This past week was filled with all sorts of unusual events. There were protests in Berkeley and Oakland that shutdown the Downtown BART station Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday evenings, which meant that I had to leave work early on those days if I wanted to get home. Then, you might have heard about this, but a big storm came through the Bay Area on Thursday (a.k.a. #HellaStorm and #Stormaggedon), bringing about 3-4 inches of rain and gusts of up to 70 mph. Schools were cancelled and tons of people worked from home. Not me, though. As much as I wanted to hunker down and stay out of the rain, my work involves working with actual lab equipment in labs, not at home. And to tell the truth, it wasn’t all that bad… or at least, I wasn’t outside for the bad part.
Socially, this was a fun week. On Monday, I had lunch with Mike and Katie (of RaceRaves.com fame) who were in the area visiting family. Mike ran CIM on Sunday, finishing just a second off his PR at the Berlin Marathon 2 months ago. Then, on Friday, I had lunch with Jane, who also ran CIM. For Jane and her husband, CIM was their first full marathon and they did awesome! Friday night was the holiday party hosted by the lab where I did my postdoc — always a good time with those folks. However, I didn’t want to have TOO much fun, because I had an early date with the trails in Saratoga, CA.
And that brings us to this week’s training. Tuesday’s run wasn’t awesome — high HR, tired legs, and low motivation. I churned out 3.9 miles at 11:44/mile. I noticed during Wednesday’s commute that my low back and left hip were hurting/achy — the first time I’ve had that sensation in months. With the big storm coming in on Thursday, I decided to forego a shakeout run at the gym and add another recovery day instead. By Saturday’s trail race – Brazen’s Summit Rock Half Marathon – I was feeling fine and ready to run. I’ll write a recap soon, but I’ll quickly mention that it was a gorgeous but tough race through the redwoods. Despite being my slowest trail half to date, I’ve never felt stronger, both mentally and physically, during a trail half marathon. I finished in 3:05:15 at 14:08/mile (almost 2900′ elevation gain). My legs were very sore last night and this morning, so I went to the gym this morning for an easy 50 minute spin to get the kinks out.
Back to the social highlights of the week: after the race, BT had me, KP, JT, and Cathryn (and her boys) over for brunch. BT made 3 (3!!!) quiches, which were delicious and totally worth taking 2 Lactaid pills. 😉 Rounding out the scrumptious lunch were Cat’s lentil soup and JT’s apple bundt cake. More important than the food was the company. I’m so happy to have met these wonderful women through running/social media and even happier to call them my friends.
On that sentimental note… I’ll sign off now. Have a great week everyone!
Group photo from Saturday’s brunch, courtesy of Cathryn.
Howdy! My name is Jen and I live in the San Francisco Bay Area. I like to eat, run, and blog, but not usually at the same time.
Running Tangents 
I’m glad your body was up for that trail half…running through redwoods is always awesome. I’m also glad the storm didn’t mess with you. I was glad the kids’ schools were all cancelled. Our commute is brutal even when the weather is nice. I saw a pic of the Ashby exit (the one we take) and the water level was almost as high as a car (you could just see the roof above the water line)! Sounds like you all had a fun brunch 🙂
I’m also glad for you that school was cancelled. You’re a saint for driving so much — I’d go batshit in 3 days of that kind of school commute. See you Saturday!!
I completely agree with this: “I’m so happy to have met these wonderful women through running/social media and even happier to call them my friends” I’m so glad you didn’t freak out when I Internet-stalked you for CIM training runs a couple years ago! .
Thanks for internet-stalking me and having the courage to actually send me that first email! It’s worked out wonderfully!
I’ve never seen you so slushy before! Have you been drinking?
Seriously…ditto. SO glad we’re all friends. The internet has many faults but it can bring people together wonderfully. x
Haha, well, I *am* quite a lightweight these days. 😉
Hooray for running friends, really. How was your commute on Stormageddon? Glad y’all are OK!
Also, looking forward to your race recap! (I’m always a bit nervous running forested trails during/ after a massive storm – a couple weeks ago I was at a trail with some friends and it just got darker and darker and darker and started to pour; as we were running we heard a massive CRACK from behind us and were all ‘oh crud’ and got the heck out of there!)
My commute was easy because 2/3 of the people who normally take the BART (our metro) decided to stay home, and none of my stations were flooded or lost power. I was also armed with knee high rain boots and my boyfriend’s giant umbrella.
As for the trails, they were in surprisingly good shape. There were only 2-3 short sections of mud, and 1 small fallen tree — nothing as dangerous as I had feared.
I’ve never seen the redwoods and a trail race there sounds incredible. 2900 elevation gain is no joke though! I bet the views were amazing.
I thought about you and a few other Cali people with all the weather news. I must have missed the #HellaStorm hashtag though, ha. Glad you stayed safe!
OMG, you’ve never seen redwoods? You HAVE to come out and do a Bay Area blogger tour — there are so many amazing trails out here. The funny thing about this race is that despite the climbs, there were no views…at least none that I noticed. We were deep in the forest. The best part of the course was the single track trail through the woods — makes you feel like an awesome trail runner.