Rest Days!

These are the days to pursue all the sports one can't do on days one is running, right?

Well, why all the running? After the exciting, fun, and (for me) successful CIM in December I signed up for a couple of races. The main event being the Skyline to the Sea 50k in April.

Anyway, Sundays are supposed to be rest days after a long run on Saturdays.
I took the chance to head up to Kirkwood yesterday, for a day of fantastic skiing, under blue skies. Fortunately the temperatures stayed crisp enough during the day, so that the snow conditions were perfect.

Happy New Year!

It's been a while since I last posted.
Lots of things have been going on, and I won't try to do full reports of all of it, since that's how I fell off the wagon in late summer/fall. But here's a short recap on what I've been up to.

The races mentioned in an earlier post went well, PRing in both of them. I finished the Moonlight 10k in 47:03, about 30 seconds faster than last year. Before the CIM in Sacramento I ran another 10k, the Silicon Valley Turkey Trot in San Jose. At this point the speed workouts had paid off and I further improved my PR to 45:22. The highlight of the 2009 running season was the California International Marathon though. Despite cold temperatures and headwinds for about 18 miles it was an awesome race. Great organization, fast course, plenty of well stocked aid stations... a good experience, allowing me to improve my time from last year's Las Vegas marathon by over 31 minutes. Well, I guess actually training for this race helped a bit as well.
All the running (between 100 and 125 miles/month for Aug, Sep, Oct, and Nov) meant that I didn't get much climbing in except for a trip to the Pinnacles in November.

The day before heading to Germany I managed to get the first day of skiing in for the season.
Northstart at Tahoe was surprinsingly dissapointing... My favorite resort here is still Kirkwood, followed by Squaw Valley.

Speaking of Kirkwood, had a great day there last weekend. After a few warm-up runs Peter and I hit the trees ans chutes, having tons of fun. I'm looking forward to more days like this! Given the huge storm which is moving in to California the skiing conditions should only improve.

What else is on the plate for the near future?
I'll try to keep the running mileage up, aiming for a few races in spring. There will be more culinary adventures with the continued subscription to the CSA box (possibly extended by a subscription to a CSA meat box, depending on the outcome of tonight's cooking experiment). By the way: Food. I have been bad about keeping up with the "Castro Street Challenge", even the list of restaurants there is hopelessly outdated.

I am not big on resolutions, but I'll try to post more regularly again!

San Francisco In Flames! ehhhh... The other way around...

Ugh, I am really behind on my blog posts...
That's what excitement at work, increased running mileage, culinary adventures with the farm box, etc. do. Let's see... What's on the list to write about? My report of the Matterhorn Peak trip, a day trip to Tuolumne with Dan, report for the Regular Route of Fairview with Clement, trip report to Temple Crag and White Mountain. So, yes, I have not been slacking, I just haven't found the time to write something up. Well, I guess I could start with last night's 'Urban Adventure'.

I saw In Flames at the Regency Ballroom in San Fran... a truly awesome show!
The first opening act, The Faceless, was rather un-impressive, but the second band on the bill '3 Inches of Blood' was a lot of fun. These guys just seem to have fun on stage, and don't seem to take themselves to seriously. A excerpt form their webpage:
" There's a reason fans have come to their shows wearing Viking helmets and brandishing both real and plastic swords. Born out of a love for pure metal, weaned on a diet of fantasy and mythology, 3 Inches of Blood have been slaying the infidel and defending the faith for nearly eight years."
This attitude goes well with a sound that reminds me of Judas Priest on speed, or the first Exodus album.
Between the Buried and Me, is an interesting case... great in their instrumental parts, but horrific once the dude starts 'grawling'. Also the blast parts don't really go well with the otherwise atmospheric, Dream Theater-like parts. Today I realized that I saw them before opening a show for Children of Bodom last year. Well... not very memorable I guess...
The headliner In Flames blew everything away though! Their 90 minute set had a good mixture of old material and songs from their last album 'A Sense of Purpose' (one of my favorites-powered my ascent of Mt. Shasta in June).
The setlist:

1. Cloud Connected
2. Embody The Invisible
3. Pinball Map
4. Delight & Angers
5. Disconnected
6. Square Nothing
7. The Hive
8. Drifter
9. Clayman
10. Come Clarity
11. Leeches
12. Alias
13. The Mirror's Truth
14. The Quiet Place
15. Take This Life
16. My Sweet Shadow

Fall races

After getting over the ankle sprain I suffered in March, I've been running regularly again. My weekly mileage is around 30 miles at the moment. In my point of view this is a good time to sign up for some races to help with the motivation. The first race will be the Palo Alto Moonlight Run on October 2, were I'll do the 10K, the second will be the California International Marathon (CIM) in Sacramento on December 6. This will be my second 10k and marathon respectively. Comparing logs from last year to this year I think that both races should be successfull.

101 things in 1001 days

Instead of new years resolutions I made a list of 101 things to do in 1001 days.

I wrote most of it down on Jan 3.
Just figured out that the end date is Oct. 1 2011.

I've aready taken care of a good chunk though :-)

Guest Post: Dan's view of the Matterhorn Peak trip

Ugh... I am lacking behind on posting again!
Until I whip up a report of the trip to Matterhorn Peak, Daniela and I made a few weeks ago here's Dan's report!

Thanks Dan!

