Trailblazer 2012: back to speed, almost

(For the 10K finishers only interested in their picture, here is my Picasa album.)

Some will say it was hot (it reached 99F in Cupertino this afternoon!), but the conditions this morning were perfect for celebrating the Stevens Creek Trail at this yearly event organized by the Friends of the Stevens Creek Trail whom I mentioned in my previous post last weekend. Blue sky, no wind and a start at 8:30 am before the heat built up. Not to forgot the perfect organization of Race Director Aaron and his crew of dozen of volunteers. A big thank to all of you for giving your time on a Sunday morning for such a good cause: raising money for the maintenance and extension of this great trail, and allowing us to have fun running or walking 10 or 5K!

I'm not going to be as prolific as for my ultra race reports. Sprinting for 6 miles on a flat course isn't the source of much inspiration or suspense... ;-) Defending champion, Jose Pina Sr. took the lead right off the starting line and would not let anyone challenge him this year. I was in 5th by the end of the first mile despite a 5:20 min/mile pace, phew! I'm still recovering from my shoulder fracture of mid-June and returned to the track only 3 weeks ago for some speed work with Bob and Jeremy. My fastest mile was 5:27 in our repeats last week, so I was really not sure what to expect today. I passed the 2-mile mark in 11:04, I was indeed not able to maintain a 5:20 or even a 5:30 pace. But I kept pushing, so much that, by mile 4, I was just 18 seconds behind the 2nd runner who had a stride almost twice as long as mine. I lost 4 seconds at a trail intersection around the golf maintenance area, not seeing where we should go and wasn't able to close the gap in the last mile. It wasn't the breathing or the legs which prevented me to go faster, more a lack of motivation to really push harder, like in 2007 when both Jose and I broke 34 minutes. I finished in 35:21, my slowest time on this course if we exclude 2009 when I ran 37:42 after I had placed 2nd at Sierra Nevada double marathon (52 hilly miles) the day before... Not such an excuse today!

With almost 1 minute of margin, and an amazing regularity, Jose won the 10K, a few minutes after his son, Jose Pina Jr won the 5K in a remarkable 16:01! (And his second boy won the under 12 age group in the 5K!) They certainly deserved taking home the two Microsoft Kinects, they will make some friends happy! Jose Sr. has won this race 4 times now (2007, 2008, 2011, 2012) and placed 2nd twice (2005, 2009), he dominates this event! I won 3 editions (2004, 2006, 2011) and getting too old for hoping for more... ;-)

So, that was participation number 8 in 11 years for me, and I look forward to coming back to this nice speed test as I now focus on ultra trail. After a long (!) award ceremony and drawing with many prizes thanks to the generous and numerous sponsors, I thanked Aaron for putting up such a great event and then went on a 17-mile run through the Palo Alto Baylands, at a much slower 7:15 pace this time.

Right after my 10K finish, I grabbed my camera and took more than 200 pictures of the 10K finishers (sorry, 5K finishers, that was already a lot of pictures...). See my Picasa album, I hope I didn't miss you (I think I missed less than 10...). By the way, Mark, I did catch you, see IMG_4820.JPG!

Here are a few picks (sorry for the Brooks bias, that's my sponsor... ;-).

We have another winner!

Not in the race, but would not miss this opportunity for some advertising! ;-)

French touch (t-shirt)... with Brooks shoes ;-)

Brooks PureConnect and great POSE posture (note the landing on the ball of the foot); minimalist running 101:

Carpooling... "Dad, we eat and you push harder, please, ok?"

Pure joy (Running Happy in Brooks PureCadence):

Another Pure... purple and pink!

The Brooks sisters:

Pure Laugh in Brooks PureGrit

Another "Brooks Run Happy" camper and lucky bib 1 number!

"Hey, Mom and Dad, I can run 10K too!"

What was that??!! ;-)

"Oops, honey, did you lose one of the kids??!!"

Yes, Run Happy in Brooks, you rock! ;-)

Take to the Trail: on the front page!

No, I didn't make the front page of any magazine, but trail walking and running made it to the front page of our local Cupertino Courrier! I remember a conference I gave 6 years ago at a networking event about the treasures of our local park system and one attendee asking me "oh so, really, we can venture in these parks and hills?" Yes, everybody can, and mostly for free, a benefit that many overlooked so far. So much that it's great to see a newspaper covering the topic.

