. I’ll leave the lavender-and-pistachio hot chocolate (yup) for tomorrow.

A week or two ago Rob IM’d me with “Guess how fast I ran the Wildcat Trail today? 51 minutes.”

51.

Together we’d been doing it in 61. 51 was quite an improvement over that.

“You didn’t stop, did you?”

“Didn’t really feel like it, no.”

Wow.

Then last week, when we ran it together, I noticed that by staying with me the entire way up, he wasn’t working. He might have been strolling in the park for all the effort he was putting out. “Lose fifty pounds, and you can do this too,” he joked.

Well…damn.

So when I ran the trail with Nina (Rob was off vacating), I did run the entire way up. Of course, Nina took off ahead of me and had to wait for me at the top, but as long as she was willing to do that, we were cool.

The three of us were running together again today, and pretty much we had the same plan: You run to the top and wait for me there.

Rob took off. Nina took off. Diane plodded the whole way up. Rob and Nina had completely cooled down by the time I got up there. We managed to run in sync the whole back to the starting line. Okay, I sometimes fell a little behind but then either I pushed to catch up or they slowed down or perhaps both.

Time at the end? 57 minutes.

Not quite as earth-shattering as 51 (or, for the woman who blew past us on the trail, 41 or so), but still: an improvement. I’m getting stronger. Yay, team.