Donner Lake Turkey Trot

Despite not having run for TWO WEEKS (low motivation) and having had a dinner party at our house last night (high interesting-beer quotient), I made it with most of Team Library Dork to the Donner Lake Turkey Trot this morning. Met Slowrunner and HiAltDawg (to use their nicknames for once) in Verdi, and trooped up to Truckee.

Despite living in Reno, the only time I've ever been to Donner Lake was earlier this year, for the Frog Creek Trail Run - and then, I only drove by it. This was to be my real intro to Donner, and fortunately, it was a really nice day.

Cold, though. Had to find sunny spots to stand in waiting for the start, and during the Mashed Potato Mile, the kids' race that preceded the main run:



Those kids took off even faster than I would for a mile run...

Managed to find Gretchen at the start, so another TLD honorary member present. Unfortunately Snowleopard was unable to make it...

We got all lined up - here's Chris angling for position. and Dave coming back...



And off. The first half of the race was on the north side of the lake, heading east. This made for some nice pictures:







At this point, long-term readers of this space are saying "Damn, Turi really needs a camera with image stabilization." Yeah, yeah, accepting donations...

We turned at the state park:



And ran through the parking lots until we came to some sketchy shady uphills:



Got a little slipperier just around the corner from this, actually. Then it mellowed out, though, and was rolling until the finish. I scored the last cocoa Clif Shot and snapped a pic of HiAltDawg finishing:



I ended up finishing in 56:something. Chris got edged and finished second (not that he was stewing about it :) ) and Gretchen was first first female. Fifth year straight, did I hear? Dear god.

Hung out for awards and raffle (in which everyone bt me won something AGAIN, for frick's sake.)

We adjourned to the 50/50 brewery, where we celebrated with a sampler:



I followed Gretchen's lead in having a porter, but brought a growler of Collective Evil home. Which is my excuse for any the typos in this post...

Fall Colors Trail Half Marathon

To wrap up a double race weekend, this morning was the Fall Colors Trail half marathon. I did this race last year with Amber, and we took it really slow - tried to go a little harder this year, since it's the last race in the High Sierra Trail Half Marathon Series. I was the lone member of Team Library Dork here as well, too - Dave and Chris were up at the Run Through the Colors in Nevada City, and Amber was off somewhere checking out new trails with Gretchen.

I think the Daylight Savings change happened at a different time last year - we started in the dark then, but it was nicely light when I got there to register. Still dang cold, though - had a hard time deciding what to wear. Settled on long sleeved shirt over short-sleeve, and gloves. My fingers were still cold for the first couple miles, but the gloves and the long sleeve both came off after awhile.

We started out with a race briefing - lotta information there, as the course had changed slightly from last year. It was well-marked, though, and I don't think anyone had a problem...



Lined up at the start, which already gave us a good view of some colors:



And took off. The course basically goes up the road in the Thomas Creek drainage, does a little out-and back, crosses over to the White's Creek drainage, does another little out-and-back there, then continues back to Timberline Road and finishes with .7 back to the trailhead. Here's the course:



And an elevation profile. I'll spare y'all my pace data on this chart - it's really spiky from all the hill walking...



Here's a shot from the slog up the first big hill - about 3 miles on this road, then another 1.2 on the trail. Heavy legs after that.



After some downhill, we had to cross Thomas Creek to head over the hill to the next drainage. (That meant more climbing.) There was this nice bridge:



I tucked in behind these two (one of whom was named Erica?) and kept pace with them for awhile. They were slightly faster than me on the uphills, but perfect on the downhills. Pretty quickly, we hit an awesome grove of aspen trees, and I couldn't stop snapping pictures. Again, I wish I'd bought a camera with image stabilization, but some usually come out OK. Those that didn't I do a little watercolor filter thing on - see what you think:











Then we popped out into a meadow, and I got this shot. I really like the sun white-out effect:



(Of course, you can click to enlarge any of these, or see them even bigger on my Flickr page...)

The next one got blurry, so I played with it a little again:



Back into the trees for awhile:



A little more climbing and - I love this part - there's Slide Mountain. You can tell what a beautiful day it was...



There was a little downhill, and I had a mountain biker I had to let past, but I did get this shot of a few runners ahead:



There was an aid station, the second out-and-back, and some fun downhill trail back to Timberline road. Nice swoopy trail here, but starting to be more traffic...



Back to the road and just over half a mile to the finish. There were two sneaky little hills in that half mile, though, that were TOUGH. Made it in, though, and my watch said 2:12:38. Didn't get me an age group award like last year - oh, well. I hung around and tried to talk myself into having a hot dog, but couldn't do it.

I eventually asked the RD if he knew anything about the Series standing. He said that the Tahoe Mountain Milers were running the series, so he would just get the results to them and they'd take care of it. I've had a hard time finding out anything about the point system, standings, or anything - it sure would have been nice to have that all spelled out somewhere. I'll wait and see, though. I't a great collection of races, and I still think the trail half marathon is my favorite race to run.

