Monthly Rhus Ridge Run

There has been a long tradition running in the Midpeninsula of long runs on Saturday morning with an immuable ritual and roster of 4 locations. I joined this group in March 2006 and learned a lot about ultra running from this very experience and friendly group. Although he has moved to Santa Cruz several years ago, we still receive the weekly email and location from Pierre Tardif every Thursday. With all the racing, work, traveling and family priorities, I now have to skip the ones which are in Woodside (Woodside School, Windy Hill, Wunderlich), but I am always thrilled when I can make the one starting at Rhus Ridge, on the other side of Rancho San Antonio. Actually, to make the long run even longer, I now park at Rancho and join the group at the end of the Rhus Ridge climb (the first plateau on the chart below), on our way to the top of Black Mountain.

I drove to and parked at Rancho at 6:35 and was at the top of the hill (Wind Mill Pasture, 4 miles) at 7:05, just in time to catch the rest of the group. It was pitch dark at the start but all fire road so very runnable in the dark. I stopped on the way up to catch the sunrise in my back.

It was my first group run with my new camera after my previous one died in my snowy fat ass run in December in France. Apparently, with the Canon Powershot SD1300 IS (12.1 mega pixels), Agnès picked the best camera and replacement of my previous Canon Powershot SD700 IS (6.0 mega pixels) but I'm very disappointed with the decrease of shutter speed. I really don't care of the doubled resolution, and actually set my default resolution way down, yet, it takes about a second between the time I press the button and the picture is taken. I could have never done my ultra digithon of Firetrails with such a camera. This Saturday, I got some runners with half their head on the picture, or just an elbow. Need another camera... In the meantime, I posted a few pictures on Picasa; less than usual and more static ones, for the above reason...

Was great to do this long run with this ultra company. A lot of updates about past and upcoming races. Here are, from left to right: Brian, Jean, Craig, Chris, Ed, David, Gary, Mike:

Note that Brooks clearly out numbered other brands 5 to 2 on this picture! And, yes Gary, we know you beat us all in your Innov8... ;-)

It was an interesting week. A good one, running wise, with 62.8 miles not counting last Sunday's 22.7, or 137 miles since January 1. And no more pain in the knee, phew! A very busy one at work which led to 3 nights under 4 hours; a good training for ultra running, yet not a sustainable habit. Thankfully, I caught up with an 11-hr night this weekend! While I was sleeping, Toshi was finishing his first 12-hr race with 73.5 in Morgan Hill. Much further, Mark was battling the clock at H.U.R.T. (Hawai Ultra Running Team) 100-mile, finishing the 5 th lap on this grueling course in 34:54, that is 5 minutes under the cut-off. Phew, that's unusual to see Mark at the bottom of the live web cast, that tells long on the difficulty of this 100-miler.

I still have to do a post to review 2010 and tell you about my 2011 plans; one post at a time... 'Till then, have a good week!