8 Miles at the Stanford Dish
Well it has been a few weeks since we last posted about our running, an update is long overdue. Sean and I have been keeping up with our training, and have been consistently running 4-6 miles every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. Even though we have had to miss a few track nights we have gotten up early to run four miles instead to make sure we keep our endurance up. On Saturday we accomplished our most impressive feat to date. We ran 8 miles from a couple miles past the Alpine Road exit off 280, over the foothills to the top at the Stanford Dish, down the backside of the foothills almost to Page Mill Road at Stanford, then all the way back up the hills to the dish and back to 280. We truly couldn't believe that we finished ourselves. I was actually pretty psyched out for the run, I had heard that the hills were ridiculous. As such, I was imagining some of the most treacherous climbs in San Francisco as what we would be up against. Frankly we were told that there were two huge hills that matched those we would be running in San Francisco for Nike and then numerous rolling hills throughout the run. Because of this, I was expecting the worst, and therefore was prepared mentally for the challenge.
The coaches said to just focus ten feet ahead up the hills rather than staring at the top. This is certainly what got me through the climb. I really couldn't believe it when we got to the top because I had anticipated much, much worse. The cardiovascular endurance we have gained was very clear on Saturday. I would have been out of breath just walking these hills a few weeks ago, and now here I was running them. We made it to the top in about forty minutes, and began our descent back down the other side. Imagine my surprise when I realized that the loop went downhill for a couple of miles before it looped back around and started the climb all over again to get back to the satellite dish from the backside! Twenty minutes later we were back at the top again, only to have to run back to 280. It took us nearly two hours to finish and by the end everything below my belly button felt like jello. I'm not sure how Sean managed to drive home, but we felt fantastic that we had finished.
The funniest (scariest?) part of the run is that when you get to the start of the trail you have to go through a gate. The sign on the gate states, "This is a mountain lion habitat". Hmmmmmm..... Check out the view of Silicon Valley including Stanford's Hoover Observation Tower. It was a bit hazy, but you get some perspective on how far up the hills we ran.
