Rob and I have been trying to do an organized race/run every month, to encourage us to keep up with the running. Rob discovered Pacific Coast Trail Runs and, when possible, that’s what we do.

Today was my second one. Ow. I can feel it.

We did the 8km (5mi) up Mt. Diablo. The run started out going straight up and didn’t let up for about the first 3 miles. Here’s the elevation map for our run. It was tough going from the start (went straight up for what felt like forever, but I see was about a quarter of a mile). I lost my ability to control my breathing — that is, I was panting like a little pup — right at the start. Mile 2 to 3 was a fire road that went straight up. I felt like it was never going to end.

From there it was all down hill, and the views were pretty spectacular when we had an opportunity to take our focus off the gravel-laden path or the roots creating an obstacle course.

The weather was fantastic: from a very nippy morning in the parking lot, waiting for the start, the temperature warmed up until it was warm but not too warm for a good run.

After we left Mt. Diablo, Rob and I wanted to get some coffee. We didn’t see one coffee place the whole way back to the freeway. Walnut Creek: no reason to live. We stopped in Danville and got some pretty good coffee at a bagel place.

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I know I’d find these hill runs a lot easier if I lost some weight. Sigh.

I woke up at 5:30 this morning. On iChat, Rob said: “Twilight isn’t until 6:30, dawn isn’t until 6:50.” Then he asked if we could go running later in the day.

Well, okay. But just this once.

Generally, I like to get my exercise out of the way early in the day, so that I will be sure to do it. Also, I am terribly selfish and want to use my kids-in-school time for something like writing. But the writing has really sucked recently, and I hoped that, as has been promised by so many people extolling the benefits of exercise, a mid-day run might spur me on to great thoughts.

(I actually deserve a prize for the amount of exercise I do, given that I get few to none of the benefits claimed by it. Weight loss? Ha, I’m doing 15-20 hard miles a week, up and down hill trails, and my weight hasn’t budged. Energy? Exercise makes me tired. Very, very tired. So tired, in fact, that a doctor made me go get blood work, because he said, “No, it’s supposed to invigorate you.” I’m now on thyroid medication. I still get tired during runs though.)

We met at Rancho San Antonio, a simply gorgeous nature preserve. We have our “usual” run there, which is about 4.5 miles and involves running up a hill. (You can use the Rancho Runner and plug in “1aef3upstu3fea1” to check out our run.) Usually when I exercise in the middle of the day it’s in a nice indoor gym, cooled by fans at the very least. But this was outside at 11:30, sunny, warm but not too warm. I warned Rob to expect a not-great run: “We’re not going to be able to do this in our usual hour and two minutes. Just so you know.” My other excuse, at the ready, was that I had just walked a mile and a half taking Sophia to school.

We started off and my legs felt like they were made of lead. I thought, I’m going to have to ask him to do the short 3 mile run. (Yes, I’m actually at the point where five miles is the default and three miles is light. Woot.) I didn’t get any peppier on the way up, although I was able to wait for our walking breaks (going up the hill we do four minutes running, one walking) and not make my own, the way I have, er, once or twice in the past. I did apologize to Rob for going slower than your average garden snail on the way up and he said, “Enh. I’m not in this for the speed record.”* Rob has been having an easier and easier time with our runs, because over the past couple of months he’s dropped 43 pounds, mostly due to the liquid diet he’s on, but also because he’s become Exercise Boy — he does these three runs a week, plus takes a three day-a-week exercise class at the Fitness Center.

We got up to the top and then began the long run down. We don’t take walking breaks on the way down because, well, gravity’s doing its part and we feel obligated to take advantage of it. I thought I’d need a walk when we reached the bottom, but instead we kept going. Several times during the mile back to the parking lot I found myself thinking, “I can’t do this. I need to walk. In just a second, I’m going to ask for a walking break.” But I didn’t, and soon we were back at the bridge to the parking lot.

Rob looked at his watch. “You were right. We didn’t make a hour two.”

“What was it?” I expect

“An hour one.”

Wow.

I mean, I felt like hell after that run, but evidently we’d done even faster than we ever had before.

And even if I don’t get anything else done today — and, to be honest, it’s kind of looking like I won’t — at least I’ve done that.

* – Not a direct quote. Where other people are concerned, they rarely are, to be honest.

A while back my running bud Rob and I decided two things: a)we were going to run a race every month, to encourage us to keep up the weekly running, and 2)we weren’t going to run any of the big, popular races, like Bay To Breakers or Wharf to Wharf, because there’s too many damn people at those things and the run becomes No Fun Whatsoever. You spend most of your time elbowing other people out of the way.

We’ve been doing various local events, like the HP Up and Running race. But then Rob, who is Mr. Gung-Ho Runner at the moment, discovered Pacific Coast Trail Runs. He did one in Pacifica that I felt completely unprepared for, since I barely exercised in July, and he said it was really hard but a lot of fun. So I signed up to do the Big Basin Redwoods run with him.

We did the 9km route.

I have never done a harder 5 miles in my life.

The total elevation rise was 980 feet: it felt like a couple of miles, straight up. At one point, as we slowly made our way up the hill, I was thinking, I just paid an organization to let me hike in a public forest. My shoes got dirty. I got dirty. I had to leap over bogs. We watched for tree roots on the path to avoid twisting an ankle. We serpentined down extreme inclines. This was no like run I’d ever been on.

Yesterday I took a nap—I don’t know when the last time I needed to take a nap for mileage under 10 was. I took a bath in epsom salts last night. This morning my quads are killing me.

I’ve signed up for the Mt. Diablo run. The 8km one—I’m not crazy.

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The one that really got me yesterday during the middle of my endurance run was: this is the route that the people doing the 50km route finish up on. After they’ve done 41 km, they do our loop up and around.

For those of you without a conversion calculator at home, 50 km is 31 miles. They had a total elevation rise of 5,925 feet over the same kind of terrain we had: not paved, with lots of irregular surfaces, tricky tree roots, and more bog than you could shake a stick at. In other words, they were doing more than a marathon over trail climbing over a mile vertically. And there’s no damn medal at the end, no throngs of people cheering. Those are dedicated runners.

Guess they’re really tired of the overpopulated runs.