A week ago, the up-and-back was the second in a small local trail series, about 30 finishers.  The podium finishes were predictably filled by local runners, but Lance Armstrong took fourth.  The race series is such a low-key affair it would’ve stayed completely under the radar if not for his tweet about it.  It’s a tough course, climbing almost 4000 ft. in a little over 4 miles.  San Ysidro is the only front country trail where the incline alone forces me to walk the whole way up.  Even at a powerhike, I need to pace my walking to hedge against trashing my legs for the steep return.  There are technical segments that slow the descent too, but not as rugged at the moment as upper Romero Canyon Road.  The dry, upper elevations are littered with loose rocks, with blunted angles and more susceptible to erosion, less painful anyway than the shale on Romero Road.  San Ysidro lulls you with the insistent monotony of its demanding ascent to the ridge, switchback after switchback on sandy yellow limestone, but then around a hairpin turn the trail can transform to a stunning red sandstone, great towers of it above you on fire from the sun.  It’s scattered with startling moments of beauty like this.

The surface varies from dark, packed soil, some scrambling on exposed rock, sandy loose stones small and large, and loose gravel with uniform grains about the size of rice.  The climb is not quite even.  The lower two miles meanders a little following San Ysidro creek, and then you climb in earnest for the upper half.  The land becomes more arid; coming down that slope is more skiing than running.  In half a dozen spots, the mountainside is so steep the traverse has almost sheared away.  A few days after the trail race, I could still make out the line that most of the runners had chosen and key foot plants that had given way.  In spite of the rain, the geology here offers little foothold for grasses to anchor the gravel.  A slip down the side would be a fast trip concluding with an exclamation at one of many boulders.  At each of those treacherous crossings, I breathed a little prayer and speculated with some awe if Eric Forte and those behind him had forged the courage and skill to run through there.

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.

On what I’m not sure, but it’s not a PR I’m thinking of.  Maybe I’m missing the chance to see morning fog spill over the mountains in a slow-motion avalanche, while the sun climbs golden and benevolent over the sea.

My habits as a trail runner are very different from the way I run on roads.  On roads, I gather a flood of data: date, time, distance, route, heart rates, effort, time for each mile, cadence, calories, altitude gained and lost, two different algorithms for effort, by heart rate and approximated VO2max by pace… in total 15 independent measurements, a further 30 calculations, trends, and statistics based on those measurements.  The nature of road running permits control, and therefore comparison.  Data can hold meaning.  As a scientist it is anathema to my nature to discard data.

On trails the same data is recorded, but my memories are richer than any number.  As much as I can, I write about my run while I re-fuel in the half hour afterwards.  My thoughts are chiefly about the trail, what I saw, what has changed, where I got lost because I always get lost, and what may remain to be discovered.  There is less of me, and more of the world.  I feel the urge to go farther and faster, not so much for personal satisfaction, but out of fascination — to see, touch, smell more of what could be above, below, around that bend…

Outside the tidy limits bounded by curbs, there is a world that defies control, and my meagre collection of data captures nothing about it.  Performance measures, my own or anyone else’s, taste a bit flat.

This doesn’t make for good racing.  For me a good race effort requires drumming up some aggression.  Aggression I don’t seem to feel for running these days.  I haven’t stopped dreaming about running though; I flit aimlessly around vague ambitions of leaving a tread-print over every trail in the front and back country, top to bottom, but it doesn’t amount to a goal.  I don’t know how many miles that is, how many thousands of feet I’d have to climb, or how many weeks I have to do it.  I’m uncharacteristically content to let those numbers rest in ambiguity.

They say you should make your goals specific, so you can judge your progress towards them and take pride when you’ve achieved them.  I’m not impervious to the sway of ego, but right now my imagination is not captive to self-improvement.  Self-esteem, self-realisation, self-anything seems beside the point.  If I should manage to trek every trail within 50 miles of the mat where I dry my muddy shoes, I’d probably just want to do it again.

There are new water crossings in places where I never even heard flow before, and the creek is running so strongly, its music followed me most of the way.  The wind whistled a counterpoint, joined by the low hum of… swarms of killer bees?  I could hear them from the other side of the ridge.  We heard some a couple of weeks ago in Rattlesnake Canyon, too.  I don’t know what they were so angry about, but I didn’t stick around to verify my supposition that they were precisely killer bees.