Nike Human Race 10K

Well, it was a free race. Don't see those too often, so, despite having a half marathon to run tomorrow, I headed out to Scheels in Sparks for the Nike Human Race 10K. Since I don't run with any of the Nike+ gear, this wouldn't really count for anything, but it was a free t-shirt, and I was hoping there'd be some nice swag. When Adidas sponsored a run here last year, they had a big demo truck and were handing stuff out left and right. Not so today - I'm sure all the Nike staff were in bigger market areas than Reno.

Less of a turnout than I thought, as well - maybe 100 people at the start? Maybe.



And a really loopy course - Starting at Scheels, we went around the parking lot, halfway around the Marina, out onto city streets, back to the Marina and all the way around it this time, then a shortened loop around the parking lot. My watch measured just under 6 miles, I think the second parking lot loop was shortened because of traffic.



Here's some photos from the race, all available at Flickr:











I didn't realize that the t-shirt actually had the "bib" number on it - I though the number was the date of the race. So that's why everyone was wearing their race shirts. Felt awash in a sea of red sometimes there...

I was trying to keep it slow - and succeeded, for a mile or two. My speed slowly crept up, and I ended averaging 8:00 miles. Here are the splits:
1 - 8:31
2 - 8:29
3 - 8:02
4 - 7:56
5 - 7:44
6 - 7:16

And the graph:



Fun little race - hope it doesn't tire me out too much for tomorrow. Got my recovery socks on...

Toenail TMI

Lotta talk around the running blogs about toenails. Apparently there was a New York Times article about some ultrarunners who have taken the step of having their toenails surgically removed. Scott Dunlap has some good links to that and some other articles at his blog.

I can see why someone would want to do that - my own toenails have been suffering lately. After some serious stubbings at the Lake of The Sky trail marathon, I've had about three black ones developing, as well as one that didn't turn black, but was seriously not right. Well - tonight was apparently their night...

Disclaimer - photos below are not for the squeamish. Not as bad as the Lisa Bliss article that Scott linked to, but extreme feet close-ups. You've been warned.

So, while doing some routine nail maintenance tonight, I noticed that I could slide the file part of the nail clippers right under the nail on the black ones. A little bend back, a tug with some needlenose pliers, and they were off. Tried the same on the other weird one, and it gave it up, too. A fifth nail was headed the same way, but just wouldn't come off, so it got trimmed back to pretty much nothing. Soooo, yeah - basically down to 5 toenails now.

OK, ready? Here's what the aftermath looks like:


Right foot - the second (longest) and forth nail came completely off, and the fifth got cut back.


Left foot - second toenail was the one that didn't turn black, and the third toe went as well.

Catching up

After last weekend's trail run and 10K, I was surprisingly sore for a few days. That and some other factors led to me not being able to drag my butt out of bed to run in the morning yet this week. I celebrated finishing part of a big project at work by taking the afternoon off as a "mental health" day and going for a rare non-morning run.

When I go to races around town, I always think "there are all these runners in Reno? When do they run?" Well, it finally occurs to me - they probably run when it's light out, unlike me and my eeeearly morning training. There sure were a lot of people out jogging around on a Thursday afternoon today. And what a beautiful afternoon it was - high 60's, maybe into the 70's. Pouring sweat by the time I got home from my 6 miles.

This weekend is setting up to be crazy. There's a beer festival on Friday night I'm pretty interested in. Saturday morning is the Nike Human Race, which is a FREE entry 10k. (Hard to pass up, even if just for schwag and deals...) Pumpkin carving party at my brother-in-law's Saturday night. And the Fall Colors Trail Half Marathon on Sunday morning.

Weekend running

Had a pretty full weekend, running-wise, for me. Got out for a 14 mile blind date trail run on Saturday, and a pacer-duty 10K on Sunday.

Saturday I met Adam (introduced through a mutual friend) at his house and drove out to Galena Park. He runs down there a bit, but I've never really been. We did a loop around the outside of the park that totaled 14 miles, but there were so many trail options, you could've done whatever you wanted. I was wearing a long sleeve shirt, and it was too much - super nice morning. Here's a few pics:











Athtough Adam was outpacing me on the initial climb, he was kind enough to slow ans walk the uphills with me. It was really cool to hear about his PCT experiences, thoughts on ultralight gear and stuff. Really fun run. Here's the data from Lumpy:



On Sunday morning I managed to wake up and make it to the Meridian Run for Education, a benefit for the Washoe County School District. I had hoped to interest my 8 year-old into doing the kids 1/2 mile run, but he didn't seem into it, so I just ran the 10K with Team Library Dork member Amber. Dave was also supposed to show up, but was under the weather. Hope he's better for next weekend's Canfest. ;)

Amber pushed it pretty hard and almost got a PR - less than a minute off. It was a perfect run for me, good pace and fairly flat. Although the elevation profile looks strikingly like Saturday's run, pay attention to the scale - less than half of the elevation gain.



Although I didn't bring my camera, Amber took an "after" shot on her phone:



Does my face look like that? A little iPhone distortion, I think...

Anyway, quite a weekend. Thanks for all the friends to run with!

Site address change?

I was thinking about changing the address of this blog from turisrunning.blogspot.com to runningroundreno.blogspot.com - and I think while I was looking to see if it was possible, I went ahead and did it. Can anyone confirm this? Did I disappear from your readers? I guess if I did, you won't be seeing this...