California Here We Come

Patti and I have been getting ready for our trip to California. Our packing is almost done. We shipped out our tandem by Fed-Ex on Monday. It should arrive at The Hotel La Rosa in Santa Rosa sometime Friday. Our flight leaves Moline at 8:30 on Saturday and arrives in Oakland around 1:30. Then we have a 2 hour shuttle ride to Santa Rosa.

We had a good training ride on our tandem this past week-end from Moline to Savanna and back. This two day ride was our second annual Muscatine Cycling Club ride. in total we logged about 107 miles. Our overnight at the Granny O'Neal's B & B turned out to be an interesting experience and we will have to stay there again next year.

I am kneeling beside Evan and Patti is to the left of Evan

We have been out 3 times on our mountain bikes since we shipped out our tandem. Monday night we took Evan on our club's ride and put in about 13 miles. Evan was on a trailer bike behind my bike. Then last night I went running with Mark Lofgren at Wildcat Den State Park and ran about 3.5 miles, while Patti bike 9 or 10 miles. Then this evening we road our bikes up to Stockton and back for another 11 miles. We are hoping to get out on the bikes one more time on Friday before we leave on our trip.

The biking portion of our California trip is 6 days and tours through the California Napa and Sonoma Valleys. Then we do some sight seeing in San Francisco for a couple of days. We are going with our good friends Deb & Keith Elliott, who are celebrating their 30'th wedding anniversary.

Wildcat Den 5k Trail Run

This past Saturday I ran the 5k trail run down at Wildcat Den State Park. This was my second year for doing this race. The park is about 3 miles from our house and I often go down to run or walk the trails.

My very first 5k race was ran here last year with a time of 24:55, which was 21st overall and good enough for 1st place in the 50-59 age group. This year I improved on my time and clocked in at 24:22, which was 17th overall, but only good enough for 3rd place. Two faster runners that didn't participate last year, decided to run this year.

This was my 8th race this year and by far the hardest. The uneven terrain and the steep hills back in the park, make for a very challenging run. Out of the 8 races I have 2-1st's, 2-2nd's, 2-3rd's, 1-4th and 1-5th.

Training For Trail Run This Week-end

This Saturday I will be doing the Wildcat Den 5k trail run at the park 2 1/2 miles from my house. This morning and yesterday morning I went down and ran on the trails in the park to get accustomed to the terrain and the inclines. The hill climbing training-both going up and down has given me a good workout.

This will be my 2nd year to do this run. Last year's run was my very first 5k of my racing career. My time last year was 24:55. Compare this time to my last race 3 weeks ago, the Hon 5k, of 21:01, which was my fastest time this year. Trail runs tend to be a good bit slower than runs on pavement, due to the slight amount of sinking your foot does in the ground and less rebound from your foot-step hitting dirt vs. pavement. I would like to get my time down to 24:00 this year. We'll see if I have made this much improvement in 12 months.