The Stairs

The Stairs Trail goes down from the West Ridge Trail down to the bottom of Laguna Canyon: I enjoyed climbing it up a way more than running down: at least it felt less suicidal.

It was strange to see so many bike tracks on those rocks. I wonder how it should feel riding a bike down this trail!

A view from the top of the world

A bit belated recap of our long run on Sunday:

6AM felt a way too early and daylight time change did not help either. No wonder Linda refused to run this early! The parking lot at Awme was dead empty. It was dark and pretty foggy. I ran on Also Creek Bikeway with my headlight. I could barely see the trail ahead – all I saw was the bright fog in front of me. Next time I will wear headlight on my belt! So I ran 6 miles by myself to get some additional mileage and then returned to the cars to meet the rest of the group.

7AM: Jeff, Marisa and Linda are already there. Noticed I am a bit sweaty for the run start. After I explained my additional mileage thing, got reprimanded by Jeff and Marisa I had not told them in advance. It looks like I am not the only crazy one.

This time we checked out both Cave Rock and Dripping Cave trails. Marisa was leading the way and – as she always is – was jumping around inspecting every cave on our way. My incident with cacti I felt into in Laguna Canyon trying to climb a rock following Marisa did not teach me a thing.

Marisa climbed another rock, while I slipped and hurt my knee. It was somewhat embarrassing to get a hand from Jeff on a little hill Marissa just climbed on her own.

We were running in a fog, but as we started ascending Mathis trail, we got above it and enjoyed the most breathtaking scenery. All the creeks and canyons below we covered by a thick blanket of white clouds. The clouds were flowing over the ridges from one canyon into another. And everything above the clouds was lit by bright morning sun.

It is not like we need some additional cheering after Mathis ascent, but the sun did cheer us up anyways :)

As we got closer to the "top of the world" point, we spotted Soka University in a distance. It was surrounded by clouds from all the sides, but it is sitting on a hill that was rising above the clouds. It reminded me Minas-Tirith fortress from the Tolkien’s books.

Marisa just ran down the Cholla trail and was snooping around. She is always investigating the area around the trails. Only my 2.5 year old daughter behaves like that! After kids turn 4 they tend to become less curious and restless, but Marisa is definitely an exception! I am not sure what she was doing in those bushes (oh, not what you think!) but she is definitely happy about being caught in action.

Another highlight of our run was the bright green meadows on Wood Canyon with all the grass covered with morning dew and shining bright in the morning sun. It was also one of those "moments that take your breath away"!

As we got back to the parking lot, my GPS was showing 11.85 miles (in addition to those six I ran earlier that morning on my own). Jeff found it funny when I started circling around parking lot to get additional 0.15 of a mile we were missing to get 12 :)

SIDEWAYS
As we were running and chatting with Jeff – I quoted something from Sideways: “Strawberry, yeah!” It turned out Jeff never watch Sideways and never even heard of it. I was shocked. I turned to Marisa and Linda and shouted: “Guys! Can you imagine that? Jeff never watched Sideway!” I stumbled and almost felt when I hear back from them: “Side...what? Is it a movie?” It turned out Marisa did watch it once but did not recall the name at once and commented it was a “sick movie”. Linda saw just a part of it on an airplane. Sideways is a beautiful movie about California, vineyards and wine. Do you know that after Sideways became popular, sales of Merlot when down in California at the expense of an increase in Pinot Noir market share: “I am not drinking f$%g Merlot! If anyone orders Merlot I am out of here!” Anyways if you did not watch it, I would totally recommend it – just do not watch it when your kids are around – 99% of it is decent – there are just 2 or 3 moments that are R-rated although pretty funny anyways.
More photos from our run:

Aliso & Wood Canyons, March 9, 2008

Just for reference: a very decent map of Aliso and Wood Canyons:

The Meadows scored again

I was anticipating Saturday morning for the most of the week nurturing the thought of my forthcoming revenge on the Meadows trail ascent in Aliso Canyon. Last Sunday I burned out very early and just walked up almost all of it. When I thought about it afterwards it seemed a little ridiculous that I could not push myself to run for just one mile… well, one pretty steep uphill mile… but a mile is just a mile after all…

So I got there this morning determined to conquer the darn thing this time and run all the way to the top. I managed to run (or better to say jog to be brutally honest about my incredible performance) for the first 0.6 mile of the climb, but could not help switching to walking after that.

Still I managed to pass by a group of mountain bikers on my way up. Those guys were definitely struggling more than I did as they also had those bikes to carry – and sure enough they were walking up too.

The Meadows-Dmitri score is 2:0 now. But I will be back!

Aliso & Wood Canyons with Jess, Jeff and Greg

We had another splendid run in Aliso/Wood this morning with Jess, Jeff and Greg. As we started at 6:30am, the additional hour of sleep we got due to the time change came pretty handy.

