I tried snowboarding over the President’s Day weekend. I really did. I tried. I even paid good money for private snowboard lessons.

But it looks like snowboarding is not for me. At least not while I am training for Big Sur.

I started off by badly twisting my right ankle.

Beginners start off with one foot in the bindings and one foot out. Obviously, I had to fall in such a way that the board ended up in an unnatural angle with respect to my body…

When the instructor finally told me to put both feet into the bindings, I still fell spectacularly with the board in the wrong angle. This time, I yelled out in pain.

Maybe age has something to do with it: younger people have more flexible joints and so adapt quickly when they fall. No so this old geek…

I think I’ll stick to skiing. At least those skis fall off when I take a tumble, instead of trying to twist this old body in ways to which it can no longer adapt.

I’ve got an 18-miler this weekend. I am not sure if I will be able to run…

Well, sort of…

This is part of my mileage ramp-up to Big Sur in April.

The weather was really nice. It wasn’t too cold when I started off at 9am. The sun was out and it was a little warm when I finished at around mid-day. I’ll probably be sporting a little tan over the next few days.

The first miles were really tough. I ran a 1/2 Marathon last Sunday and was tired after the company ski trip on Friday. Two physio-therapy sessions over the past week added to my general tiredness. I had to stop many times to stretch both legs but in particular, the ITB on my left leg.

My pace picked up only when I hit the up slope at Yosemite Drive/Piedmont Road. I guess the presence of other runners also helped. That’s one limitation of running alone. We had a talk by an entrepreneur yesterday and one of the questions we asked was how he dealt with self-doubt. This is something runners struggle with sometimes, especially on the days when the mind is willing but the body is weak.

Running outbound on Piedmont Road was the highlight of the day. The rest of time, it was slow going. I was able to get an average of 9:30 min/mile pace while doing the 16 milers. Today, I was as slow as 12 min/mile in stretches.

At the end of the day, I managed to complete the 18 miles. This is the most important thing. Unfortunately, I’m just too tired to be happy about it.

I ran the Kaiser Permanente 1/2 Marathon today. On the day before my birthday. That makes 4 half-marathons for when I am/was a 44-year old. That’s not bad when you consider that I started running a single mile in March 2007. 45 will be more interesting as I will be running full marathons. Yay!

The weather has been pretty bad. So I spent most of Friday, Saturday and Sunday checking weather.com . The San Francisco weather didn’t disappoint: it RAINED during the run.

Mark, my postman, who also runs and maintains a run-fanatic mailing list, joined me at my house at 5am. We left in two cars. Mark with me and his uncle, cousin and friend in another.

We arrived at something like 6.10am at the Great Highway. Fortunately, there were already a bunch of people and we just followed the cars in front of us to find the parking.

It was really cold that early in the morning, with the sea wind and all. We were glad to get on the Laidlaw school buses to be transported to the start point.

The weather until about 7.40am was okay: windy and cold but not wet. Then it started to drizzle intermittently. During the run, it rained a little.

The worst part was after the U-turn on the Great Highway: we were running against a really strong and cold head wind. It really sucked the energy out of me.

In the end, I still did a PR of 1:49.43, about 16 seconds faster than Silicon Valley Marathon. The good thing is that I had a strong finish, sprinting the last 20-30 yards.

This run didn’t use chip timing. So my PR was based on my stopwatch. The official clock time was 1.51++.

Anyway, it was a good run.

It’s Superbowl Sunday and the Brand Management professor wanted us to watch the ads. So I basically spent the afternoon on the couch, in front of the TV, with my readings for Monday’s class on the lap and a beer in the hand. Well, several beers…

Hey, I need the calories!