It was to be a modest test of my rib.  I wanted fairly simple footing so I’d be able to focus on the form I need to cushion the break.  In my impatience to get back into the hills, I might have been wilfully delusional.  Trail conditions at this time of year are impossible to predict, and really all the slopes in the Santa Ynez mountains are a challenge to run at full lung capacity.  Romero road was more technical than I or my shoes could handle at running speeds.  It turns out that the corners of shale potatoes penetrate the rock plate of my Mountain Masochist trail shoes rather easily.  I also left a little more skin behind.  Honestly, I don’t know if I can afford to replenish my running wardrobe with this sudden fascination for gravity experiments.  This time however, I tucked in my shoulder and offered only the skin off my left elbow.

My rib stayed well protected.  For the most part, I feel hopeful about learning to accommodate it.  Going downhill turns out to be limited by my skill; if I concentrate, my legs can absorb the shock better than they do on asphalt.  Going uphill is limited by the supply of oxygen which isn’t quite what it used to be, but I can work with it for now.

I was surprised to discover how much of a difference my new hydration pack makes.  I’m using a Salomon Advanced Skin S-Lab pack and the snug vest gives my rib a little extra compression which helps with errant footfalls.  With a full reservoir, the pack weighs perhaps 5 lbs. which I dismissed as insignificant.  On my flat, long run last week it was negligible.  I suppose I knew that it would take more energy to lift a pack 2800 feet than to tote it across 18 miles, but I didn’t expect to feel it so emphatically in my calves, quads, hamstrings, hips — more or less everywhere.  They were unanimously sluggish.  I thought this was my cross to bear with a cracked rib, until I noticed my legs felt better after climbing a couple of thousand feet.  By then I’d drained about half of the reservoir.  Now I’m toying with the idea of weighting the pack with a brick and running like that every day.  Hmm, well maybe I’d better heal the rib first…

At the university, it was a little cloudy and damp before I started out, so I didn’t expect much from the views.  From 1800 feet, I could see Santa Barbara and Montecito, misty and distant, the ocean not quite as glittering as it usually is.  Around a canyon and a few hundred feet higher, I saw a marine layer was forming, bubbling up mystically over the water.  Another 20 minutes of climbing, and it had thickened.  There were undulating waves of fog where the sea should be.  The Channel Islands rose up in this snowy ocean, and soft fingers of mist seduced the shore like the tentative caresses of a new lover.

Fractured ribs can take anywhere from 6-8 weeks to heal completely, but I can look forward to less pain over the next 3 weeks.  Ribs can’t be set, and unless the bone is out of alignment there’s no intervention while it heals.  In my case, the fracture is supported by lots of muscles around the chest and shoulders, too.  This is both good and bad.  It’s good for healing the rib in its correct position, but affects how much strength I can exert with my left arm and shoulder.  Attempting a push-up for example, makes my eyes water.

The best part about a cracked rib is that you can do virtually nothing to help or hurt the healing process.  This will infuriate control freaks, but as a reformed one, it’s awesome.  There’s no physical therapy exercises to do, no worries about lingering muscle imbalances that could bite you later.  I find it surprisingly liberating to know that simple pain will protect my rib from my own folly.

Even with twice the recommended dose of NSAID on the label (but still 30% less than what’s allowed under my prescription), inflating my lungs to their fullest extent hurts, and when it hurts with every breath, you either slow down or stop running.  The simplicity of it is beautiful.  Pounding hard with your heel, forefoot, or whatever, it doesn’t matter — all kinds of hard foot strikes hurt.  You learn to do what it takes to mitigate that impact with the muscles in your feet, legs, and hips, or stop running.  You learn to do these things in a matter of a few minutes, refine them continuously while running, and remember those lessons for the next day.  The prospect of pain sharpens the mind — I’ve discovered powers of retention that rival an elephant’s.  I was only half-joking when I wrote once that a cracked rib might be the best training tool to happen to me.

Very little of this trail is runnable for me, but the upper part is especially steep and rocky; it would be tough even for an elite.  Near the top, Scarlet and I looked at each other as we stepped aside for a woman hiking at a brisk clip.  She had a smooth blonde bob, a smart, red hoodie, tailored black bermuda shorts, and a handbag slung over her shoulder.  Amid the multitude of subtly varied shades of green, muted yellow and orange, her red lipstick was startling and vivid, painfully precise.  I thought she might have walked down a short way from the road to take in a little of the trail and was returning to her car at the top.

