Sunday run in Caspers Wilderness Park with Linda and Andy

We parked on San Juan Meadows parking lot of the Caspers Wilderness Park at about 7am today. This place is right off Ortega Highway on the left-hand side of the road when you drive inlands from Orange County.



We started our run on Juaneno trail. The first 2-3 miles of the run were pretty flat. Half of the trail was covered with a deep dust or sand, and it felt like running on the beach – great cushioning but it slows you down considerably.



Right after we turned onto San Juan Creek trail we hit a steep climb where Linda and I had to switch to walking, while Andy just kept running managing to keep the pace we had on the flat sections. I do not hate ascents – I am just not good at handling them. Downhill running is so much more fun!



We turned on Hot Springs Canyon trail and reached the hot springs pretty soon after that. It was around 5 miles from where we parked this morning.



Few facts about the hot springs for those who have not been there yet:
1) They are actually hot - not Starbucks-coffee-hot - but at least bath-tub-hot. So it is not a figure of speech as I kinda expected :)
2) They are bubbling and there is even actual steam coming up from the water despite it was already getting pretty hot when we reached the springs
3) They are reserved for trail runners only - you can only access them if you trail-run or do long-distance hiking. They are pretty close to Ortega highway, but completely fenced and surrounded with “No trespassing!” signs all around. However all the fences and signs face Ortega and if you get there from the hills side it does not feel like you do anything wrong at all :)



This is the infamous vampire photo of me Linda made in the Hot Springs area. Linda could clearly see me standing there - but when she was looking at me through the camera viewfinder she saw an empty spot right where I was supposed to be. Andy mentioned that this phenomenon is pretty natural for the vampires in the day light and works alike with any optics whether this is an ordinary mirror or a camera :)



After that we ran Cold Springs trail and turned on Oso trail that goes on top of the mountain ridge - it is one of those trails where you are getting a very spectacular view down on both sides of the trail at the same time. We could see from it Coto de Caza with the estate of William Lyon in the middle of it.
The downhill on Oso was pretty breathtaking. We went down from around 1650 feet to 550 feet within just a mile or two miles tops. I tried out again that thing I read in Scott Jurek’s interview from TrailRunner Magazine few weeks ago: no leaning back on the downhill - just relax, shorten your stride and run as fast as you feel comfortable running. And fast it was :)



Finally we turned on Bell Canyon trail, than Oak trail, passed by the horse stables and windmill and reached the parking lot with Linda's truck and cold Gatorade in it!



A genuine footprint of a genuine mountain lion. We have not see a lot of those prints on the trails though - they were more spotted by deer, runners and mountain bikers.
According to the information from the rangers’ post the last sighting of a mountain lion in this area was at July 24, 2007 (or was it June 24?), while the last sighting of a mountain biker was about 5 min before we came there.



Mileage: 13.5 miles
Time: 2:51:00
Average pace: 12:40 min/mile

More photos from the run (63 photos):

Caspers Wilderness Park

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?

We are not joggers!

I really love the spirit of the recent Pearl Izumi marketing campaign and their slogans. They always resonate with me a lot.

There some cool wallpapers on their web site: http://www.wearenotjoggers.com/

The distance of truth

I think I will be competitive until they dig a hole and throw me in the ground. (Ferg Hawke) Although the DVD will be available on September 30, they have already added online ordering on their web site. We will see if this documentary is going to be at least as good as Running on the Sun.

Apocalyptica

Nothing paces me better when I am running uphill :-)

CLIF SHOT Blocks

Thanks to Brian, I found a very nice alternative to my favorite PowerGel - CLIF SHOT Blocks.

I never tried CLIF SHOT Blocks before and found them much less sugary than PowerGel. The problem with the latter is that after mile 15 or 20 I cannot stand its sweetness anymore, especially when it is hot.

CLIF SHOT's have a bunch of flavors but I picked 2 for now - Margarita with extra salt and Black Cherry with Caffeine.
And from the point of nutrition facts CLIF SHOT Blocks are no worse than PowerGel too:

Morgan trail run

I tried a new very cool trail today - Morgan trail - with Linda, Andy and Brian.

The trailhead is located next to that weirdish candy store in the middle of nowhere on Ortega highway.

As Andy said, if you run Morgan trail, it feels like you do three completely different trails back to back. At first you have to climb a pretty steep incline jumping from boulder to boulder.
Then you run a pretty flat trail carved into 7-feet-tall dry bushes on both sides. The rest of the trail goes through a little canyon with a shady green forest in it.
The trail ends up at a rest/vista area on the Main Drive also known as NF-6S07 road (could not someone come up with a more straight name for this road?!)
From this point you can see the north-west part of the lake Elsinore. Even if we did not enjoy the trail itself as much as we did, just this one view would be worth the effort of getting there.

The trail is 5 miles one way - or 10 miles out and back. We did the whole thing just 2 seconds shy of 2 hours at a very comfortable and relaxed pace of over 11 min/mile.I loved it and will certainly be back.

The only thing is I would not recommend to run there alone as we saw some paw-prints of a mountain lion on the trail.

Here are more pictures from our run:

Morgan Trail Sep-07

FM 21-76: US Army Survival Manual

I found a pretty cool online book today:
US Army Survival Manual FM 21-76
http://www.equipped.com/fm21-76.htm

It covers everything from navigation in a wilderness to snake bites to poisonous fishes and shells to eatable plants and other survival stuff.

They have both HTML version of it
http://www.equipped.com/fm3-0570.htm
and a downloadable PDF
http://www.equipped.com/multiservice_ser_manual_1999.pdf

They also have there a separate brochure about poisonous snakes:
http://www.equipped.com/21-76/appe.pdf

A lot of it might be pretty useful for the folks diagnosed with trail running obsession :)

Rock climbing

Lisa Rands:


Dan Osman:


These rock-climbing clips completely blew my mind away :-)

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