Sunday, June 01, 2008

Caspers run with Kirk and Mike

We ran 14 miles at Caspers today with Kirk and Mike K. One of my goals for the run was to discuss with Kirk our “strategery” for San Diego 100, where I will pace him for the second half of the race.

We started off on East Ridge trail, turned onto Oso trail, then turned right and ran to the Hot Springs. We ran back to the fork along Ortega highway, where we finally got back onto San Juan Creek trail.

East Ridge: Mike is jumping like a five-year-old anticipating a sighting of a mountain lion. The idea kinda grew on him. He got obsessed with “how cool it would be if we saw a mountain lion from a distance!”

Oso trail: we passed a beehive – luckily empty as it turned out Kirk is allergic to bees. After 2 hours of intense negotiations Kirk promises Mike to become more responsible and carry on his long runs and races some remedy (Benadryl?) just in case he gets stung by a bee.

Hot Springs trail: The trail got largely overgrown since I saw it last time a year ago with Linda and Andy. Mike K admits he is scared to continue as he is afraid of ticks “like a calf”. Never heard calf being that afraid of ticks but Mike knows better. Kirk is afraid of ticks too. Mike and Kirk are running behind me, whining and cursing me constantly for leading them to this overgrown trail. I am getting a strange feeling I am running with two road runners that never left the streets of Manhattan before. In 5 minutes it got worse: Kirk and Mike evidently decided to kill me and are negotiating who gets what after my death.

Mike and Kirk are checking each other out for the ticks. Each of them found two ticks on each other. They remove ticks so quickly I did not have a chance to see them – not sure they are not just full of it. I did not find any ticks on me. I hear Mike’s scream behind. We run back to him. He found a tiny green caterpillar on his shoulder. Mike calls it a “worm” and kicks the poor thing out before I can get a camera to take a picture. Hard to believe these guys belong to a trail running club. I guess they never left track before and trail running never went beyond a loop in the Central Park for them.

Mike and Kirk are showing off legs to each other discussing the rash each one got while running this trail.

Hot Springs: The water is hot but if you sniff your hand after you put it in the water, it is pretty stinky. Kirk suggests Mike should have used wipes during his quick #2 stop earlier at East Ridge.

Ortega highway: Kirk and Mike refuse to run back same way we came to the Hot Springs. Well, and me too... They cannot stand ticks and rashes. I cannot stand two big dudes whining about ticks and rashes. We dive under the gate near the Hot Springs. Mike gets stuck – I guess it would have helped if he took of his camel back before he got under it.

Shoulders do not exist on some sections of Ortega highway. We are scaring cars and bikers. I guess we have a higher chance to be hit by a car there than getting a lime disease from a tick on those trails. Kirk and Mike lay on the highway for fun. Mike is trying to cuddle with Kirk. Kirk does not seem to be hugely excited about it.

San Juan Creek trail: Mike is trying to bore us down with different pacer-runner scenarios to get Kirk and I prepared for San Diego. He goes through different what-if scenarios that might potentially require a runner to take care of his pacer. What if Dmitri breaks his leg? What if Dmitri runs out of water? What if Dmitri runs out of fuel? What if Dmitri breaks his neck? At this point I draw my knife I carry for the sake of eventual mountain lions and annoying running buddies. To our relief Mike changes the subject right after that.

We ran 14 miles at a very relaxed pace. The weather was fabulous: neither hot nor cold. I had a 20oz hand bottle and two more 20oz bottle in my backpack - 60oz all together – and a bunch of gels too. I carried it all with me on the run but did not drink a drop of water and did not eat my gels either – just for the sake of experiment. I could feel some energy drop by the very end of our run, but it was not very significant. I felt all right. I will try to do something like that in a warmer weather one day just to see how my body handles that.

More pictures from our run:

Caspers June 1, 2008

2 comments:

Unknown said...

sounds like i missed out on a great run. yeah...mike and kirk, those two guys are the biggest whiners.

this dirt is too bumpy. can someone carry this water for me? this grass is itchy. can we stop going uphill? the skin around my rattlesnake bite is going necrotic.

sheesh.

missed you on sunday. it was epic!

Anonymous said...

That is a funny funny recap. Amazing what you can do with Photoshop these days. Like we would lay down on the Ortega HWY....right. A very dangerous day. Mikek