Awesome ski weekend with a good crew up in South Lake Tahoe and Kirkwood.
We had great snow on both days with blue skies and “warm” weather on Sunday. Arnaud and I took everybody for a whirlwind tour around the mountain to some of our favorite runs. And since we were going hard and the weather was so nice, we had to stop for the picture at the top of chair 10.
That was really close to the perfect ski weekend.
The park closest to home is also our favorite. Rancho San Antonio Open Space Preserve is part of the regional Open Space district and connects to another preserve I mentioned here before: The Monte Bello Open Space Preserve.
While we usually hike the Wildcat loop trail, today, we decided to explore a bit and see how far we could get towards the summit of Black Mountain, where Monte Bello starts. So we got on the Chamise trail and hiked for a while. We ended up in a a beautiful pasture area like we love them before turning around so we would get down to the parking lot before sunset.
We are planning on exploring this preserve a lot more so you will hear more about it soon.
If you have read the previous episodes, you know that as far as running is concerned, this year’s theme is speed. So I have setup a plan to get from point A to point B in less time. As a way to keep me motivated, I have signed up for several half marathons already and will add some more with the goal to run 6 events this year.
The first one this year is new for me but The Kaiser Permanente San Francisco 1/2 Marathon has been going on for 27 years now. While it has been raining the whole week, the sky opened up today and the Sun shined over San Francisco for a beautiful day. Alicia and I made it to the starting line with some time to spare, and we did that looking for the sweat bag drop off “strategically” located half a mile away from the start line. Still, I managed to get to the front of the pack in time for the start.
The point to point route was a net descent and the gently rolling hills helped me get good speed. The view coming out of Franklin drive toward the Old Highway was breathtaking, or was it because I was running at 7min/mile?, and I really enjoyed the whole race.
After a great effort, I crushed my previous 1/2 marathon PR by a bit more than 2 minutes finishing in 1:34:27. I am really happy about that and feel 1:32 is within reach. Next is Santa Cruz in April with the plan to go even faster in that great race I ran under-trained last year.