After tackling the XTERRA Point Mugu 18K Trail Race in October, I decided to do the Santa to the Sea Half Marathon in December next. But that left me with two months without races and I got impatient. I was looking through my timeline on the Strava site when I saw that tri-athlete Anthony Grey was in his last weeks of training for the Surfer’s Point Full Marathon. After that I signed up for the half marathon or the race to be held on Nov. 16, 2014.
After the last two weeks of abnormally hot weather on the Central Coast, things finally cooled down and my running heated up some at the 2014 XTERRA Point Mugu 18K trail race. The race took place today, October 12, 2014, at Point Mugu State Park in Malibu, just a few miles south of Oxnard.
I completed the Bulldog 25K trail race this past weekend, August 23 2014. This was my longest and only second trail race.
After doing the XTERRA Malibu Creek race in May, I had started eyeing the Bulldog race and immediately started training for it. I took a bit of circuitous route though, doing a series of 5K races including the Father’s Day race and three of the “Boogie Nights” races that were held on Wednesday afternoons near Surfer’s Point in Ventura.
I ran the XTERRA Malibu Creek Challenge 22K Trail Run on Saturday and it was hot. The good news was that it wasn’t as hot as it had been all week (high 90’s and low 100’s) but it was still plenty hot in the high 80’s.
This past Sunday I went out for a run/hike at Malibu Creek State Park, next to Calabasas. No I didn’t see Justin Bieber but I did have a fancy Porche tailgaiting me as I tried to find the park entrance.
The Ojai Half Marathon was my second half marathon, the first being the Santa To The Sea race in December. The Santa To The Sea was on a very flat course with an elevation loss but the Ojai race features a bounty of rolling hills.
I did the Camarillo Duathlon race yesterday and things went well. This was the third and last of the year’s Camarillo Duathlon Series 2014.
Unlike the first time I did the Duathlon Series last October, I trained for this one. After the October duathlon I started running regularly, 3 to 4 times a week, and cycled during cross-training days. Although, when I decided to run the December Santa to the Sea Half Marathon, I shifted all my training efforts to running and cycling fell by the wayside.
I’m preparing for the Ojai Half Marathon on April 27 and it’s a hilly course so I’m setting up target mile splits for race day. When I ran my first half marathon this past December it was a very flat course and my main goal was just to finish while keeping an eye on my heart rate.
But once you set up your goal mile splits, you’re going to want to figure out your total time and that’s where I ran into a problem. I’m fairly proficient with Excel but I fumbled around for a good 20 minutes before I started Googling easier ways to accomplish the task without doing it manually.
The solution was Google Drive spreadsheets. To add up mile splits in a spreadsheet:
It was September of last year and I had just met with my doctor. After a few months of exercise and completely shifting my diet, I had controlled my diabetes and had lost 30 pounds.
Four days before the big Bandit Ultra Trail Run race I was at work and felt body aches and had the chills. “Unf***ingbelievable” was my reaction. I knew I was getting sick. It had been many months since I had as much as the sniffles.
