The Tale of Two Runs

Coming up with a witty title for this post is proving more difficult than I thought.  This weekend was a tale of two runs (and tacos), so I went with the obvious. 

I woke up on Saturday to find that the carbing with red wine that worked so well last weekend, didn't workout as well on the second try.  I ran from our house to Ocean Beach to meet up with the club.  I was planning on running 16 miles on Saturday -- four to Ocean Beach, eight with the club, and four back home.  This didn't happen. 

Taking left turns was extremely painful and the uneven path along Great Highway was giving my tender left ankle more than it could deal with.  So after 12 miles, right on pace I called it quits.

The route, out on Great Highway and back into Golden Gate Park, was alright and the crew was nice but I just wasn't feeling another four miles up hill to get home and neither was my ankle.  So hitched a ride and called it a day. I iced, ate a Sandwich Spot sandwich and watched some IU basketball.

I was getting pretty nervous about the trail run I was leading the next day.  My ankle was really sore and if the uneven path on Great Highway was giving me trouble, I was screwed in the Marin Headlands on Sunday.

In order to get ready for what would be 10 difficult miles on the trails I did what all smart people would do: I went to the Mission to eat tacos and drink beer.  After three tacos and a beer, I was stuffed and we went over to some crazy location on Valencia that transformed from a strange-martini-pub-in-a-box to a strange-night-club-dance-rave.  But it was fun.  But it wasn't exactly relaxing and good to get ready for a run.

Sunday morning I got up did my thing, got the ZipCar, picked up running chum Aleah, and proceed to get lost on our way to the trail head.

View from the top.

When we did get there, I lead the group on a one mile extra excursion around Rodeo Lagoon and then we were off into the hills. It was beautiful and challenging.  The ten mile route lead us up about three miles of uphill before we regrouped to have another mile up.  There were points were we could barely hike up the hills and some down hills were we just flew.

The one thing that wasn't making it challenging was pain in my ankle. This did however contribute to the beauty.

It could have been the shoes, it could have been luck, it could have been my impeccable form.  I am leaning towards luck.

But it was a fantastic 11 mile run and I felt great after.  I had almost no pain and was very excited to keep a 10 minute mile on what was not an easy course.

However, in hopes having absolutely no pain moving forward, I am not running this week.  I am going to bike my miles (average time that I would have spent running will be spent on a bike) and then I will get out there again on Saturday and Sunday.  I should be rested and feeling good in hope of having strong Saturday and Sunday long runs.