Adventures in Onionism

I just ran another 50K: PCTR's Redwood Park race. The course was changed slightly from previous years because of the intense rain the last few days. The 10K loop avoided the awesome singletrack of the French trail and stuck to wider trails and fire roads, also reducing the vertical by about 1000' to 4500', I believe. Anyway, I felt pretty good going into the race. My roommate M ran the 20K, so that helped get me psyched even though we didn't run together at all. I started out fast, running most of the ridiculously steep and muddy climb that is right out of the gate, not wanting to get stuck in a big crowd with everybody walking and/or falling down. I did pretty well, passing the first aid station at 8.5K after 53 minutes. The next 11K back to the start/finish aid station always feels long to me, but I finished the first 20K loop in 1:52:35, exactly what I need to break 5:00. I did the altered 10K loop in 59 minutes, putting me at 2:51, and things were still looking goo...

I set a 50K PR today by running the Chabot Trail Run in 5:12:28. With the exception of my right knee, the conditions were pretty much perfect for a long run. I got a decent night's sleep the two previous nights, the temps were in the mid-50's and partly cloudy with no discernible winds. Perhaps most importantly, the course was flat--only 4,243' of climbing as opposed to 5,980' in my previous 5:21 PR at Pirates Cove. So clearly that difference is more than enough to explain away the difference, but I'll take it. My real beef is that since I live in gorgeous year-round trail-running Mecca, running around Lake Chabot is pretty boring compared to the alternatives. I'm not trying to knock the race, because I had a good time, and I love the PCTR folks. I think it's awesome they're creating several new courses this year (Tilden in April! Oops, I'll probably be in the Grand Canyon instead.) However, when your choices are views of Diablo, Tam, the GG Bridge, ...

I just read John Vaillant's The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival . I'd heard good things about it, and I loved his earlier book The Golden Spruce , so not liking this book was especially disappointing. It's half about a tiger that killed a couple guys in Siberia in the mid 90's, and the other half is your typical popular non-fiction smorgasbord of history, science, and Malcolm Gladwell-quality pseudo-science. In the end I found the story of the main tiger pretty underwhelming. The tiger is built up as a super-intelligent being that sought out revenge against those who had previously wronged it. Except in real life the tiger only killed two people, one of which might have shot at it or stolen meat from one of its kills previously, while the other clearly hadn't. The other half of the book is not amazing either. It jumps back and forth (too) frequently between history, geography, ecology, economics, and anthropology of the Russian Far East, some of which...

I figure I'm obligated to watch (and blog about) any movie remotely related to long-distance backpacking, so I went and saw The Way Back , based on Slavomir Rawicz's The Long Walk , today. I didn't like the book, and based on all the reviews I'd read, I didn't expect the movie to be good. I was not disappointed. And by that I mean the reviews were correct; the movie was not good. Coming from Peter Weir, director of Master and Commander , The Truman Show , Dead Poets Society , The Mosquito Coast , and Witness , this was a pretty big misstep. Basically everything about the movie was ham-handed: the dialogue, the characters' relations with one another, even the anti-communist message (the characters escape from a Siberian labor camp and walk across Siberia, Mongolia, and Tibet to their freedom in India.) I was pretty much bored out of my mind and kept watching it just for the scenery, which was good, but not amazing (watch any Zhang Yimou or Ang Lee for better mou...

Skurka's NatGeo article is up.

It was an accident, I swear. Nevertheless, I apologize. Next time I try and do squats with my truck, I will lift with my legs, not you. Now can we be friends again? Love, Garret

There's been a miniature high school reunion going on in Berkeley the last week. That's meant some excellent runs with MRB, as well as a nice hike in Point Reyes yesterday. Views from the Sky Trail Oysters on the half shell at the Marshall store Science

Finished a good run today in perfect time to catch the tail end of the sun setting in the middle of the Golden Gate Bridge (as viewed from Evans Hall), set to John Lennon's Imagine . From Strawberry Canyon it should happen in a couple days. Bringing my camera would be a sensible thing to do. It'll happen again in November, but I assume I won't be hanging out in Evans quite as much.

I signed up or was selected for a few runs recently: the SoCal PCT 50, San Diego 100, and Wasatch 100. In the last week I started running again, using a stopwatch in training for the first time in a long time. I wrote a new post on the invite-only blog.