Quarantine Day 61. A couple years ago, one of my trail running buddies, Ed Cruz, started a weekly trail run. Every Sunday, he’d gather a group of trail runners (mostly affiliated with LMJS). We’d go anywhere he fancied in the East Bay.
As our group grew larger, and the event more regular, he decided we needed a realtime channel to coordinate. Thus, Inspiration Point (the chat) was born, named after Inspiration Point (the staging area), where we’d sometimes meet.
I don’t remember who the “founding” members of the group are, now (I know I was one of them). Originally, our group was small, maybe 5-6 people. Our conversations were limited to Sunday Fun Trails.
But as more people joined, the purpose of our group evolved. Now, the group has 25 people. Conversation happens throughout the day (so much so that some people have dropped off over the years, or clearly unmute only when they have something to say). While we still mostly talk about running, we often talk about other parts of our lives now as well, including weddings and pregnancies, births… and deaths.
In keeping with the Sunday trail run tradition, Ed still asks every Friday: “Weekend checkin: any activities, run on road or trails, or volunteering?” This check-in’s been something that he’s been doing for at least a year.
Now that we can’t meet up in person at all, I feel like this weekly check-in is even more important than ever.
For this weekend’s check-in, I said I’d run to our namesake, Inspiration Point, and run the Tilden Tough Ten.
Run Name: homage to the Tilden Tough Ten
Run Description: which would’ve happened today. Unofficial start at 6:15am was way too early (for me) though!
On the TTT segment — I told myself that I was _not_ racing today, and to take it easy. I ended up running much of it at around threshold. So while I definitely felt like I was putting in work, I didn’t push myself like I did last year (when I was gunning for sub-70 and racing 1-1 with another guy for most of return trip). Surprisingly, I finished in 1:16:51 (7:38 min/mi) today, a sub-80 result! (Only) about 1.5 minutes slower than my first TTT, in 2017!
Other than that segment, I think this was half run, half hike, as usual.
After I was done with this run, I didn’t do much else, other than join the weekly LMJS Racing Team zoom at 4PM and read (I’m currently reading Christian Rudder’s Dataclysm and Stephen King’s On Writing). John, Tammy and I played some Splendor at 8PM, but my play was a bit half-hearted (I’m a little bored of playing online board games now).
Another day in the books.