Note
Interesting coincidence --
When reading the write-up about the Rochester Marathon, I noticed that the men's half-marathon winner, in a nice time of 1:12, was from Laguna Niguel, California, which was of interest because that's where Cheryl's sister lives, and where I was headed the day after the marathon. The paper noted that he was a 1998 graduate of one of the Greece high schools (Athena?), and that he coached cross country at the Laguna Hills high school.
When I arrived here in California, I started looking around for something interesting to do this coming weekend, either orienteering or running. I found that neither the San Diego orienteering club nor the Los Angeles club had a meet scheduled for this weekend, so I was out of luck on that count. My next try was to see if I could find a running group, kind of like the Oven Door Runners, to join on a run. A quick search turned up a Fleet Feet store about a mile or two from where I'm staying, so I decided to stop in at the store to ask about running groups.
The young man at the store who was working when I stopped in this morning was very helpful, telling me that Fleet Feet had a group than ran Thursday evenings, and another one that ran on Sundays for longer runs. I asked a few questions about the groups, and he gave me some information but then apologized that he wasn't more on top of some of the things I was asking about, and said that he hadn't been paying as much attention to these informal groups for a few weeks because he was coaching cross country at the Laguna Hills high school, and it was a real busy time of the season ...
I then, of course, asked if he was originally from Rochester, and if he was the one who won the Rochester Half Marathon the previous Sunday. He indeed was the one!!
What are the chances that I would have run into him while I was out here?
Walking 1:00:00 [0] 2.5 mi (24:00 / mi) +66ft 23:25 / mi
shoes: Asics Gel Kahana - screw shoes
Estimated total time and distance of three fairly easy walks, while in Joshua Tree National Park or on our way there.
Walking 1:35:00 [2] 3.0 mi (31:40 / mi) +984ft 24:10 / mi
shoes: Asics Gel Kahana - screw shoes
Cheryl and I climbed a relatively small mountatin in Joshua Tree National Park (Mt. Ryan). The peak was around 5400 feet, with a 1.5 miles one-way distance and a bit more than 1000 feet vertical gain. Nice climb, great views, and strenuous enough to actually call it a bit of a workout.
Cheryl was kind of funny -- after a couple of tenths of a mile and about 150 feet of vertical, she was complaining about how hard it was and how there was no way she could make it all the way to the top. So I said, that's fine, let's go as far as she feels like, maybe we could have a goal of going half way, 0.75 miles. She was OK with that. The more we climbed, the more energy she seemed to get, and when we hit the .75 mile mark, I suggested we turn around, but she wanted to go further. Anyway, we wound up getting to the top, and she really had no big problem doing so. It just took a bit of a warmup for her to convince herself that she could do it.