National Running Day: way to celebrate

There are so many things to celebrate in our world today, every day is an opportunity and has its National label! Fortunately we only stop working for the major ones (Veterans' Day, Memorial, Labor, Martin Luther King's, Thanksgiving) but think of those ones: Earth day, Sewing Machine Day (this Thursday!), Juggling Day, Fudge Day, Eat your Vegetable Day.. And many more available for instance at www.daysoftheyear.com. By the way, sorry Chikara, I'm not going to write about this past Saturday's National Doughnut Day which you enjoyed so much per your Facebook status... ;-) Last week, Wednesday was the annual National Running Day. With about 50 million runners in the US, this could almost be a National Holiday! Like most of the previous years (e.g. 2010), I did extend an invitation for a group run to my IBM colleagues. Last year, a handful registered but none showed up. Thankfully Agnès was able to join me and we ran a few miles together at Alviso. This year, 13 positive responses and 3 shows: not an overwhelming response, but still some progress!

Sandy and Sonoko picked the walk option, starting from the Alviso parking lot

while Sumanth and I started running from the office, 1.25 miles away.

Sumanth has already run a half-marathon and is dreaming of pushing to the marathon. We ran the first 3 miles together and I'm very confident he can do it with some specific training. I went on for 2 more miles (10 miles out and back), far enough to see a dozen of pelicans.

Since the ILOG acquisition and our move to the IBM office on North 1st Street, I've run hundreds of miles on the flat levee of this Santa Clara County Park that too few people know about.

The full loop is 9 miles but you can run any distance and see some birds along the salt ponds and the Alviso Slough which allows boats to access the Bay. There is even a Yacht Club with half a dozen docks:

Again, a nice way to celebrate the most practiced sport in North America, running!

I ran every day last week and logged 107 miles after the 106 miles of the previous week. On Saturday, I ran 31.5 miles from Cupertino to Palo Alto, hopping on the Stevens Creek Trail in Sunnyvale, running through Mountain View's Shoreline Park all the way to the Palo Alto Baylands and airport. It was hot and I was happy to clock a 3:11 marathon and 7:14 min/mile average pace overall for this 50K training run.

On Sunday, I went to the top of Black Mountain on Montebello, did the Bellavista loop for a second ascent of Black Mountain (no walking!) and enjoyed a cold shower at the waterwheel on the way back, seeing Hannes and Monique Vogel again, as we had already met the previous weekend!

Sorry for the delay in posting this account of last week's National Running Day. It was a busy weekend finishing up some work projects and packing for Europe. Next post from Portugal then!