Quarantine Day 80. Today was a little different. LOL.
First, as I closed out the day yesterday, I found a bug during final production testing. It turns out that a colleague had checked a few large changes that hadn’t been tested with a GPU.
Fortunately, she was able to propose a fix that got everything working today. Unfortunately, the delay meant that I had to repeat a lot of work.
Other than that, I had a bunch of meetings today, that I don’t quite care to remember. Rather, the main thing I want to remember is this:
Here’re the notes I posted on Strava:
san bruno midnight loop
a moonlit, no-headlamp run/hike adventure with Lucas and Nicole 🙂
Notes:
- I saw plans for this run around 3PM, meaning that I had 6 hours of notice before the run would set off!
- As soon as I saw the (anonymous) EBQB post, I knew it was Lucas who’d post this sort of thing. So I texted him.
- I didn’t know who else would join us. For Midnight Merritt, it was just me and him. This time, Nicole would be joining us. Since she’s new to the running scene, we would go at a mostly relaxed pace. This was more than fine with me because (1) I’m still recovering from my back-to-back 50’s from two weeks ago (more on that later), (2) I don’t usually go fast on trail at night, and (3) I’ve never run these trails before! Unless it’s a race, I’m usually more cautious on unseen trail.
- Because of the relaxed pace, Lucas advised me to bring extra layers. Good call. Whenever we were on exposed ridgeline, we were blasted by west-to-east crosswinds at maybe 20-25mph. Not the worst, but enough for me to have to wear two layers (something I rarely do when running, since I generate so much heat).
- Most of the initial climb (and final descent) was paved. Actually, I didn’t realize how steep it was until the descent (~1300ft over under 2 miles).
- Both ridgelines were mostly rolling, on both Fifield Ridge (west) and Sawyer Ridge (east, where we went down/up Portola and went back to our start via Corol Reef).
- On lighting, the moon during this run was so full and bright that headlamps were hardly necessary. This came as a relief to me because as soon as we started, I realized that the Black Diamond Cosmo headlamp I brought wasn’t working. At first, I thought the batteries were dead. So I replaced them with my spares. With my spares, the lamp still wouldn’t light up. With my backup cycling headlamp/flashlight, it turned out that one of the battery contacts had corroded. Tough. I didn’t tell Lucas or Nicole this, though I’m sure Lucas was probably wondering why I didn’t at least use my headlamp’s red mode for some of the more technical sections.
- Because I wasn’t sure how long we would be out there, I brought a water filter, knowing that we’d be close to the reservoir. I didn’t know how long 1L of fluid would last. But because I didn’t sweat that much (due to the cold), I didn’t have to drink that much water. (Because we were going pretty slowly, I also didn’t have to eat at all!)
- On my recovery status, I said during last week (where I racked up exactly zero miles of running) that I’d continue to recover this weekend. Obviously that’s not happening. I’m definitely back in running shape, but my left hamstring and left calf definitely complained on the way back. I’ll have to continue to work on strengthening them for the foreseeable future.
- After this run was over, I was surprised how awake I was. But I knew that as soon as I stopped moving, I’d immediately fall asleep. And that I did.
I’ll be resting today (Saturday). I’m leaving for Tahoe tonight, though, for yet another project. Given my recovery status, I’m a little concerned I might have a hard time. The route will have 8500ft of vertical gain over 50K, at altitude, at near freezing temps, and not many (if any?) water sources. I’m told going to be a hella scrambling on granite; I won’t have safety gear. This is gonna be fun.
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