Today’s trail run was at Fort Cronkhite, in the Marin headlands, just over the Golden Gate Bridge. Two words: utterly gorgeous. We started across the street from a popular surfing spot — the water temperature approached 0 Kelvin, but there were a lot of surfers out there — and we ran up the hill (puff, puff) past lots and lots of WWII (or WWI? or earlier?) concrete gun emplacements. There’s a lotta concrete in the hillside up there, complete with bunkers with iron doors.
Hey, no one ever invaded the Bay, did they? (If I remember correctly, the Presidio was originally built to defend against the Russians…the Tsarist Russians. So it wouldn’t surprise me if those bunkers were WWI or even earlier.)
The start of the run was brutal: pretty much the entire 1100 foot rise was the first half of the run. Everyone was walking after a while, except maybe the extremely fit. I asked Rob if he was getting a workout, and he said, “I don’t do these runs for the workout. I do the workouts so I can do these runs.” (Because they’re so beautiful.)
I’m pretty sure I didn’t beat the 9-year-old this time, but this is definitely a run we’d do again. The surroundings are completely stunning — more than once we stopped not (just) for me to catch my breath, but just to look out at the Bay and the Pacific and the headlands — and, except for not being able to hack the initial run to the top, I didn’t find the trail excruciating. I felt pretty good at the end, actually.
I don’t know what the trail runs will be like during winter. Wet dirt trails don’t sound like much fun, but the uncertainness of the terrain is half the fun of these things. Much better than a boring ol’ flat land run, that’s for sure. And my desire to run (or at least keep jogging) all the way to the top of one of these runs is quite the inventive for me to keep up my program.
What amazes me are the people who do the 50km runs. (Not that I’ve been around long enough to see what they look like when they get back.) They do a run much longer than a marathon over terrain harder than any normal marathon, and there’s no medal at the end, no cars to win.
I would love to be one of those runners. I guess I need to work my way up to doing a 20km run first.
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During the drive back I pulled out my Alphasmart and managed to write 600 words as Rob drove. And now I have to go do my other 1400 for the day.
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Update: Rob points me to a page that talks about the artillery bunkers and emplacements at Fort Cronkhite.
Th emplacements were built for World War II, except for some near the bridge which were put in during the Civil War.