Just came back from Tahoe. Four days of ski and freezing temperatures.
The nice thing about running is that I am in better skiing form. I have more stamina to carry all the equipment from car to station and more strength to ski fast. A night and day difference.
Unfortunately, running has not helped with skills nor prevent a face-first smack-down in hard snow 
At the end of the day, it was a great ski trip. Now, I’m aching all over and nursing a sore throat, stiff neck, painful thighs and wondering when I can re-start the training for Big Sur…
I upgraded WordPress this morning. I did it because it was long overdue (needed security fixes etc) and because I couldn’t sleep in on Christmas morning.
The upgrade was really easy: went to Google and searched for “wordpress upgrade”, selected the first search result found (I _am_ feeling lucky today) and followed the instructions.
The hard part was to copy all the necessary files using the OS X terminal program. I wish there was an easy installer package for Midnight Commander. The web server is still a little slow, though. Maybe it’s time to upgrade to a faster iBook…
P.S.It looks like the editor has some problems. It doesn’t insert paragraph tags… ugh! If I were to manually edit the raw bytes and add in opening and closing paragraph tags, it will work. Until the next time I edit. Then WordPress will remove the tags again! It looks like a new “feature” in the newer versions of WordPress.
I finally managed to link up with the PARC runners at Sawyer Camp. They usually meet at 8am on Saturdays for the long run.
The thing is: they all run faster that I do.
Oh well, the point is not to be faster but to be ready for Big Sur. So I ran mostly at a 10 minute/mile pace for 14 miles. Out to the end of the trail, back again, then out for a mile and back.
This time, I took the effort to properly stretch and massage my legs after the run.
So there is a lot less pain and ache.
Next week, I’ll do another 14 miles and maybe upgrade to 16 miles the week after.
My goal is to keep 14 miles as my base long run mileage: one I would run every weekend if there are no special events I am preparing for.
Running blogs (like this one) are quite common. The question is how often they are updated.
This one seems to be updated pretty often. It looks like the blogger is also from the SF Bay Area.
I also found a website that tries to marry social networking with endurance athletes: athlinks.com.
The concept is really interesting. Socializing is one important part of running. It is always more fun to train and race together. Okay, maybe not “race together” as in running side by side, but at least run in the same event. Then there is always something to talk about for years afterwards.
The scary part about athlinks.com is that all you need to do is to type in your full name and it digs up all the races you have participated in along with your results and age.
Oh yeah, I signed up for both the 5K run at the Palo Alto Baylands on 1st January 2008 and the Kaiser Permanente 1/2 Marathon in February. I am not sure about Pat’s Run this year since it’s one week after Big Sur. But then, I’ll probably in such great form that I’ll finish Big Sur AND do a mile pace PR for Pat’s Run! My goal for 2008 is at least 3 half marathons and 2 marathons. Yeah, I’m insane.