Very belated recap from El Moro

On I did my last long run before the PCT50 race at El Moro. I met there Pete and two of his friends from his triathlete club – Lisa and Julie – both IronMan finishers.

We did a short but nevertheless hilly loop of just 9 miles. We ran down to Laguna Canyon, crossed Laguna Canyon Road and climbed the infamous Stairs trail in Aliso Canyon, and then just ran all the way back.

When climbing the Stairs, I had a lot of flashbacks from those long climbs at Leona and Mt.Dis, climbs that go on and on and on, and all you want is to get to the end and look in the eyes of that sadistic RD that included that stretch of the trail into the race course.

It is like in that Russian anecdote:
Imagine Russian farmers market. People sell grains, vegetables, chickens, cattle and stuff. And there is a big very gloomy man making his way through the crowd and dragging a huge bear on a chain after him. People stop him asking if he sells bear or something. – No, I just want to find that man, who sold this bear to me last year as a hamster.

A lot of those courses remind me that hamster (when you register for a race and check the course profile from home) that all of a sudden turns out to be a huge bear when you eventually get there.

Here are some more photos from our run:

El Moro: May 4, 2008

P.S. I am still working on my recap from PCT50 race and will paste it here shortly.

Blooming run in El Moro

El Moro… El Moro is blooming! As a matter of fact it is freaking beautiful! Bight yellow hills, bright orange poppies, etc.

We started at 5:30am: Jeff, Ryan, Marisa, Lisa, Pete, Chris and me. We did our usual 10-mile loop, and then went for a smaller second 7-mile loop in Laguna Canyon on my most favorite single-track trail. I did not initially plan to stay for the 2nd loop but I can never say no to Laguna Canyon even despite I know I will have to pay back for the beauty of this awesome downhill trail at the long uphill that follows it.

Running uphill with Ryan and Jeff is difficult. It is not even as they are pretty fast and I have hard time keeping up with them. Both of them – and Ryan in particular this morning – never stop cracking jokes. Like we noticed a big black bug on the trail, and the next thing you hear is that Ryan establishes a price fund of $10 and a pack of Hummer Gel for anyone who would eat the poor thing.

At some point we lost Jeff. I turned back and saw him standing in the middle of the trail behind us, bent to the ground not being able to stop laughing. Beware: this is Ryan’s secret weapon he uses to neutralize competitor runners trying to pass him by.

Marisa was being Marisa – there is no better way to put it. Just yesterday she completed Old Goad 50-miler, got her 2nd female finisher trophy at the finish, iced her legs a little and went for an additional 12-mile run right the same evening. And after running those 100K yesterday, she looked pretty fresh this morning!

A picture of ultra runners' ghosts at 5:25am:
Blooming El Moro:
Lisa storms another hill:
Orange poppies by the trail:
Jeff, Ryan and Lisa on the 2nd loop:
Ryan's signature photo of Jeff, me and Lisa:
Two miles to the cars, Park Rangers passed by on a truck. It got pretty hot and they asked if we were ok and did not need any water. How nice of them!
More photos:

El Moro: April 13, 2008

Sleepless in El Moro

We had a great time at El Moro today.
Pete scheduled a pretty cool training run there consisting of 3 loops:

Loop 1 - 10 miles - Start 5:00am - Finish Time 7:05ish
Loop 2 - 7 miles - Start 7:10am - Finish Time 8:40ish
Loop 3 - 10 miles - Start 8:45am - Finish Time 10:44am

I did only the first two loops: 17.5 miles with about 2:55 overall time. And I would go for the third one, except that something told me that running 27+ miles would not go along with my tapering before the Orange Curtain next weekend.

For the very first time at El Moro I ran through all the up-hills on both loops. Keira had some hard time with me last time kicking my butt and dragging me up the BFI. I guess the spirit of Keira kept staying with me (or better to say kept kicking me :) Go figure!

But my adventure actually started a bit earlier today - at 4:30am. Once I crossed the bridge on Crown Valley Pkwy I found out that Crown Valley is completely shut down in west direction: the was a blinking police car standing right in my way. I have no idea what happened… I had to U-turn, get back to Antonio, turn on Oso, then take I-5 South to get back to Crown Valley on the other side of the police cordon. To my surprise I nevertheless managed to get to our Ridge Park meeting point on time and did not miss the run.

So today I met in person a lot of OCTR folks I never had a chance to run wit hbefore – like the authentic Pete Vara (the one that never broke his ankle), Marisa, Lori, Beiyi, Sid, Cyrus, and …
OK, I have to openly admit it now – once again – I am awful about remembering names (I remember faces a lot better) and I met a lot of new people today – as embarrassed as I am, someone please help me out to fill in the blanks in the blog…

There were a few familiar friendly faces too: Jeff, Shelli and Ryan.