We took our time scrambling up, savoured our accomplishment at the overlook and began our descent.  Red Lipstick Lady passed us again!  This time we noticed her hiking boots, and serious calves.  Scarlet and I exchanged significant glances; this Lady Who Lunches is a regular on these trails.

About halfway down we were able to run the smoother sections, thrilling in exhilarating speed after hiking for most of the day.  Over the past couple of months, I’ve solidified the habit of taking short, quick strides and leaning slightly forward when going down.  The steepest slopes still intimidate me, but I’m learning.  What I haven’t quite mastered is the technique of smoothly throttling my speed, so I don’t lose too much momentum when I go around or over obstacles.  This requires adjusting both stride rate and length, while choosing the best path to accommodate those adjustments, and of course scanning ahead to plan for what’s coming.  My puny brain has barely enough computational capacity for all this.  We were cruising down a series of switchbacks with just enough rocks to make it fun, without being a complete death trap, when I used a small round stone to pivot and it rolled out of its slot.  Boom!

I went down headlong onto another cluster of rocks farther down.  So much for smooth momentum.  I couldn’t quite get my left shoulder turned fast enough — jammed a volleyball-sized stone into my left pectoral muscle, and my left palm.  I also whacked my left leg on a smaller rock just below the knee at the top of the shin.  I had scrapes from knees to shoulder.  The innocuous one on my palm was particularly annoying.  The damn thing dripped blood on my shorts the rest of the way down.

That was pretty much the extent of it*, there were no stones at my knees or my face.  After walking for a while, I decided the banged up leg was going to get an impressive bruise and nothing more.  I sort of wanted to run again, to get past the face plant but I think my friends worried that inviting more adventure would involve carrying me back to the trailhead.

Our journey wasn’t quite concluded without one more encounter though.  Another blonde came up the trail: shoulder-length locks like cotton candy, this time on a man about the same age as Red Lipstick Lady, perhaps in their fifties.  He wore a black, pinstriped, dress shirt, open at the collar, and black trousers with a gold-buckled belt.  Behind him his companion carried a timid dachshund in her arms like an infant.  We attributed the LA personalities to Scarlet.

*Upon medical examination two days after the crash, it turns out I was right about the shin, but I also fractured a rib, and my left wrist.  Neither of these is critical for running however; I consider the whole excursion a win.

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.

I had decided not to run today, because I didn’t want to, and I don’t have to.  And then, I stepped outside to get some lunch; the ocean was more achingly blue than I’ve ever seen it.  The grass was emphatically thicker, littered with tiny yellow wildflowers.  Boston wears its finest clothes in October.  Washington, D.C. puts on its best dress in April.  Santa Barbara is climbing into her most magnificent gown right now.

I laced up my shoes and loped out to the trail beyond the estuary.  The sea is deeper than the sky.  Against that glittering field of blue, the cliffs are painted in broad strokes with the textures of tall grasses and red-tinged succulents, starkly brilliant chalk, mustard blossoms cheerfully bobbing in the breeze, even small patches of tender green moss.  For twenty-three enchanted strides, a hawk rode the updraft next to me, both of us edging the border of beach and bluff.

Possibly, fever sharpened my vision.  About an hour after my run, my body temperature hit 103.2ºF, but I couldn’t wish for a finer postcard of California to carry back home to the Canadian frost.

The San Marcos Preserve to Tucker’s Grove trail has this latter character.  It rolls up and down across the lower part of the mountain range, through some open chaparral, some woods, has a few water crossings, and a variety of dirt, sand, rocks and roots under foot.  The total ascent is a modest 1300 ft., but the single longest climb is a mere 300ft. It’s still too steep for me to run the whole way, but short enough that I can conceive of a day when I might.  By desert standards, it offers quite a lot of shade, and the earth is soft in this wet season, not at all technical.  Right now, the hills are brilliantly green, sprinkled with cheerful yellow mustard blossoms and purple lupine.  The terrain reminds me of home, but there are differences.  For one, a modest climb brings you above the most wooded areas, which aren’t very dense or frequent.  There are vistas to be earned, and so I keep looking and thinking ahead, over the crest of this hill, around this bend, past this canyon…

Geoff once remarked that trails are best experienced in their entirety, finding a unity — oneness with the whole.  They’re about panorama, and here in southern California, I have to agree.  Partly it’s an awareness that there are hills and mountains to climb.  The openness of the landscape suggests there will be something to see, hinting at a destination even when you’ve never been there before.  Inside a canopy of trees, the oaks aren’t so tall nor so tightly crowded.  The sun filters through, dappling the path, and holds out the hope that you’ll break past  into the light.  My mind is propelled by a momentum ahead of my feet.  I’ve known the environment we run through prods our bodies to elicit strengths that let us move more easily over it, but on these trails I become aware of the influence the land weaves into our thoughts as well.