Now, it's not the best kept secret either, at least for our local Rancho San Antonio County Park in Cupertino. It has been months since I drove there and was astonished to see the parking lots full by 6:40 am this Saturday morning! And even more surprised to pass runners on Chamise on my way up to Black Mountain. We have this rotating Saturday morning trail runs which, every 4 weeks starts at Rhus Ridge, on the other side of the Park. This morning, the group was quite small and I met Penny, Lina and Chris near the top of the steep climb from the Rhus Ridge entrance and minuscule parking lot, while I started from the main lot.

Nice opportunity to catch up with them before I took off after the Black Mountain camp ground (yes, very few people know about the existence of this camping opportunity at 2,800 feet above the Valley). I went on for the long version of this monthly circuit, even adding the 0.9-mile Panorama Trail loop, thinking of Charles Stevens who was always keen to go a little further...

From the top of Black Mountain where my average pace topped 11:30 min/mile after the long climb, I got the pace down to 9:37 at the bottom of the Rhus Ridge "wall", at the 24-mile mark. Albeit slowly, in what Hal Koerner would call the diesel mode, I was able to run the entire climb and only lost 4 seconds of that average pace which I quickly regained in the last 6 miles, to finish a 31.1-mile and 5,100-feet cumulative elevation loop in 4:49:25 (9:22 pace).

See a few more pictures in my Picasa album.

Back to the Cupertino Courier article (and likely an article shared by sisters publications through the Mid-Peninsula), it highlights a few great running and hiking places indeed:

1. Rancho San Antonio: amazing variety of trails. Nice authentic farm, 1 mile from the parking lots. The outside loop is 9.5 miles and includes Rogue and PG&E. You can reach the top of Black Mountain (2,800-feet) via either Chamise Trail (7.5 miles to the top) or a connector at the top of PG&E. As noted above, the parking lots tend to fill-up as soon as the park opens around 6:30 am on weekends!
2. Fremont Older: limited parking but nice view point over Cupertino and the Bay. Connects to the Stevens Creek County Park.
3. Stevens Creek County Park: this is the "headquarters" of our Stevens Creek Striders running club in Cupertino. You can join the group on Saturday mornings at 8:30, check the club website.
4. Stevens Creek Trail. Starts in Sunnyvale and gets you all the way to the Palo Alto Baylands through Shoreline in Mountain View. Asphalt bike path from Sunnyvale to Palo Alto. Several drinking fountains on the course. The dream is to connect the Bay to the hills and the Stevens Creek reservoir in particular but it's going to take many more years to get through Cupertino and Los Altos where many properties extend to the creek itself (you can track the progress of the trail development on the Friends of the Stevens Creek Trail website, and also consider joining us for the Trailblazer 5 and 10K races next week!)
5. Saratoga Creek Trail. As the article says, this is a short 1-mile section of trails along the very busy Lawrence Express Way. I would have rather mentioned the newly opened trail sections along Highway 85 and the rail track from Stevens Creek in Cupertino to Winchester Boulevard in Los Gatos, through Saratoga and Campbell.
6. John Christian Greenbelt. For those living in Sunnyvale, it connects to the Baylands Park and Bay Trail along Clabazas Creek Trail.
7. Baylands Park. In the context of this article, it's the Sunnyvale Baylands Park, but Palo Alto has its own Baylands Park near the municipal golf and airport.

Overall, this is a great article to promote the outdoors opportunities in the area, although there are 10 times more throughout the Mid Peninsula, then even more all around the Bay. Included in the article is a mention of the 500-mile which the San Francisco Bay Trail will cover, along the Bay. And more than 500 other miles for the Bay Area Ridge Trail, at the top of the hills surrounding the Bay! And likely at least 1,000 more miles in other parks, that's a lot to explore!

I often said it in this blog, we are so blessed with so many accessible and perfectly maintained parks. See you on the trails then!

PS: on Friday evening, I had the privilege to represent IBM at the 2012 Legends & Leaders gala dinner of the San Jose Silicon Valley Chamber of Commerce and hear an amazing speech from Football legend, Terry Bradshaw (4 super bowls as the Steelers' quarterback, and still a very active figure of this sport). I'm not into football but what an interesting and vocal character, with so many life lessons to share!