The highlight of the race: when we hit Laguna Canyon, we ran through a big field of a very high green grass – the upside of the recent showers. The greenness of the field looked strange for Southern California where we are more accustomed to a much more yellowish palette. The grass was covered with dew drops that were sparkling in morning sun like diamonds. I tried to take a picture but failed to capture the beauty of it.

Another highlight (same Laguna Canyon, second loop): it was pretty difficult to keep restless Marisa on the trail all the time. She was making circles around us checking out surrounding rocks and caves, and getting additional mileage as well. When Marisa climbed one of those rocks to a cave, and I took a picture of her in it, she suggested I should try it as well. Had not I listened to the internal voice (saying that I was gonna look like a chicken if I do not follow Marisa there), I would not have slept on that rock and would not have found myself embracing a cactus underneath it. My right arm was looking like a hedgehog after that with a bunch of cactus’ thorns sticking out of it :)

I recall Jeff saying that on the bright side I would have something to blog about. And this is exactly what I ended up doing tonight :)

More photos from our today's run:

Sleepless in El Moro

Super-early pre-Christmas run at El Moro

We have had a wonderful run in El Moro on Sunday. At first I thought no one is going to show up at all. Then Mike K signed up on the condition though that the run should start at 5:30am. After Mike mentioned he would bring his famous cannabis brownies, few more brownies lovers signed up for the run too: Charles and Keira. Also Mike invited over a friend of his – Matt.

At the end of the day this Mike’s brownies thing turned out to be a scam and we did not get any. As Mike explained after the run it was a joke. I totally agree with Chaz on this: “There are a few sacred items you don't screw around with in ultra running: someone's hydration bottles, all Garmin products, trail shoes and fricken brownies.”

The day started with four of us impatiently dancing together in chilly morning dusk waiting for Keira to show up. The temperature at the Ridge Park was about 45F. As Charlie noticed, if it were a guy we had been waiting for, we would have been gone for good long before that. But Keira was worth every second of the wait. I did not have a chance to meet her before but just heard a lot about her from OCTR folks. Keira turned out to be another "Energizer bunny" constantly cheering and energizing everyone around her – very similar to iMichelle image I got after I ran with her in Aliso/Wood. Later on when we hit BFI and El Moro ridge uphill, and I lagged behind everyone and switched to walking, Keira waited for me and kept cheering me until we reached the top of it. Thanks to her I managed to run it up this time!

But when we started the run it was still pretty dark there. Mike and Chaz had headlamps. They turned out to be pretty handy on the Pacific Ridge trail, which had a couple of moderately technical downhill sections that would have been a bit tricky to get through with no lights at all.

After we reached the PCH and made a turn on BFI, I saw Chaz and Keira abruptly stopped staring at something on the trail. That something turned out to be a couple of empty Starbucks cups left by some careless hikers by the trail. I would normally just pass by not even paying attention to some trash in the park. Not these guys though. They picked up the cups and argued for the next 10 minutes who will have an honor to carry them out. Finally after the caps were properly smashed and loaded into Chaz's backpack, we went on.

After we reached the top of El Moro, Keira became restless and kept running back and forth every single little side trail or anything reminding a side trail at all. She recalled some magnificent down-hill switchback she ran down there with Kevin once before. We did not find it but the whole back-and-forth exploration process was quite a fun just by itself.

This is what we looked like when we finally hit the Bommer Ridge:

The first loop around Crystal cove was over 10 miles. After that we returned to our cars to refill our bottles. At that point Keira told us she was tired - something no one probably ever heard from inexhaustible Keira ever before - and opted out from the second loop. She had an excuse through - she had run 30 miles with LT just the day before...

We did our second loop on that spectacular side trail leading from the Bommer Ridge down to Laguna Canyon. I am not sure about the names of trails and canyons though in the north-east part of Crystal Cove. Probably this is the one reffered to by Ryan as Mudslinger Scramble.

Anyways while we were running there Charlie was entertaining us with various stories interrupted from time to time with short commercials about his new grey running bra with cupholders for Starbucks cups:

Our final mileage was: 18.3 miles
Overall time: 3:24:20
Average pace: 11:10 minutes/mile

More photos from our run:

El Moro Run 23-Dec-07

XTERRA Crystal Cove 15K

XTERRA Crystal Cove 15K, December 16, 2007: Link
Place: 69 (out of 214)
Bib: # 345
Distance: 9.3 miles / 15 km
Net Time: 1:25:33
Average Pace: 9:12 minutes/mile
Elevation Gain: about 1200 feet

Start line

Dmitri, Lambert, Martin

Finish line

Lambert and Martin

Martin and Dmitri

I set a new distance PR today – I ran the shortest race in my life - 15K. My first race ever was Saddleback Half-Marathon in 2006 and I never did anything shorter than that. As I have never been exceptionally fast I did not even plan to do any of those 5K or 10K races.

