martinlittle.com:thinkThin

Following on from my last running update, here's the summary for my last two weeks:

• w/c 14th: 15th [8.29km], 17th [14.9km], 19th [8.34km]. TOTAL: 31.53km
• w/c 21st: 22nd [17.83km in the gym], 23rd [9.79km], 24th [10.2km], 26th [37km]. TOTAL: 74.82km

Saturday was my final long run in preparation for London. Previously I've used the BayTrail for running from SFO down to San Mateo and Foster City, which is really nice -- scenic, mostly away from traffic.

I presumed it would be similar heading south (PDF map here), but what a nightmare it turned out to be. After leaving my hotel, I couldn't find out how to get on to the path. Eventually I gave up until I thought I could catch the next point. As far as I can tell, that should have been a river crossing ... which is now closed. In the end, I basically ended up running along the side of a road for most of the time, across some wasteland, over a very overgrown bridge with the steepest entrance & exit which appeared out of nowhere (and on which I met a random guy pulling a trolley with huge cans of paint...), through a yacht yard, along some more roadside until I finally found some nice-r trail to run along ... right beside highway 101.

Nevertheless, the run was solid: 23 miles (I'd been aiming for 22) in 3.5 hours, with about 1 mile cooldown. At the end, I was still feeling OK, but it was getting dark and my legs were a bit tired, so I decided not to take the risk of eating sidewalk or injuring my legs. My training is now officially tapering -- according to the schedule I'm on 12 mile runs for the next two weekends, which is nice.

For now, I'm reading my book and preparing for the big day. It's going to be a lot of fun -- Hazel and I are heading down on Friday afternoon or Saturday morning, and we should be meeting Allan and my rentals over the weekend plus plenty of other friends, then spending a few days doing random Londonshire things. Rockin'!