California fires: are we there yet?

I thought I'd give you a quick update on several fires in California:

1. the wildfires which started with the thousands of lightnings of June 20,
2. my quad (burning) injury after Skyline,
3. the truck on fire which got us to cancel our trip to LA on Friday night.

First and foremost, the wildfires. Great news: they are all contained but 7 on the Northern part of the State. At some point at the end of June and early July, I had heard pessimistic firemen saying that some fires would have to wait for the first rains to be contained, in October! Glad to see the outlook is more positive. Yet, there are still tens of thousands of acres still at risk as we speak.
You can find this map as well as other up-to-date news on the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection's website.

My second topic is about my burning right quads. I thought I had almost healed on Thursday. It was the 11th day after Skyline and the first one I did not experience pain simply walking or going downstairs. On Friday morning, I gave it a shot with a jog around the block. By the first mile the pain was back, and the quad burning again at the end of the 2 miles. Went for 5.5 miles at Rancho with Max this Saturday evening and it was better (quads heating up after the second mile, and not too bad before going to bed). And another run on Sunday evening, 9 miles this time. Still missing some elasticity in the right quad, which makes me shorten the stride, but making good progress over three days. Despite longer distances each time, pace was respectively 8:18, 7:50, 7:35 min/mile. Will give a few other tries early this week before tapering again before next week's 50K championships (Headlands 50K).

Last, we were supposed to spend the weekend in Los Angeles, to visit one of my nephews who has been invited for a 6-month paid internship by one of the best imaging labs in the world. We left home by 5:30 on Friday afternoon, to get stuck one hour later on highway 152 (Gilroy - Los Banos) in a traffic jam similar to the ones we can experience on highway 80 when snow storms hit Lake Tahoe. 4 hours to drive 10 miles, that was too much and we decided to head back home after we just went through Pacheco pass at 11 pm and realized we had four more hours before reaching our hotel. The reason of the jam was a truck on... fire, earlier that Friday afternoon. Fire had stroked again... By the way, just learned from the web that Pacheco pass is a haunted place, beware of the ghosts!

Well, that's a hot summer, a blazing one! Hope you stay cool on your end. We surely did today, spending several hours at Raging Waters with the boys and a visiting cousin. In the meantime, some ultra party was going on at Leadville (a 100-miler also called "The Race Across the Sky") where snow and freezing temperatures were expected. And running buddy Peter Lubers is attempting to break the speed record on the entire Tahoe Rim Trail (165 miles under 45 hours). Going through a heat wave on Saturday. And with neighbor Michael Kanning updating a semi-live webcast on Peter's blog. Some sort of e-ultra (electronic-ultra)! Different places, different weathers, different temperatures...