Escaping the Daily Routine

Trees, a photo by Wayne-K on Flickr.

A friend sent me an online article about breaking away from the mundane, day-to-day routine and actually making time to do things that are important to you. I would post a link here, but unfortunately I must have deleted the e-mail (I’ll need her to resend it). Anyway, as a result of reading the article, I set out to define the things I would like to do outside of the daily grind. One thing I wanted to do was run another trail race. The last race I ran was a 17km run at Muir Beach in December 2007 (or there about). My friend is an avid trail runner, so I asked her for recommendations. I didn’t want to schedule a race for December because it’s too cold and I wanted something sooner, so I would have motivation to begin my training immediately. She said, “Oh, you could be a pacer for me when I do my 100 miler in August.” After further discussion, I realized I would need to run 20-30 miles, at high altitude, with thousands of feet of elevation gain – clearly not what I had in mind when I asked for a suggested trail run. My four mile, flat runs with the dog were clearly not going to cut it. I would need to significantly increase the distance and intensity of my workouts, or she would be pacing me during the 100 miler.

I resumed my trail running on the Pleasanton Ridge a few weeks ago, but unfortunately developed Achilles Tendinitis. This was clearly caused by increasing my mileage and hill work too quickly. After a week of resting, icing, massaging, stretching, and ibuprofen, I decided to give the ridge another try today. I ran/walked my five mile route, walking up the hills to minimize the strain on my Achilles, and stretching frequently. I also stopped on occasion for some photographs. The afternoon light created nice photo opportunities of the West-facing landscape.

Here are a few photos from my training run today. I love my compact Panasonic LX5 camera and how easy it is to carry on my water bottle belt during my trail runs.