This time we took Meadows trail. Greg mentioned that he will be able to say he is in an excellent form when he is able to run it all the way to the end. As we were running through those beautiful meadows on an absolutely flat trail I could hardly understand what Greg was talking about. But the understanding came to me pretty quickly – right after the first 50 yards of the crazy uphill section of this trail we hit around mile 3. The Meadow climb was quite humiliating – I had to walk 90% of it, while Greg and Jeff disappeared in the dense fog ahead of us pretty quickly. According to my Garmin the climb was about a mile long with 650-700 feet of overall elevation gain.

Whenever I get a false feeling I am an endurance athlete or something like that, I will do the Meadows climb again to get myself back into senses.

Greg left us around mile 5 where he took the Stair Step Trail – he was totally obsessed with the idea of doing an ultra-long run this morning and could not waste any more of his precious time with slow kids like us, who consider 12 miles to be enough for a Sunday run. As the Stair Step Trail is a very steep downhill, we took a couple of pictures of Greg in case we do not see him again in one piece.

The most fun part of our run was running down the Cholla Trail. I totally feel like a 10 year old kid on this section. All it takes is to turn off your brain along with the self-preservation instincts, and pray there are no mountain bikers doing the same right behind you.


Some more photos I took in Aliso & Wood Canyons today:

Aliso/Woods Canyon, Nov-07

Elite iRun in Aliso & Wood iCanyons

I ran at the Aliso & Wood Canyons this morning. I was supposed to meet with OCTR group at 7am there, but decided to come a bit earlier and run an extra couple of miles before that: as usually on Saturdays I need to be back at home by 8:30 or otherwise Irina will not make it on time to her Saturday Kung-Fu class.

It was still dark at 6:40 when I started running. Runners and bikers were gathering and stretching at the trailhead, but the trail itself was dead-empty. 5 minutes into it I heard someone approaching me very quickly. I was sure it was one of early bikers, but I was wrong. To my utmost surprise and amazement it was iMichelle! Michelle Barton is the OC running legend who won a lot of ultra races like Lake Hodges 50k, Mt. Disappointment 50K, Wild Wild West 50K and lots others.

She tends to constantly embarrass a lot of other runners who see her only at the finish line well-rested, smiling, usually with a first-place trophy in her hands and her hair looking as if she spent previous 4 hours in a beauty salon, and was not running 50K or 50 miles on steep mountain trails.

Here is a nice recap from one of iMichelle’s races:
http://www.lonepinechamberofcommerce.net/events/CommentsfromMichelleBarton.htm
I can only second the author's opinion that "this girl is from another planet" :)

I ran for about 3 miles next to iMichelle at a pace of around 8 min/mile. After we turned on Mathis Canyon trail and hit the uphill section of it, I started to struggle and had to switch to walking in a while. Michelle probably did not even notice the uphill as she kept her pace constant and had to circle around me – back and forth on the trail – cheering me up.
Unfortunately I had to turn back after mile 4 to return home on time.
I also met Alexa, Wendy and Michelle M on my way back, and shortly after that Sue and Skip.

Aliso & Wood Canyons

I overslept this morning - my super-intelligent alarm clock switched to winter time this night and when I finally woke up at 5:35am, I realized quite soon that it is more like a quarter to 7 already :(

Trying not to swear too loudly, I eventually left home at 7:05am. I was supposed to meet with OCTR team 5 minutes before and be running already and I was still 10 miles away from the trailhead!

No wonder when I came there 25 min late I did not find anyone at the Awma parking lot, and the trail was empty too...

Still I got lucky - I took a Rock It trail shortcut and caught up Greg and Martin, and in a while after that Sue and Steph on the hill ridge where the trail ends. Here is a picture from the happy reunion:

I ran about 13 miles today and feel pretty happy I did not miss all the fun due to my alarm clock hiccup this morning.

Aliso/Wood Canyons run with James & Joe

I had a great time running in Aliso/Wood Canyons this Monday.
I ran with James (an OCTR member) and Joe (who is thinking about joining the club too).

James explained that he is more of a mountain biker and he did have a mountain bike in his trunk indeed. As James just got an archilles tendon injury (or something like that) he had to run more then mountain-bike lately.

As we started and ran the first mile together (at around 6:55 min/mile pace) I realized that there is no way on Earth I would be able to keep up with these guys and told them to go ahead. I barely managed to picture their backs as they were quickly disappearing on the trail ahead of me:
I will need to ask James next time about his injury and how I could get one like his as well to be able to run as fast as he did.

Well, at the pace of 9 min/mile or slower I definitely feel and embrace life and beauty of the hills around me much more than I do while running at 6:55 pace :-)

James and Joe again:

Most of the trail was beautiful, but some of it was totally breathtaking:

And although the trail might look pretty flat on the picture (James was complaining a lot about how boring for him the first 2-3 flat miles of the trail were), and although the day was not too hot, I was pretty soaked by the end of mile 4:

Another wow-section of the trail:

There were some pretty steep up-hills. But when you see people around you working much harder and suffering much more than you do (I am talking about mountain bikers here that manage to ride up on those hills somehow), you get less focused on your own hurdles:

The last uphill was most of the fun: it was so steep that they even did stairs on the trail to ease up climbing up for those mortals that cannot fly:

I did 9 miles overall that night at an average pace of around 10:50 min/mile.