A tale of two runs

On a recent road trip to California to visit my oldest daughter at college and explore some colleges for my younger daughter, we spent time in Las Vegas, Anaheim, Pasadena and Cedar City, UT.  En route to California we spent the night in Primm, Nevada.  I don’t think there is such a thing as a bad run, but the eight miles I logged in Primm come close. 

Primm straddles Interstate 15 where it crosses the state border between California and Nevada.  It is named after the original developer of the town, the casino owner Ernest Jay Primm.  We stayed at Whisky Pete’s, so named for the bootlegger Pete MacIntyre.  Three and a half laps around the town gave me eight miles total.  The route was completely flat.  The remarkable thing about the run was the illumination of the neon lights made my early morning run seen like it was mid-day. 

And on we went to Anaheim.  2.5 miles east of the intersection of Harbor and Katella in Anaheim, CA lies a ¼ mile swath of waste land that cuts north and east through LA.  About thirty feet below street level flows the Santa Ana River.  Adjacent to the river is a soft, wide dirt path that parallels the river.  There is an on-ramp to the path located just past the entrance to the Honda Center, where the Mighty Ducks play.  That arena and Angels Stadium which sits a about a half mile away, across Katella, are built upon land reclaimed from that ditch.  I ran seven miles on that path before returning to get ready for a day with the family in The Magic Kingdom. 

This was an unexpected gem of a run, not what you would expect to find in the highly developed satellite of Los Angeles.  Every 20 yards birdhouses perch atop the barbed wire fence posts and the chirps of birds could be heard over the drone of traffic, ever-present, even at 6:00 on a Sunday morning. 

The murmur and splash of the river could be heard as it flowed over rocks.  I have swum in those waters at the mouth of the Santa Ana River, several miles downriver, where it empties into the Pacific Ocean between Newport Beach and Huntington Beach. 

While in the Greater LA area I swam with my old friends of the Fullerton Aquatics Sports Team at the Janet Evans Pool.  I met some new friends at SOCAL Aquatics in Tustin.  I also got a chance to see the Rose Bowl in Pasadena. 

During today’s long run in Cherry Creek State Park, which doubled as a tempo run for me, the topic of the difficulty of running a sub three hour marathon came up.  I have been fortunate to have run three marathons in under three hours and still feel like an interloper in that crowd.  Modesty and decorum necessitate the trite expression “I had a good day.”  While that is a fact, the full truth is a good performance comes after months of focused, dedicated preparation.  A good day, or a questionable course, gives you a few minutes.  A bad day could cost you 20 minutes. 

Do a couple of minutes on either side of the three hour mark change the way you perceive your abilities?  Do you let it dictate your worth as an athlete?  What do the prairie dogs think about as we run past?

Answers to these rhetorical questions tumbled around my mind as I labored through 14 miles at 7:45 / mile pace.  Based on the way I felt, it seemed inconceivable that I was able to run 26.2 miles at any pace, and certainly not at 6:44 / mile which I did at this year’s Colfax Marathon.

In other news, congratulations to the University of Colorado Men’s Team for winning the PAC 12 Cross Country Championships, which were held yesterday in Louisville. 

I registered for next year’s Platte River ½ marathon, so now I have five months to get ready to defend my masters title.