Training Log Archive: Lori

Haunted Hills 10k with Sam and Presto! Rex set up another awesome Halloween orienteering race in Piedmont, so Sam, Presto, and I headed over to check it out. We obviously had to dress up for Halloween, so we went as fantastic beasts. Sam was an erumpent, I was a bowtruckle, and Presto was a murtlap. I'm pretty sure absolutely no one at the race had even the tiniest clue of what we were :-).

Anyway, the race was super fun as always. We somehow missed the mass start even though we were right there, so we ended up starting a minute or two late, and then fumbled around for a bit trying to get into the map. There were two sort of obvious orders to take the controls in, and most people seemed to choose the opposite direction, so we were alone for the first 5 or so controls. We eventually caught up to another 10km runner going the same direction as us, who we stuck with for quite a while. The residents of the houses were clearly not sure what to make of us. Some of them just sort of stared at us in confusion. Others were waving or seemed unsure of whether we were actually trick-or-treating :-).

Presto's costume made him quite a bit wider than usual, so he kept getting stuck on trees and bushes and street signs, which was kind of hilarious. He was a really good sport about it, though, and everyone thought he was adorable. Sam and my costumes were mostly just uncomfortably warm. I had the unusual experience of being faster than Sam on the uphills, downhills, and flats by the end of the race. Hopefully his knee will be feeling better soon, although it is sort of nice to not be the one dying on the uphills. Even still, we managed to drop the guy we were running with on the last couple of controls, and came in as the 3rd 10km team. Yay!

Stretching back at home. I was oddly tight, so maybe running in a costume was more of a challenge than it seemed.

Running with Presto after lab! For reasons that are unclear to us, Presto decided to attempt to pull the child gate into the kitchen down today by taking one of Sam's shoes (which Presto accessed by sticking his arm all the way through a hole in the gate and pulling the shoe towards himself), bracing the shoe against the child gate, and then pulling on the part of the shoe that fit through the hole in the gate as hard as he could from the other side. He succeeded in destroying Sam's shoe and bending the metal child gate (which is luckily screwed into the wall). He also clearly attempted this unsuccessfully with my shoes because the laces were all pulled funny and all covered in dog saliva. I have no idea why he has suddenly decided to destroy things, but it is frustrating. I suppose in good news, I guess this means Presto is still as spritely as ever even though he turned 11 earlier this month?? Anyway, the run was nice at least!

C • Presto 2

Normal abs.

Normal stretching.

Running with Presto after lab! Just sort of generally tired from the conference, not like my legs were particularly tired, just sort of feeling slow. Still good to get out, though, and Presto was quite excited to be out and about, so it was a good evening. Also, I managed to escape lab before 7pm, so the whole evening felt very relaxed.

Normal abs.

Normal stretching.

Running with Sam and Presto at Asilomar State Beach! Sam and Presto came to pick me up from the conference so that we could actually have some time together this weekend (silly conferences that go over the weekend...). We were initially planning to run somewhere in Santa Cruz, but it turns out that the Santa Cruz parks are pretty anti-dog, so we decided to just run by Asilomar. I noticed a trail on a map that went in the direction of 17 Mile Drive. I'd never been that way because the trail is a little hard to find, but since we weren't on a conference schedule with a tight running window, we figured we'd check out that direction. For future reference, this is an AWESOME direction to go in :-). We ran to Bird Rock, which was entirely covered in sea lions!!! They were also playing in the water in front of Bird Rock doing jumps and generally being fantastic. We hung out there for a little while watching the sea lions and then turned around and headed back to Asilomar for lunch. Glad to get some relaxing time with Sam and Presto in before heading back to work tomorrow!

Normal stretching back at home.