Tozilla's Running World!!: Los Gatos Trail

Showing posts with label Los Gatos Trail. Show all posts

Sunday, May 23, 2010

Weekly Running Log -- Los Gatos Trail 10 miles (05/15/2010)

Good thing about running is, even when all your friends are not available, you could still
run by yourself.
Yi said he wanted to rest today for the race tomorrow. Kai canceled the run in the last minute saying he was not feeling well. So..it was just me....
As long as I could force myself to get up from the warm bed, everthing would be just fine.
Only problem was, when I was heading out, Allison woke up, and found me.
"Daddy, where are you going? , I wanna go with you !! " oops ...
At first, I was going to dump her home, after all, I won't get too much run if I brought her alone.
But on the second thought, it's been a while since I ran with her last time. This kind of chance might be just getting rare in the future.
Okay, I said, let's wake mom up as well..
So, our whole family were heading to the park at last !! what a great start of the weekend.
However, my dream of all three running together soon disappeared, When Allison saw the slide
in the park, she dumped me right away and insisted she wanted to play instead of running..
What a smart girl...sigh...
okay, at least, I brought my wife alone and she didn't like or I should said, she hated running
anyway...
In the end, I was all alone again with my own pace...
It was unusually croweded, a Indian running group just started their run, and there was a race
in Vasona Park. A lot of people on the trail made me to pass them one after another.
Well, to my surprise, my speed increased and I didn't even feel it. Look like I held back to much before, should push myself more on the speed.
I've been trying to adjust my stride since I saw the Chi-Running video, it somewhat helped me, however, my body also started to reject it . I've never had shin pain, but it started to bother me when I tried to increase the speed by increase each stride. It seemed to put more pressure on the legs. Maybe next time, I should use a camera to video my stride for analysis. Somewhere must be not right.
Last two miles, full speed , I thought I could bear with 2 miles of discomfor....
10miles in 1:22:21 , well, my best training time.
Not too bad...

When I got back to the park, Allison was still playing the slide. A lady who we used to met in the park came to talk to me. We chatted a little and she mentioned she was preparing to run the Boston Marathon !! Oh man....she was really good. In my age, to be qullified for Boston Marathon, I had to finish in 3hr 15 mins, and my last record is : 4hr 25 min ...
It's a long way to go..
One funny thing was, she said she was from Taiwan as well, but she didn't look like Taiwanese,
didn't sound like Taiwanese, she didn't even know where the HawLien is....
I didn't know why she would say that...maybe she was living in Taiwan when she was young ?

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Weekly Running Log (0417 _2010)

Los Gatos Trail -- 10 miles running log

Saturday morning again, God knows why the time flies so fast when we are close to 40.
As usual, three of us got together for our routine training run. This
week, 10 miles easy run .
You might wondered, who decided how far we should run? In fact , there
is no such thing as training plan. The number is purely decided by the mood.
Easy pace is used to lure Kai to run with us the full course. Ever
since he got some soar knee, he just closed himself around 8 miles
distance for a long time. Of course, there is no pushing here .. After
all, it was our only healthy interest.

Maybe people were still in their spring break, it was really rare to
find a parking spot available in Campbell park, and today there were a
lot of them. One hand it was good for us to park closer, on the other
hand it seems quite lonely to run with such few people .

After some stretch, we headed into the trail as I leaded the pack.
Since I was the only one with the GPS watch, usually, it's me who controlled
the pace in the first half. I promised Kai that today would be a easy pace run,
therefore, I tried to make it around 9:10-9:20 speed in the beginning, with which
we could still chat. Some experts did suggest runner should do some pre-run stretch after
about first 1 mile jog, it's better to stretch a warm body than a cold one. And what's more important is the post-run stretch, which could prevent some muscle injury. Well, we knew about this, but reluctant to follow.
Hey guys, this was very "unprofessional" !!
Wanna do it next time ?

Around the 2 miles marker, my body started to feel warm, and the tight feeling on my legs was gone. I started to speed up a little bit but still keep an eye on Kai behind me and my watch. All of sudden, Yi was totally left behind for quite a distance. He might not have enough sleep last night, but I was not worry about him at all.
He must had fallen asleep with such a slow pace .ha ha ..

At the 5 miles marker, it was GU time, we all stopped, and refuel with GU gel . It was quite important to us, since we were all empty-stomach. GU gel was quite magical, you could feel it when it was taking effect.
We could run a 8:20-8:30 without gasping, or tiring legs. Plus, it was a little bit downhill on our way back, the gravity also helped to speed up.

I knew it, when we were close 8 miles, Yi started to speed up , and even more in the last mile.
7:19 min/mile on my watch, I tried to keep up with him, even though my legs didn't agree..
Kai arrived around 1 min later, saying, didn't you say "easy pace" for today ?
Ha ha, sorry Kai ...

Compare to last year, our pace did improved by about 1 minute in average. We
used to run 9:50 min/mile , now it was about 8:45 during the first 2
miles warm up, and we could maintain about 8:20 to 8:30 cruise speed.
Push hard on the last 2 miles with 7:30 - 7:40

Now workout was over, it's breakfast time !! We went to try the new Subway breakfast this week
and you know what, it was pretty good and cheap!! Ever since McDonald won big in the breakfast war,
now, everyone jumped in to share the market. Burger King , Starbucks, and Subway...
To tell the truth, it was not something special at all, all they did was to put an egg into their subway sandwich
or you have a choice to change the bread to English Muffin.

This weekend, we'll shift the paved road to kick some dirt in San Antonio Ranch. There is a trail from San Antonio Ranch to Black Mountain. It should be fun. Stay tuned for the running report.

--
Sent from my mobile device

Sunday, April 04, 2010

Los Gatos Trail (04/03/2010)

Los Gatos Trail -- 12 Miles by itaotsai at Garmin Connect - Details

寫在頭前
Shoreline park 算是我們跑步的原點，因為以前住在那附近，所以後來雖然搬到南邊，
我們一開始還是都跑來北邊跑步，後來是實在是跑得有點煩了，因為那裡大部分都是老人跟野鳥，越跑越沒動力，更北邊一點的 Saywer Camp 雖然是美女如雲的跑步地點，但是光是開車就得50分鐘，所以我們就決定試著去找找有沒有別的路線可以跑，在一番搜尋之下，沒想到居然在我家附近就有這麼一條又長，又安全的運動路線。

基本上，Los Gatos Trail 是沿著 Los Gatos Creek 跟17號公路，北從 Willow Glen 附近的 Meridian Street , 南至 Los Gatos 的 Lexington Reservior 水壩，從北邊開始，一路上都是paved road 一直到 Los Gatos Downtown 附近才變成碎石子路，全程大概有10.2英里，
沿路還會穿越兩個公園，加上 trail 兩邊豐富的動物生態，讓這條路線成為南灣最受歡迎的運動休閒的場所，每到週末都是人們攜家帶眷的來這裡運動，沿路上最受歡迎的起點就是 Campbell Park. 因為這裡停車方便，而且公園裡的活動設施又不錯，所以我們也是以這裡為起點，然後往南邊跑，跑到 Lexington 水壩大概有8英里，基本上，除了做馬拉松訓練之外，16英里來回對於跑步應該都是很夠的啦，另一個好處是，這裡的路上有 Mileage Marker , 讓你知道你跑了多遠，對於跑步的人真的很方便。