Tag: trail running
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The Cross Town Loop
This 13 mile loop route with 2,854 feet of gain barely qualified for the San Gabriel Trails Project. It does, however, include several miles of trail that are, indeed, within the San Gabriel Mountains. Those several miles of the Cross Town Trail in La Cañada’s trail system are what this loop is named after. The […]
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Hawaii: History, Honeycreepers, and the HURT 100 – Part 2
For part 1 of this trip and race report, see here. Two days before the race, we took a trip to Pearl Harbor to visit the USS Arizona Memorial. While Google Maps did a good job of getting us temporarily lost on Honolulu’s confusing roads, we still arrived early and only had to wait a […]
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Hawaii: History, Honeycreepers, and the HURT 100 – Part 1
We look out over the vast Pacific that forms our temporary backyard and watch the sun set as large waves break on the volcanic rock in front of us and Brown Boobies fly northward just offshore. This is our first of ten nights on the island of Oahu. It’s my first time in the state […]
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Cool Clouds in the Verdugos
[Featured image: Downtown Los Angeles as viewed from the Verdugo Mountains on October 16, 2016] Even though I am supposed to be training for January’s HURT 100, I hadn’t run a step in two weeks. Having just come off an extended layoff because of a knee injury, I woke up the next day after running […]
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Make it Count
Dear Angeles Crest 100 newbie, Last Saturday, I stood at the top of 9,407-foot Mount Baden-Powell hoping to view much of the remainder of the San Gabriel Mountains, as well as the Angeles Crest 100 course. Unfortunately, a relatively rare weather phenomenon known as a haboob left the air densely hazy, with visibility much lower […]
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The Running Year That Isn’t
I might as well open here by getting directly to the point: I will not run the two ultra races (Speedgoat 50k and Angeles Crest 100) that remain on my schedule for 2016. This was an extremely difficult decision for me to make, but one that I am certain is correct. My only hesitation in the last […]
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Ken Burton Trail Reborn
Since I began serious trail running in 2010, two of the closer trails to me in the San Gabriel Mountains were only runnable via out-and-back routes. This changed at the start of May when the Ken Burton Trail, closed since the 2009 Station Fire, reopened due to the diligent work of the Mt. Wilson Bicycling […]
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A Theater of the Absurd
Yesterday, I ran the Nirvana Ultra Big Bear 50 mile trail race based out of Rim Nordic ski area in the San Bernardino Mountains. I had some difficulty getting here: After a great start to my training season, I managed to get a pretty significant injury to my right hamstring while, believe it or not, […]
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Waterman Mountain and the Morbid Art of Dead Giants
Yesterday was 22 miles in beautiful weather on what I will call the Waterman Mountain Loop. My previous experience on this mountain was limited to birding on the trails on its lower reaches. On this day, I climbed up the trail starting on the northeast side near Buckhorn Day Use Area and took the out-and-back […]