The G Running Diary

Nisene Marks was Nice: 10/27/03

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Saturday was the Seacliff Beach 50K, a new run from Pacific Coast Trail Runs. Ok, I will quote their ad. I was about to call it a race, but they prefer to call them runs. The ad says, "Runs that aren't races in beautiful places." It's catchy. Anyway, Don and I drove over with Steve Reagan, who Don had convinced at the last minute to do the run. It is easier to use races as training runs because someone else figures out the distance for you, and they provide all the food and water you need. Plus, at PCTrail Runs, we get chili afterwards. The start of the race was out on the beach. It was cold in the morning, cold enough that I was wearing pants before starting, but soon warmed up. We expected 90 degree weather because we had been in a warm trend for a few days.

The course went out on the road from the beach, past beach houses, under highway 1, and into the Forest of Nisene Marks. Inside the park, the 50K did three separate loops before returning to the beach. I liked the last loop the best. Since Don and I were taking it easy on this run, we talked a lot of the time, mostly about ZombieRunner. We also talked about the last time we were in the park, which was for my second marathon. It started in the park and went up a fire road for thirteen miles, and then back down. We remembered painful moments on the return trip--I remembered my knees killing me, and Don said he thought he would die. The mountain bikers were not to friendly back then either. When a biker yelled at a runner to get out of the way, he said back, "I've just run 22 miles!"

The bikers didn't seem much better today. We wondered if they were the ones who vandalized the trail markings early on in the course. Not only did they remove ribbons, but they moved them to other places. Some people took wrong turns. When in doubt, follow the map. We took a wrong turn, but soon realized that it didn't match up with the map. Moving right along, the third loop went up the fire road and then turned onto some great single track trail. This route led us past the epicenter of the big one from 1989, Loma Prieta, another event to remember. I never get tired of hearing stories of where people were when it hit. I made Don tell it again.

It seemed like we were back at the start/finish all too soon, even though it had taken us almost eight hours. Don said time flies like molasses or something like that. The weather was perfect on the beach. The post-run food was great, and a bunch of people were just hanging out. Actually, the weather during the run was perfect, too, because we were in the trees the whole time. It never got really hot. I told Wendell it was a perfect running day. This followed my perfect non-running day Friday, when everything went right for me. It was the little things that mattered, like getting a package in the mail, and a city official being easy to deal with. I'm still smiling.