O'Neill

Yesterday a couple of brave SCTH members – Chaz, Greg, Keira, and Kirk – decided to challenge mountain lions running through Coto de Caza and Caspers at night.

The run was supposed to be around 30 miles long and start from Charlie’s home in Ladera. I totally love night runs with a flash light and was anticipating this one for a while. But when I woke up on Saturday I had a cold and sore throat. Bummer! I still ran up to Charlie’s place, which is slightly over a mile from my home, and after that ran through O’Neill park with the rest of the gang for about an hour.

I have not been to O’Neill for a while – due to all the rains we had this year the streams widened. We had to cross a bunch of them and sure enough we got wet.
I ended up with 14 miles.

Here is Greg’s recap of their night run:
http://achtungrunner.blogspot.com/2008/05/lights-out.html

Fall in O'Neill Park

No, I did not fall. I meant "autumn". And it is totally spectacular in O'Neill Park :)

I had my last “long” run before the Ridgecrest race in O’Neill Park today. Well, it was only 8 miles, which qualifies as a long run only during a pre-race taper period.

As much as I tried I did not manage to keep my feet dry there - thanks too all those streams you have to cross in the canyon.

There is no shortage of poison oak in the canyon either. It is bright red this time of year and you can even enjoy seeing it all over the place - as soon as you don't get into it :-)

First run in O'Neill Park with OCTR

We had a big group today running in O'Neill park: Wendy, Alexa, Jessica, Kayla, Kiko, Heather, Jenn, Chris and Bobby. As we were scheduled to start around 6:30 am and I needed to be at home by 8:30, I came there earlier and ran 3.5 miles before I met everyone at O'Neill park gate.



The whole group was running at a very comfortable of about 10 min/mile. The only exception was Kiko who kept circling around us running twice faster than the rest of us :-)



There were a couple of streams crossing the trails. Chris and Alexa ran right through them, while others tried to jump across on slippery submerged stones - some less successfully than others - I got my feet wet as well. I guess I should have followed Chris and Alexa: the result was about the same while their way of stream crossing was much more fun.



The initial plan for some of us was to run up to Jessica's place, hopefully get a bannana reward over there and get a lift back to where we parked our cars. But as we reached Ladera Ranch, we realized that we probably missed a turn to Las Flores where Jess lives.
Here is Jessica's recap on the search-and-rescue adventure our group had after I left home.



The good part was that I ran straight home from there and got there just in time.

Mileage: 12.3 miles
Time: 1:53:54
Average pace: 9:16 min/mile

More photos from today's run:

O'Neill Park with OCTR Sep-07

P.S. As soon as those streams are such a problem - at least on longer runs when it is more likely to develop blisters when your feet are wet - why do not we just get together and bridge them in the same way it is done in Aliso/Wood Canyon park?

Adventure run in O'Neill Park

I had a lot of fun in O'Neill park yesterday morning. As a matter of fact I never run in O'Neill park before and was not even too sure about where it was located - although it is literally next door to where I live.

The morning was lovely although it already started to warm up at 6:40 when I left home:





Right on my first mile into the park I hit several streams crossing the trail. The first one was pretty narrow to jump across. But the second and the third one were wide enough and I had to use boulders half-submerged in the stream - most of them shaky and slippery.



As I am not used to things like that, it was pretty scary at first and I could not help picturing myself falling down and hitting my head against one of those stones. I was ready to turn around and find another trail :-)



But after you cross those little rivers a couple of times, you get much more comfortable about them. They are pretty beautiful after all:



The trail on the other side was mostly flat for several miles:



In a while the trail dives into a pretty dense forest. I have never been to a rainforest but this is how I picture it. You do not feel there like you are in Southern California anymore:







I met a couple of deer on my way. The little one was jumping high above the grass like a kangaroo:



Here are few more cool pictures from the run:







I took only 24oz of Gatorade with me and completely ran out of it around mile 10, still having 3 more miles to go. As it was getting pretty hot by then those last 3 miles were not most of the fun:



A picture of my shoes I took specifically for the dirty-shoes contest:



Mileage: 13.1 miles
Time: 2:09:40
Average pace: 9:54 min/mile