July 27 2009

Matterhorn Peak – North Arete

Friday evening, Bjorn and I did the usual rush hour crawl out of the bay area and arrived at a campground just off of Twin Lakes Rd in Bridgeport just about midnight.

Before 6am, we hopped in the car for a short drive to the Twin Lakes trailhead. Our trek started out at 615am. The trail headed through another campground then followed the creek upstream. We passed rushing waterfalls, beautiful wildflowers and enjoyed the views of the mountains surrounding us. Soon we could see our destination in the far, far distance. The path was easy going until we headed away from the creek and up steep sections of rock and boulder field. The going got even harder about 3 hours into the approach when we reached the lake. I, having only a pair of trail runners, had very little grip on the glacier and scree sections which made this approach more difficult then it had to be. Bjorn made quick work of the difficult sections with his trekking poles and solid approach shoes, digging out steps for me to follow in the last steep glacier. I basically crawled the rest of the way up and reached the beginning of the climb at noon.

A pair of very happy climbers was descending the east side and verified we were in the correct place to start to the first pitch. Bjorn led the entire climb, combining the 2^nd and 3^rd pitches to speed things up. Rock quality on the 1^st and 2^nd was shotty but it became increasingly better as we made our way to the summit. We reached the top in good time and I couldn’t have been happier. Thanks to Bjorn, I was able to complete my first “successful” alpine climb. It was about 4p, storms were in the distance, and we made our way off the summit, back to the gear we left at the first belay and got ourselves geared up for the hike back. We knew it would be dark before we arrived at the car and wanted to be passed the lake and hopefully back on well-traveled trail before sundown.

We couldn’t help but create mini rock slides all the way down the scree section to the top of the glacier…that kind of terrain is very tricky and I haven’t mastered a good technique. The glaciers also proved themselves to be just as problematic down as they were going up. After some time of trying to make my way down as if I were descending a ladder (thank god I brought gloves), I said F-it and slid down the whole way on my ass. Oh and by the way, Prana pants are NOT waterproof. Bjorn was making good time above me with his poles and started making incredible time when he slipped, landed on his ass, and zoomed past me heading down to the rocks below. Thankfully we both made it to the boulder fields without injury...only very cold and wet backsides. Shortly after that, we could see the lake and knew the hardest parts of the day were behind us. We followed the trail back to the creek, picked up the pace and made it through most of the remaining boulder hopping before we broke out the headlamps. Arriving back at the car around 1015p, were too tired to do anything but head back to the campground. We were lucky enough to find the same little spot to lay down for a few hours before the alarm went off again for an early start back to the bay area.

Awesome trip and very excited for the next alpine adventure.

A good training's weekend

Ugh! I am way behind on my postings... What a new, exciting job does!

Anyway, a couple of weeks ago I went to Tuolumne Meadows (again!) with Linda. After our successful and quick trip up Cathedral Peak, we figured we'd give the West Ridge of Mount Conness a shot. We left from my place in kind of a rush on Friday night, only to get stuck in traffic on HW680. This was not the last delay of the weekend though: As we stopped at the Taqueria El Algave in Oakdale a couple of hours later, I look down at my feet and see flip-flops... I had forgotten my approach shoes! There goes the plan of an early start the next morning, since a 4-6 hour approach in sandals didn't seem very appealing.
Fortunately the climbing store/ gas station in Tuolumne Meadows had a good deal on 5.10 Tennies, so I wasn't set back too much... We moved the weekend's goal to Sunday, and decided to keep it easy on Saturday. (It was too late to start up Conness after the store opened).
The first objective was Golfer's Route, according to SuperTopo, a great introduction to TM runout climbing. I can only agree to this since it took me a few tries to lead the thing all the way to the top. But ever since I like to come back and enjoy the knobby climbing. This morning however, we found a long line of people at the base of the climb, some obviously intending to set up a TR. Black Widow, a few feet to the right was deserted though, so we hopped on that. Good thing, since I had never done this climb before... By the time we were done, the line at Golfer's had gotten even longer, so we left Low Profile Dome, and headed over to Daff Dome, where I wanted to give Wicked Witch of the West a try. It is a somewhat run-out 5.9, and a felt a bit squeezy at some points, but made it to the anchors alright. After Linda cleaned the anchors and rapped off we did the climb right of WWotW, which seemed a bit easier, and better protected. I don't know the name, though, it's neither in SuperTopo, nor in the Reid guide.
The rest of the day was spent at the beach and having a beer in the meadows before heading to the Mobil Station for dinner. Before hitting the bivy spot we made quick trip the the South Tufas of Mono Lake, where we saw a fantastic sunset. Too bad that the lightning we saw on the horizon caused wildfired in Inyo National Forest...
On Sunday the alarm went off at 4:30AM, in order to give us a good, early start on Conness. Just as I woke up I realized that I felt pretty shitty, but decided to give it a go anyway. By 6AM we were at the parking lot of Sawmill Campground and started hiking in. We were warned that it's a long, steep and confusing approach. All the warnings were correct, as we discovered about three hours later: We had missed a turn off from the trail and ended up in the wrong bowl... After hauling our gear over talus fields, scree slopes and swampy meadows for three hours... At this point we made the best of it, had lunch with a beautiful view and called the day a good workout.
We got back to the car exactly seven hours after we had left.
The West Ridge will have to wait for a bit, but I'll be back!