San Ysidro Trail

I think of San Ysidro as the plain, neglected sister.  It’s starts out charmingly enough, wooded with impressive rock walls, the rolling melody of tumbling water, and the reward of a high, delicate waterfall for your efforts.  The upper part up to Camino Cielo has some nice views, but on the whole it’s a lot of work — hot and exposed to sun.  Most people stick to the lower part, or use it as a connector to make loops with other, more glamourous front country rivals, like Romero (Trail, not Road) Cold Springs, Buena Vista, or easier ones like McMenemy with equal vistas.

Missing Out

I’ve been adrift without a plan since sometime in late January, without even much in the way of running goals.  It became apparent that I wouldn’t be in Toronto in April when most of my spring races are scheduled.  I managed to find one 10-miler and a trail 25K in Santa Barbara, and then sort of lost steam.  Even before I fractured my rib, I was biding time, waiting to become impatient with the race-shaped hole in my training.  For a while, I was treading water with a two-week cycle of a long run, 3 trail runs, one tempo and one interval workout.  Two weeks felt a little long, so when my injuries allow, I might shorten that cycle to 10 days, but it feels mostly right.

It feels so right that I don’t seem to notice that race-shaped vacuum.  The SBER 25K that I’ve ambitiously registered for is now in doubt, which would normally fill me with anxiety and disappointment.  Not this time.  My biggest frustration is that I can’t run mountain trails if there’s rain in the forecast.  Under other circumstances, I might attempt it, but I can’t take the risk of another fall in slippery conditions.  I’m missing out.

Romero Canyon Road

Imagine a convoy of trucks carrying potatoes spills one load every hundred meters or so, down a fire road in the Montecito mountains.  Potatoes with corners.  Made out of shale.  That was Romero Road a couple of days ago.  It’s normally a wide, degraded dirt road, relatively tame and not too steep, meaning it’s largely runnable for me.  Santa Barbara has received so much rain this winter and spring that the upper part of the road is interrupted by a rock slide every few hundred meters, and in between, an eruption of grasses and scrub oak narrows it to a single track.  One impressive pile-up was crowned by a boulder about the size of an 18-wheeler cab.  I had to turn back about 800ft. short of the crest, but all the slides up to that point were passable with some scrambling.

Cracked Rib

Out of the couple hundred bones in the human body, I feel pretty smart to have fractured an especially convenient one.  I broke the second rib at the left front; it’s less sensitive to expansion of the diaphragm than some of the lower ones, and from its relatively high position on the torso, it can be better protected from the impact of foot strike.  Coughing, sneezing, or giggling feels like a knife twisting for home to the heart, but in the spectrum of possible injuries, it’s giving me much less heartache than any I’ve had from the waist down.

Rattlesnake Canyon Trail

I ran Rattlesnake last weekend with Greg and Scarlet who were visiting from Minnesota, and LA, respectively.  This trail is interesting in that it starts out very green with hops back and forth across Mission Creek, then climbs into dry, loose rock and chaparral, quite exposed to the sun, then goes back into a well-watered, wooded section with a waterfall, virtually all of it climbing up.  It comes to a rugged conclusion at a road with a spectacular view of Santa Barbara’s harbour, the wide blue ocean, and the channel islands offshore.  You earn the view with sweat by coming up the trail, or take a roundabout drive up Gibraltar Rd.

Souvenir

It was supposed to be a mountain trail run, but I wimped out.  I’ve been tired, I didn’t get enough sleep, and for the first time in a long time, I can’t say I was galvanised by the thought of reaching for a summit to see what’s up there.  I didn’t even feel much like moving my legs.

These days, I find myself in a position where I don’t have to run.  I’ve logged fairly steady mileage for a few months, with a good mix of long runs, speed, hills and trails.  My routine pace is a little bit improved, and best of all, running feels easy and smooth every day.  I’ve run so much that I don’t need to push for a while.  For the last month while I’ve been in Santa Barbara, I’ve run chiefly because I couldn’t stop myself.  It is the sort of place that makes me want to break into a trot when I walk from one building to another, just to feel the play of warm air and sun over my skin.

San Marcos Foothills

Santa Barbara is wedged between the ocean and the Santa Ynez mountain range.  The nearest trails climb up, up and up — relentlessly up towards a summit, or another trailhead, which then continues to go up and up to one of the many peaks.  On the east coast, trails cross creeks, rivers, go down into valleys, through forests and meadows, up a knoll and down, and perhaps up again.  Here, descents in the middle of a trail are considered with a residue of resentment as gratuitous, whereas none of the trails I run at home have any summits at all, sometimes not even the suggestion of a destination.  The trails have a start and an end, but in the densely developed northeastern U.S. where I started running, the destination is often the path itself.

Under Construction

Part of the bluff trail that I run almost every day looks like it’s being ripped asunder.  There are bulldozers, men in safety vests and hard hats directing walkers, runners and bicycles.  Young men and women, dressed differently — students, volunteers, they look ecologically conscientious, not like the construction workers — are moving succulents, ground cover, and huge mounds of earth from one side of the path to the other, and re-planting.  Today I noticed a small sign explaining what was happening, the trail is undergoing a face-lift because of trampling from overuse.  In the winter wet season, parts of this trail turn into broad fields of thick, black, sticky mud.  The soil here has natural tar and oil deposits.  Once, I ran through a mud patch and my left shoe stayed planted in the mud while my foot continued blithely on its arc.  At its highest point, I stopped.  Panic-stricken, I teetered on the right foot, trying to deduce what had happened.  I tried to hop to the lost shoe, but of course the right shoe was now trapped, too.  I ultimately escaped the muddy quicksand, but the sock could not be saved.

Drunk on Sensation

Whenever I move, my perception of effort is swamped for a week or two from an overflow of sensory stimulation.  I’m distracted by the bright sunlight, stark shadows.  The smells are familiar, sweet green eucalyptus, sage and laurel, wet salt and seaweed, but they’re sudden and too strong after months of sterile ice and snow.  My feet patter to a different rhythm on rain-softened clay, and my skin all over is flooded by the movement of air, after weeks of being sheltered under layers.
I keep forgetting to run slow and easy.

I ended my long run on trails at the Ellwood Butterfly Preserve.  Thousands of monarch butterflies migrate here for the winter, nest in the eucalyptus trees, and mate.  During the cold nights, their wings are folded and still.  Massive clusters of them cover the trees and look for all the world like leaves, until the sun warms them and they begin to wake up.  Their wings slowly pulse and open revealing brilliant colour and they begin to flit away from the trees, one and then a few at a time.  By mid-morning there are hundreds in the air at once alighting on branches, stems, and if you’re very still, on you.  They chase each other, play, and soar on the updrafts of sea air on the bluffs.
It’s not easy to remember to run slow.

Winter Animals

To run long in the winter is to accept cold as a state of being for that interval.  This is a dirty little secret that outdoor Canadian runners keep to ourselves.  We bear our stoicism to the weather like a patriotic badge, and to admit that running for more than 3 hours in the winter is unpleasant, is to risk derision as a Bad Canadian.  But, it’s true.  No matter how carefully you layer, cover, zip and un-zip vents, it’s impossible to maintain a perfect defence.  There is no triple-layer, technical laminate to shield you from the reality that you will come to know the growth and spread of chill, across your skin and into your bones.  It’s not a terrible, mortal cold, and from a broad perspective, two or three miles at the conclusion of a 3-hour run isn’t very much time, but neither is it avoidable.