Sunday, April 13, 2008 [12M]

Rancho San Antonio. I was up until 4AM last night, watching an exiting London Marathon, and woke up by 10AM, wanting to get my run in early before hitting the beach in Santa Cruz. I didn't get that much sleep but it was totally worth it, since it turned out to be the best marathon race I've ever watched and arguably one of the best in history. I must say, though, that the coverage sucked. There were 9 guys in the men's race coming through the half in world record pace but more time was spent covering a slow women's race, a sit-and-kick wheel chair race and a british guy finishing over a mile behind the leaders. I made my first attempt to get up at 9 but ended up sleeping in for another hour and I didn't get to Rancho San Antonio until 11. The weather was in the 80s again but a lot more comfortable than yesterday since I was running a bit earlier and I was in the shade for a big part of my run. I started with one of the usual loops, going up Upper Wildcat Canyon trail to Upper High Meadow trail and coming down on Wildcat Loop trail. The park was really crowded since the weather was so nice and I had to dodge people on some of the early trails but the number of people dropped off exponentially with the distance from the entrance. I tried out a couple of new trails near High Meadow and finally added a few miles on the Coyote Trail. Running in Rancho San Antonio is always challenging because of all the hills but I was handling everything fine. I was putting in some good climbs and cruising on the flat and downhill parts. It was amazing how much better I felt compared to a couple of days ago. I would have liked to run 14 or 15 miles today but I had to cut it short since my friends were waiting for me to head to Santa Cruz and I was already running a bit late. I still got a good start to the week, though, and didn't regret spending a beautiful day on the beach.