Year-end mountain trail marathon at San Mateo

Mileage: 26.4 miles
Running time: 5h 23min
Average pace: 12:14 min/mile
Overall elevation gain: 4800ft

Runners: Charlie, Keira, Greg, Lambert (LT), Robert S, Eric Kosters, Eric Klingsporn (EKP), Kirk, Dmitri

Course: We started from Morgan trailhead on South Main Divide Road. From Morgan trail we turned onto Tenaja Falls trail, then south Tenaja trail to Tenaja trailhead (where we refilled our bottles), and then ran back to Bluewater trail. After that we took a Crazy-Lambert shortcut to the north Tenaja trail and finally reached the Four Corners. After we ran down the Bear Ridge trail we split into slackers that ran down Bear Canyon trail to Charlie’s Jeep (26.4 miles option), and super-nuts that when all the way back to the Morgan trailhead and ran 30+ miles overall. 99% of course was on single-track trails.

Most spectacular part: Tenaja Falls trail. It was pretty flat, running through a dense forest with several streams crossings. The streams where mostly dry, all covered with huge white boulders. The falls are nowhere close to Niagara, but the view from the top was magnificent.

Most memorable part: Crazy-Lambert shortcut to North Tenaja. It is a mountain trail abandoned by deer and mountain lions for its steepness. Why would one want to waste time doing switch-backs if you can just short-cut it running straight to the mountain top? Every time we were reaching something that looked like a summit, we saw yet another portion of the uphill in front of us. Not sure about the elevation in the canyon at the bottom of it (1000ft?), but our elevation at the end of it was over 2900ft. As good as Lambert is about itineraries, someone should do a reality check after him each time.

Most painful part: North Tenaja trail is covered with overgrown dry vegetation and thorny brush. You have to run through it while it peels your skin of your legs. At least it felt that way. We all ended up with a lot of cuts after running through it.

Most enjoyable part: Candy store and a croissant cheese and ham sandwich I bought there after those 26.4 miles. I do not recall being as hungry as I was after this run! Ever! When we were running Bear Canyon trail down to the Candy store I basically saw a bunch of visions of various burgers, double-doubles, hot dogs, and other food :)

Just to give you an idea of how beautiful these trails are:

The OCTR gang led by Keira to Tenaja falls:

Turtle-like boulder above Tenaja falls:

Tenaja Falls trail:

We are at Tenaja Falls trailhead. Keira is milking the pump while Lambert is entertaining the crowd with a little striptease:

Chaz is showing off his knee:


More photos from the run:

San Mateo trails, 29-Dec-07

Here is Greg’s recap from our run: Link.

Happy New Year!