Choose Strong
For Tim.
I got out of the house at about 6:20am weighing 146.0 lbs
and with a resting heart rate of 45 bpm. Mission Blvd was
packed and I found parking near Subway. 6:38am kicked off
my solo run.
It was cool and cloudy, a typical summer morning in the valley,
and shortly it became misty on the trail. The higher I went,
the denser the fog. After the last oak, my eye glasses were
covered with water and useless. Visibility was about 10 yards
and I ran steadily toward the foot of the summit.
I broke out of the mist halfway to the peak. The sun was
shining brightly in the majestic blue sky and white clouds
floated under me stretching as far as the eye could see. The
ascent took one hour and I stayed for seven min on the
summit where I bumped into a colleague. Each offerred food.
His Nature Valley Oats bar looked healthy. But I told him I
sweated all morning so that I could have a kitkat.
The descent on the Horse Heaven Trail was treacherous and
downright risky in the dense fog without glasses. I almost lost
control a couple of times. Thank God I safely reached the
Stanford Ave trailhead in 33 min. My feet felt good. After a
brief stop for water, I ran two miles along Mission Blvd to my
car and finished loop number one.
I dropped off the jacket at the car and started the second
ascent. By this time, I felt a little rusty. My glutes were
strong, however, and climbing up was again no problem.
After refreshments at the summit, I decided to find out how
long it would take me down on the Mission Peak Trail. That
trail usually had the most traffic and was recently smoothed
out and paved with gravel. To tell the truth, I prefer rugged
terrains such as the summit or the less popular Horse
Heaven. Well-maintained trails took away precious challenges
which were getting rare these days.
You see it everywhere. Yesterday, I chatted with a neighbor
(in his 60s) as I was about to hand-clean my car. He was
wearing some heavy-duty waist-wrap to "protect" his joints.
He expressed great admiration for my friend L who outran his
19-year-old son in the recent Zion 100-miler. And yet I never
saw him hand-cleaning his car or mowing his
great-looking lawn. Those jobs were made easy by the
drive-through car-wash and out-sourced to Mexican labor.
To me, these petty chores were the essential of life and it is
them that protect our joints and muscles from decay and
atrophy due to disuse. Do people realize how good a mobility
exercise kneeling down and hand-scrubbing hardwood
floors provides when they smuggly hand the job over to
iRobots? Or how good a grip and whole-body exercise it is
to hand-wash and squeeze a pair of pants?
My feet felt battered downhill. Again, I kept the strides
small, controlled my gait, and safely arrived at the trailhead.
(It took again about 33 min.) I rinsed my feet with cold
water and went on for the last two miles. It was painful
and reminded me of the last quarter of my marathon four
years ago. But my feet were in much better shape now.
After all, I just came through over 4500 feet of elevation, gain and loss.
OK. After six 12oz-bottles of water and three 42g kitkat,
I finished this morning's 18.5-mile run in 4 hrs 20min.
I did four rounds of Surya Namaskar besides my car, visited the
farmer's market on my way home, cooked a salty, fatty, and
spicy Mapo Tofu and had a great meal. My weight after two
bananas 143.4 lbs.
Yes. I drink only on trailheads and on the summit. I try to enjoy as much as I can, which includes food and water. What's the hurry? :-)
It's true I haven't met anyone else hiking MP in those shoes yet. But I did see regularly a tall guy wearing Vibram Five Fingers jogging down.
暖冬好，你太风趣了，其实我根本不需要知道 7grizzly 的身高和是否戴镜，只要有人从我身边穿着 Xeros跑过去，就可以断定是他了，在MP上基本没人会这么跑步的：））不过，我见了他是否接头需要看具体情况，若他的脚趾破了，需要邦迪，我就肯定会出面了，这叫天知地知，我知他不一定知：））
哦，我明白了，你在跑的时候基本是不喝水的，只是到了trailheads 才会猛喝的。
甲:左手42g kitkat,右手12oz water bottle.
乙:手拿 two bandages:))
再开个玩笑:))新周快乐!
The Xeros don't have a toe-box and therefore certainly prevent nail injuries. The 5mm soles make it easy for the feet to feel the ground and this helps avoiding ankle sprains. The only "drawback" is I can't make large strides going downhill but that has its own merits.
The trailheads all have water fountains and I never have to carry more than 12oz water to the top :-)
这个星期比上个星期多跑了几个miles，大概是因为第二次登顶后基本是原路返回经过 Ohlone College的原因了。Stanford Ave 那边的trail 坡度确实很大，往下奔跑很容易失控，要是不穿你这种鞋，一般的球鞋估计脚趾顶撞在鞋上得痛死了。 Ohlone College 这边的坡度就好不少，但路程会稍微长点。全程喝掉6瓶水说明你的运动量确实大，水也有重量，最起码你每次要携带3瓶水登山。我慢吞吞爬半瓶水都喝不了，看来我的运动量不够，不是在登山而是在逛马路了：）跑一次掉近3磅，确实是很好的减肥运动！
最后登顶的一段路石头很多，也很陡，要多注意安全的，要不脚趾和腿很容易再次受伤，好不容易又开始了你的长跑历程，要小心谨慎：）