Busy week, vacation around the corner!

With three round trips to San Francisco to attend part of the SemTech conference I, for once, drove more miles than I ran this week. And, no, it was not an option to run to the City. Still, I managed to squeeze three 9-mile runs in the neighborhood and a long 29-mile run this Saturday up to Black Mountain again. Which was still windy and cloudy but not rainy this time. And it's almost mid-June...

Besides long work hours, lot of learning at SemTech and a 60+ mile running week, we had two graduation celebrations this week: Greg transitioning from middle to high school and Alex finishing high school (Baccalaureate celebration on Monday night and graduation celebration at De Anza on Thursday evening). Alex could not be happier to conclude this phase of his life before moving on to College life at Georgetown in August and attend the Walsh School of Foreign Service!

Here is a photo album from my long run, this Saturday. It was great to meet with the Striders at the Stevens Creek Park.

The top of Black Mountain was in the clouds,

but the climb on Stevens Creek Canyon Road and Canyon Trail was sunny. There were quite a few mountain bikers whom I warned about two Rangers out there checking speed (like mountain bikers had speed meters...). On my way up, I stopped to capture all the sorts of flowers blooming along the road and the trail and here is a collage:

The trails were so beautiful with such colors and luxuriant vegetation, I often thought of the luck I have to run on them from my house:

Again, more pictures in my Picasa album.

I had primarily taken my camera to capture the fact that the Stevens Creek reservoir was still full that late in the year, something really unusual. And with the creeks flowing in, that should last for a few more weeks.

We have more water than usual, the South of the country is devastated by floods and Europe by droughts, so much out of balance. Hope this helps creating more awareness for the many things to do to protect our planet and our environment.

This Sunday morning, before the rush of Alex, Jeannie and Jackie's graduation party, I went back to the track at Mountain View High School for another tempo run. I was aiming at 10 miles at 6 minutes/mile pace but, I passed the 5-mile mark in 30:40. With both tired legs and a deserted track, I was not feeling like pushing to hold the pace. But Gabor Bartha, a runner I have met at a few 5 and 10K in the area several years ago, came to run a few laps and that got me re-energized and focused, enough to manage to do a negative split, gaining more than one minute in the next 5 miles and finishing the 40 laps in 59:25. Gabor has had the misfortune of having many injuries of the past 4 years and I invited him to run more on the trails at Rancho and rotate models of shoes.

With that, one more week before our family trip to Croatia; talk to you next time from Central Europe then, and have a great week in the meantime!