XTERRA seemed to be cool though but when I heard about it, it was already sold out. And then all of a sudden I saw that Pete Vara’s post at our club’s web site about the unique once-in-a-lifetime XTERRA free entry opportunity.

The only thing is that I had to run there as Pete Vara. As Pete is faster than I we agreed I will disguise myself as “Pete Vara with broken ankle” so that no one would notice a forgery as I cross the finish line an hour after Pete would cross it if he were not out of town this weekend.

I went to pick up my bib on Saturday at Fleet Feet in Laguna Niguel. They did not find Pete on the list for some reason, told me that I do not look like him at all, and that they would need to break my ankle for real if I keep bugging them.

I went home with a relief as I did not feel well and did not run at all since Tuesday. Oh, did I mention I got a terrible cold that got worse after inhumane Ridgecrest weather? Still I sent a quick note to the real Pete after I came back – just in case. To my surprise Pete managed to settle the things up, and I got my bib the following morning.

I met Lambert and Martin at the drop bag area, and then later at the start line another OCTR member Kiko and two mudslingers – Ryan and Diego.

At the start line we were reminded that earbuds are not allowed during this race as they are “anti-social”. Well I already had my iPod on me and headphones with big ear cups. They had absolutely nothing to do with the forbidden earbuds and I put them on – partially in order not to hear Lambert who was desperately trying to convince me they are illegal.

As the race started the temperature went up abruptly and I started to feel overdressed. Or probably it was not really the temperature but the fat big incline on El Moro Ridge (aka BFI). This was brutal. I kept running for the first mile, and had to walk most of the second one – which was a quite embarrassing thing to do taking into consideration that it was just the 2nd mile of a short 9-mile trail run. I was so worn out by the BFI, that by mile 4 I saw a vision of Sue running in the opposite direction :)

After I passed the mile 4 I started to feel I am enjoying the race. Not sure whether it was cause my PowerGel dissolved in my stomach, or cause at last I got warmed up, or cause the BFI was eventually over, or as I was listening to one of my favorite Apocalyptica songs at the moment, or all of the above :)))


Bommer Ridge and Pacific Ridge consist of a lot of small ups and downs, and I was anticipating the big downhill on the last 2-3 miles of the course. The downhill turned out to be less steep and not without some unexpected uphill sections that did not make it to the elevation profile graph. Still it was enjoyable anyways. It is the first race when I got disappointed and almost discouraged when someone shouted that finish is just around the corner. I sprinted the very last downhill section to the finish line at around 6:30 min/mile to pass by another runner I had been chasing for quite a while.

My final time was 1:25:33. Not as fast as I expected. But good enough for the first place in the category of “Athletes with broken ankles” :)

El Moro 15 Miler

We have had an amazing run this morning in Emerald and El Moro Canyons. I overslept though, and had to rush to get there on time – so I forgot the camera – and no one else had one... But this was really the only hiccup… Well, almost the only one – after we hit the crazy uphill between miles 4 and 5 Steph decided to head back to her car as she did not feel quite herself this morning. As she seemed to be confident about finding the way back I did not run back with her. Thanks to Greg who took a role of my conscience this time and made it clear he would never let Steph go back alone like that, we were worried about her whereabouts until we eventually got to the parking lot and found that Steph’s car is gone already.

I forgot to mention, by the way, there were 7 of us, who left the Park Ridge at 6:30am this morning: Diego, Greg, Jeff, Ryan, Shelli, Steph, and myself.

The first 3 miles we had a pretty curvy single-track trail with a thick brush on both sides and a nice canopy above. After that we ran in a canyon surrounded by rocky hills with a lot of natural caves in them. There were so many of them that the place looked like a cavemen’s city :-)

At mile 4 we touched down Laguna Canyon road – right on the opposite side from the Stair Step trail – and ran uphill for a couple of miles. Then after a crazily exciting downhill we found ourselves in Emerald Canyon. We ran it all the way west until we found ourselves in front of a rather high fence with a barbwire on top, protecting some posh Laguna Beach gated community from trail runners and other animals. But we managed to sneak in anyways constantly looking around in anticipation of a SWAT team and helicopters – or at least several guards with guns :-)

We ran along PCH for a while until we reached the Crystal Cove Park, were we started on El Moro Ridge, than took Eastern Cut Across to the El Moro Canyon, and eventually Slow ‘N Easy trail to the Bommer Ridge that got us to our Park Ridge parking lot gate, which was exactly mile 15 of our run. I was pretty impressed with Ryan’s precision :-)

As Ryan said about the Slow ‘N Easy trail, it was Slow indeed but we almost never got to the Easy part. I guess it is “easy” only compared to Elevator trail, which is a mile shorter with the same elevation gain. I should try it next time.

Here is Jeff's post about our today's run:
http://www.breakingthetape.com/blog/archives/008179.html