Los Vaqueros Reservoir

First I start you with this gift from the trail. Rock City must love me! The funny thing is I knew when I brushed up against a bare twig what it was as there was a faint stingy-tingle...I had the nerve to say, "I just brushed up against poison oak, but I think I'm immune to it because I'm always walking through stuff and haven't gotten any".  At least it's just this one spot.

 Los Vaqueros  Reservoir

This is looking north at Mt Diablo, the summit is on the left peak.

Inside the interpretive center. We were the only people anywhere to be found.

Bobcat, very common. The guy said he sees them on a regular basis, they come down to drink.

We had to walk up a road to get to the trail head, he already found his stick, a priority at the start of every hike.

Then we headed up. We started at the dam end....that's all there is is a dam. The far end had the marina and docks and more action.

The first half was pretty much just like this the entire way.

Diablo looked so different from here. A factoid- Brazen's 50k ran through the valley down there, then we went up over the ridge on the left.

Trail sandwich, nice and squished. Brian was given some raspberry-key lime jelly at work, it was so good!

Found something I hadnt' seen in many years, kids wanted to know how I knew what it was : )  There's so much they don't know about me.

We saw this pretty large bunny as we were leaving.

There are many many trails to explore, a large section of which are closed right now.  It's a beautiful area, though, with challenging trails!  Fyi, we used the entrance off of Walnut, it cost $4 at the booth, and the booth guy, the sheriff, and the guy at the center all were more than friendly and recommended their favorite routes.

More pictures HERE.

A Run With a View

Just a few pretties from this morning's run -

"Take Me to the River....

Drop me in the water"- Big Mouth Billy Bass
(who knows what I'm talking about....it makes a good "you might be a redneck if you know what this is")
Anyways, here's a few pics from today's adventure mentioned earlier today....after I actually thought about the timing of this run....I think I may have been a bit hard on myself....4.7 miles, climbing 710 feet in 2.35 miles, with 22 creek crossings, in 1:15...with a mid-creek potty break and taking 45 pictures...means when I was actually running it was going at a decent pace : )

This is the paved road leading into the park. My best estimate is that the creek has come down about 12 ft, but it had clearly been up over the road at one point!

So happy to see water in the creek!

A little rock slide.

Wow, this scared me a bit, there's usually a tiny little stream down there...the whole area was flooded.

Creek crossing #1...no I won't post all 22

No, this is not when I went potty

another crossing

This tree looked so strange, it was steaming from the sun.

The deepest one was about knee deep, this wasn't it

If you look close, you can make out a debris line on the far side..it was about 12 of my feet up the trail...It would have been quite a sight to see the creek coming through that high!

This is a spot I normally take a picture of myself in front of the tall reeds...but today they were napping and the creek was flowing over and down into a spill way thingy

Oddly enough, it wasn't until way out here that there was any mud...sticky Diablo suck your shoes off mud.

And this is where I had to turn around. There is a section on the left that looks like trail but is ankle deep mud, the rest of the trail was flowing creek. This section was the out and back on Brazen's Trail Challenge 10k....looked nothing like this.

There's more pictures Here.

Stage Rd is Finally Flowing!

Todays run-

4.7 miles
710 ft of elevation gain

22 creek crossings!!!!

There was some serious fartleking from creek crossing to creek crossing, and it took longer than any 4.7 miler should take, but that's a heck of a lot of creek crossings to cram into 4.7 miles. It was basically run hard from crossing to crossing, but slow down as you approach or you'd slide right in....but the creek was ripping through there!  I went out to the Burma cut up that we ran down during Brazen's Trail Challenge 10k.  I would have gone further, but the creek was up on the trail, and next to it the trail was under ankle deep mud so there was really no where to run.  This was the out and back area we did during Brazen's run...it's totally not recognizable right now. I'll put up pics later this evening, but it was really crazy.  All the reeds in the Pine Meadow area were laying down and had a creek flowing through them and across the trail.  There were lots of branches and boulders and debris on the trail...but oddly enough, other than right at the creek crossings, not much mud. Things were nice and compact.

I've been waiting months for the creek to fill....it delivered big time today!

North Face Endurance Challenge, 2012

Stormy Skies as we crossed the Bay Bridge

We walked up part of the course to get to the start/finish area...most everyone was covered w/mud

This area started off grassy, but took a beating

runners huddled around a fire pit, it was in the 60's so not cold, but once you got wet, it was chilly

It took a minute to find an "official booth", there were a few vendor booths, but not anything that said info, or results, or anything like that, the most official area was in the back of the that white uhaul in the background....but once we found out the kids run was cancelled, we just turned them loose in the mud

they are going to turn up on countless web sites...many, many pictures were taken by other runners and race people

this was after the belly slide at the finish line, they wanted to take some pictures of the kids

Video of the actual belly sliding can be seen here.

The kids had a blast, and we had a blast watching them! No medals for them this year, but lots of good memories were made!

Tomorrow's North Face Races All Cancelled

We drove to Marin today to the North Face Endurance Challenge to find out the kids race had been cancelled today....it in no way prevented us from having a blast, though!!

The finish area was so torn up....really just a mud pit w/ a few fire pits burning to keep finishers warm...most vendors and booths either did not show at all, or packed it up early....it looked nothing like the amazingness of last year....but nor did the weather. Conditions were pretty bad out there today, lots of stories about people struggling to get up trails because the kept sliding backwards, even a few broken bones.  With conditions forecasted to get even worse tonight and tomorrow, they just announced they have cancelled all runs tomorrow - 13.1, 10k, 5k, kids run.

I'll post pictures later tonight...but the kids had a total blast!!  The announcer even introduced them and invited them to do belly slides across the finish line, and of course they did.  The whole area was basically a slip n slide of mud, and of the finishers we saw, at least half either fell on their backsides at the finish line, or just chose to dive face first and slide across.

I know there are disappointed runners out there about tomorrows races, but the trails were thrashed out there today....I can only  imagine what they would be like after the pounding they are supposed to take tonight, not to mention the high wind warnings and flash flooding watches.

Congrats to all who ran  today!!
AND, to all you CIM'ers....have fun tomorrow!!