Week 44, 2012: St Joseph's Open Regional Space & Almaden Quicksilver County park

On Monday evening I went for a hike with Miguel and some of his friends. We went to Mission Peak. It was essentially the first time I hiked in the dark, but with the full moon I have to say it was very pleasant. We climbed to the top, had some food and wine there and then came back. Nice one!

On Tuesday I did my fast run and managed to make it substantially faster than last week, averaging 4:30min/km. The route is becoming a routine for me: 6km out and back along the bay with the first short stretch on asphalt and then mostly on dirt/gravel; whole thing completely flat. It becomes my landmark route for the fast runs, which is nice as the results should be comparable.

What is less nice is that my training seems to resemble a careful balancing act; most of the time I'm borderline injured (my shins acting up) and have to tread carefully, so to speak. That was the main reason why I canceled the second planned run on Tuesday. Was considering making up for it on Wednesday but gave up on that idea too. At least I stuck to my gym routine.

As usual the highlights came on weekend. On Saturday I decided to hit the Sierra Azul Open Space Preserve. I actually made a mistake and ended up in the neighboring St Joseph's Regional Open Space. That might have been fortunate as I ended up doing a very short, 12K, run and I managed to visit every nook and cranny of this small park, whereas I wouldn't even make a dent in the big Sierra Azul -- next time. Part of the reason why I kept my run so short was that I didn't have much time. But part, worrying part, was because I didn't really feel like running more. Looks like a general tiredness started to sip in into my training and it seems I needed to make it an easier week.

Still, on Sunday I decided to go to the Almaden Quicksilver County Park, located on the grounds of the former mercury mine. It's a fairly big park and I was hoping to see most of it but yet again (as usual) I left much later than planned and moreover my running grogginess was still with me. I ended up doing only 21k, one of my shortest long weekend runs here.

Oh well, I guess I needed to take it easy this week, which I certainly did with only 4 runs and a total of 62km. Anyway, there will be other opportunities to finish exploring the Almaden Quicksilver, which by the way was a very pleasant place for running (photos in this post mixed from Saturday and Sunday runs). Hopefully I will get back my energy next week.

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