In order to avoid the mud, people go around into the grassy meadow, or toward the edge of the bluff which is home to flowering succulents.  One end of this section of the trail abuts onto Del Playa, the party hub of UCSB which is home to frat boys and surfer dudes.  They bike with their boards on the trail to get to better surf.  Faculty also live along this trail and they walk with their children in the mornings and evenings.  At the other end of the trail is an elementary school.  Of course, there are also plenty of runners.

Back home, a trail with this much pedestrian traffic would be paved.  I confess I’m ignorant of the ecological or geological reasons why this might be necessary, but I hate paved trails.  To me, that makes it a sidewalk, not a trail.  The plan for this section of the bluff trail is a surface of decomposed granite.  I’m not sure what that is, but it sounds better than pavement.  All this tearing up and re-routing has made the trail much less appealing to run on, but it makes me happy to know there are places such as this, where a mile-long dirt path entirely out of reach to vehicle traffic can be overused by people walking, running, motoring under their own power.

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.

On my long run last weekend, I remembered the ever longer excursions I took one year when I naively thought to train for a spring marathon.  The purpose of very long runs of 18 miles or more is to consume all of the easily available glycogen in your body.  Glycogen is a chain of sugars, and is stored in muscles and the liver for fuel.  As these sources run low, blood sugar drops slightly, and the body tries to do more with less.

It begins at my hands, the fingertips or the top of the thumb, the shivering numbness travels slowly along the upper line of my forearm toward the inside of my elbow.  Then, the back of my arms, a tingling at my shoulders, a passing quiver at the nape of my neck when the wind catches a bit of moisture at the escaped strands of hair. For a time, I can pick up speed for short bursts into the wind to generate more heat, then coast as I turn away to regulate my temperature.  Eventually though, I reach that point when this recourse too, is denied.  Blood and sugar is served only to my deep organs and working muscles.  My goose-pimpled skin, deemed inessential, is on reduced rations.

However, my glycogen is not exhausted yet.  My legs confirm by their relative liveliness that they still hoard some precious fuel.  So it’s necessary to run on.  These final miles of a long run are inevitably frigid.  Adding layers blunts the penetrating bite of the wind but fails to eviscerate this basic animal law: to be deprived of food is to become intimate with cold.  For my long runs, it’s only 20 or 30 minutes, a relatively brief period.  A single time, I was simply too spent to run the last 3/4 of a mile of a 23-mile long run.  I had shuffled for almost two miles before that, and I could not continue.  It was really only ten extra minutes to walk home, but there was nothing larger in my consciousness than crushing dread, that the steely cold gripping my spine would slice deeper.  I didn’t feel any dejection that I had fallen short of my goal.  I bore no anxiety about the marathon, no speculations about what went wrong.  My whole being centred itself on a single, all-consuming drive to find warmth and food, and a convulsive fear that I might not reach it.

Of course, this is really the same drive that inclines us to seek comfort with others in love, friendship and community, to give, receive and feast together.  It roots the symbolism of food with comfort, light with warmth.  In comfortably sheltered circumstances, it’s easy to believe that these are cultural constructions, our prerogative to embrace or cast off, or perhaps a privilege of civilisation for which we ought to be grateful.

The definitions of cold include illness, death, numbness in sensation or emotion, a kind of living death.  Squirrels, raccoons and skunks don’t hibernate in my neighbourhood, partly because food isn’t as scarce in this urban environment.  A steady supply of calories from visitors to the nearby cemetery and parks allow them to withstand winter temperatures.  When I run, I consent to exist briefly as a creature at the mercy of light and dark, warmth and cold.  In this condition, love, and charity, and the reassurance of plenty don’t seem as far removed from the imperative of survival as we like to believe.