The G Running Diary

Catching Up: 6/12/03

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I always feel like I am behind. Maybe that comes from running with someone I am always trying to catch up with. In the entry before this one I wrote about anticipation. Readers must have thought that event I was looking forward to was so bad that I died. Well, it was hard, but nobody died. The race I just completed was hard, too. It is Thursday today. Sunday morning at 8:00 am I had just finished running for 24 hours around Lake Nokomis in Minneapolis. I felt good enough this morning to go for a short, slow run around the block.

So what happened back on 5/17/03? Early that morning, Don, Bob Akka, and I set off up the stairs of the Dipsea trail beginning in Mill Valley. In front of us were 16 crossings of the Dipsea, a quadruple quadruple. Why? Well, there is only one answer for that: why not. In November Don and I ran two Dipseas before running the Quad Dipsea. That was 42 miles. Somewhere in Don's mind was the thought of doing 100 miles on the Dipsea. It turned out to be a thought from Bob as well, so we talked some more, chose a date, and now here we were.

In the early morning we could hear many bird calls. I'm terrible at identifying them. The only really obvious one is the robin, which sang on and on. We had some great friends helping us for the first out and back, one with us and the other meeting us at the other side of the Dipsea with a magic aid station. Our pace was slow and even, which was as planned so that we could manage to complete the entire 114 miles in about 40 hours. It's easier to identify birds if you see them and hear them. I heard a whittling noise and stopped to look up--I saw a woodpecker with a bright red flash on its head, working away at a tree.

After the first out-and-back we felt such a sense of accomplishment. We stayed on the 2:30 per leg pace and felt good. Steve Jaber was joining us for the next one. Were we going to have pacers the whole way? The weather was shaping up nicely--probably my favorite conditions. It was warm, but not hot, and based on the temperature at 5:00 am, would not get cold over night. So far everything was fine.