In action at the Stanford Dish run

CIMG2456, originally uploaded by Maui Runner.

Believe it or not, this photograph was clicked on my run between miles 10 and 11. This was on the Alpine Road part of the trail, way after the Stanford Dish. I am amazed to see that I am still smiling. It's definitely thanks to the beautiful downhill towards the end of the run.

PS: This is the first time I am posting from flickr.

Week Eight: The Hill Conquest

Consider a 12-mile run. Consider a major part of the run on a hill. And consider the hill to be the Stanford Dish. You will need all the energy you can muster to complete the run. And that's what I did this Saturday, 29th July. I conquered the Stanford Dish trail!

The Stanford Dish trail is a beautiful trail, offering nice views of the Stanford and Palo Alto area. We started from the back side of the trail (from Alpine Road) and went all the way up to the dish. If you remember to look back while running up the hill, it offers a nice view of Portola valley. After we hit the dish, we took a right turn at the fork and ran along some rolling hills, before running downhill all the way to the front entrance at Junipero Serra Blvd. We saw some nice views of the Stanford campus on this trail. We then took the even more steeper trail up to the dish. If I thought the first uphill was bad, this one was much worse. I had to walk up a couple of steep slopes. After we hit the dish, we once again ran along the trail that overlooks Portola valley- this time downhill, back to the Alpine Road entrance that we started from.

By this time, we must have done about 7 miles. After this, we ran west along Alpine road. I was quite tired on this stretch, and was not quite sure why. I had tried my best to not "attack" the hills, but "massage" them, as our coach had put it. That should have left me with enough energy to finish off with a decent pace on the flat road. After running about a mile or so, I realized that all this while, Alpine road has had a steady upslope. No wonder! After I hit the turn-around point, I was quite charged up because I realized that the rest of the trail was a steady downhill, and I managed to finish up with a big smile on my face. I now have the Stanford Dish trail under my belt.

My timing for this run degraded a bit, but that was to be expected, considering the hilly course. More importantly, I managed to finish the run.

Week Seven

I was crazy busy at work this week. Effectively, I did not manage to catch any of the scheduled buddy runs. Instead, I ran 5 miles on a treadmill at the office gym from 8:30 to 9:30 in the night, after a long day's work. I was dead tired by the end of it!

The weekend run was an on-your-own run. Since I was at Niket's place over the weekend, and since it was an extremely short trip, I did not manage to run while over there. Instead I ran 6 miles on a treadmill in the office gym on the following Monday, in the evening, after work.

Week Six: The First Double Digit Run

This weekend (16th July) was my first ever double-digit (in miles) run.

This 10 mile run was on the Coastside Trail at the beautiful Half Moon Bay. We started from Pillar Point Harbor, and ran 5 miles south along the beach, and back. Rather than trying to map this trail, here's a link to a brochure containing a map of the trail. The Bay Area hiker has a wonderful description of a part of the trail, along with some nice pictures.

All along the trail, we were running with the ocean on one side. Anyone who has been to Highway 1 in California, can attest to the beauty of the coastal route. We passed by quite a few beaches along the trail, as well as a number of campgrounds. It was breakfast time for most people in the campsites, which was enough to encourage us to finish the run quickly. After the run, the entire group headed to a restaurant at Pillar Point Harbor for a well-earned brunch.

I was once again pleased that I managed to maintain my 10K pace. I will have to see how long that will continue though. I did feel much more tired this time around, compared to the 8 mile run. As my mentor had organized carpools, I was glad I did not have to drive back after the run.

Our next long run, two weeks from now, will be a 12-mile run, on a relatively hilly terrain. This promises to be a challenging run, on account of the distance, as well as the terrain. I will need to focus more on pacing myself on this run. I'll keep everyone posted on the status of the run.

Week Five

This week, I did a 3-mile buddy run with Niket on the Stevens Creek trail. On Sunday, I did a 5-mile on-your-own run on the treadmill. There was no track workout this week on account of the July 4th weekend, for which Niket and I headed out to Crater Lake. Overall, it was a relatively relaxed week.

Week Four: A Barrier is Broken

This was the best training week so far, for a couple of reasons.

First- I broke a long-standing barrier in terms of the longest distance I had ever run at a stretch- which was 6 miles until now. On July 1st, I ran 8 miles for the first time in my life. I was so excited and so happy to reach that milestone. Two years ago, on 4th July 2004, I had reached the 6 mile distance while running at the Peachtree Road Race in Atlanta. After that, I had run 6 miles quite a few times, but did not ever manage to cross that barrier. I crossed the barrier this time, with Niket and the folks from TNT cheering me at the finish line.

This run was on the Sawyer Camp trail, an extremely beautiful trail along the Crystal Springs Lake. Here's the approximate 8-mile route that I ran; I cannot plot it exactly due to the tree cover. This trail has markers every half mile, and is therfore an excellent trail to pace yourself. I was quite pleased to see that my pace for this 8 mile run was exactly the same as my 5K or 10K pace. This was the perfect start to the long weekend.

The other good part about this week's training was the dynamic drills on Tuesday (27th June). We did all kinds of drills such as heel and toe walking, skip running, side-ways running, lunges, butt kicks, high knees and so on. Each one of these exercised a different muscle in the body, gearing it up for the longer distances. However, this also resulted in my walking around slowly the entire next day, as well as putting in a huge amount of effort while getting up from and sitting down on a chair. The good thing is, I survived :-)

Overall, a great training week.