Monthly Summary – February 2013
In February, I raced the Bandit 50k in Simi Valley, my first race since the Bear last September. As I wrote in my race report, I’m happy with how the race went and learned some lessons that I can hopefully carry into the rest of 2013. In the above picture, I’m just finishing the “jump” I did at the finish line – I think the official race photographer got the jump, but the official photos still haven’t been posted. (What’s up with that?)
Last year at this time I was training for the LA Marathon and as a result most of my weekend long runs were on roads. I remember watching people post photos of snowy mountain runs with a little envy. This year, with no road races on the calendar and a few trail races coming up, I’m spending a lot of time in the mountains. And I’ve been getting my share of the snow!
We (Elan, Bodie and I) had a little snow (but awesome sunny conditions) on the trails around Mt. Wilson a couple weekends ago. On that run, when we got to the top of Mt. Wilson, the trail we were hoping take (Rim Trail) was totally covered in snow and we ended up turning back about a mile down because we didn’t know where to go! Here we are at the top of Mt. Wilson before trying the Rim Trail:
Then, last weekend I went back up to Baldy and there we had A LOT of snow (and pretty awful conditions at the top). A group of eight of us got together for this climb up and down Bear Canyon to the summit. The forecast called for strong winds(40-50mph). During the drive out there, we could see snow being blown off the summit and knew the forecast was right! There was snow on the ground pretty much from just above the start in Baldy Village, but nothing too bad until somewhere around 7,500 or 8,000 feet. And from 8,500 or 9,000 to the top, it was deep powder. We were constantly falling through up to our knees and up to our waists from time to time. For most of the climb it was sunny and relatively comfortable with some wind. But the last three-quarters mile or so was definitely not comfortable. The winds were blowing and swirling like crazy, picking up snow and pelting it at our faces. At the summit, the winds were blowing well over 50 miles per hour. I was getting pushed around like crazy up there. It was definitely a little “sketchy”, but it never really felt “dangerous”. I definitely wouldn’t do something like that alone. And I wouldn’t do it without microspikes (we all have Kahtoola MICROspikes and they rock!) This time I wore better gloves and sunglasses and was much happier for both. I doubt I would have made it up to the top without either. It was a friggin’ blast to get up there with a fun bunch of fellow crazies and I’ll be psyched to do it again soon!
Some awesome photos from the day:
Also, Billy finally posted his great video from our January trip to Baldy. At the time, we thought those conditions were bad. That was practical tropical compared to this past weekend! Check out the fun video:
Mt. Baldy Summit (via GoPro) from Billy Yang on Vimeo.
I was planning on running a little more than the 217 miles I ran, but I know that my run volume is on the up-swing. Hopefully March will be another solid month.
I’m happy with my swimming and still having fun doing it. Evan and I swim a ton of 50s, and I’m enjoying that much more than the long, steady swimming I used to do. The other day we did a workout where the main set was 5 rounds of 4×50 + easy 100 (total: 300 meters per set). For the first set, the interval was 55 seconds and I tried to keep each 50 around 50 seconds. For the second set the interval was 1:00 but this time, the first 50 was a sprint, the next 3 were pace (50 seconds). The third set was on 1:05 and the first two 50s were sprint, with the next 2 at 50 seconds. The last set was 4 sprint 50s on 1:15. It was super hard, but super fun!
Finally, I’ve been getting back to yoga. I convinced Elizabeth to try Moksha and she and I have been going together once a week. It’s hard. 🙂
Love the video. I feel like the only person in LA that has not been up Baldy in the past 2 months…but that’s just envy speaking!