Going Long

This week has been a big week in terms of volume, I’ll have more on that in my next post. What I wanted to share was a great run I had yesterday at the Rancho San Antonio Open Space Preserve. I went out for a three hour run with 10 lbs (some birdseed replaced the pasta we had eaten the day before), and since I’m getting tired of running in the same places I looked for something new – and decided on Rancho, a 10 minute drive away.
What I found was a gem of a park with trails for every purpose. I didn’t bother looking at a map before I started, I figured I would just wander around. My first turn brought me to a trail called “PG&E Trail”, which started climbing along the southern ridge of the park. I could see views of the bay as I got higher, and I congratulated myself on my trail choice. After 30 minutes, however, I started descending, and before I knew it found myself back at the parking lot of the park! So much for my navigational instincts…

Back at the parking lot, with 2 hours of running left, I decided to look at the map. After pondering over it a little, I saw a network of trails leading up to Black Mountain, at 2500 foot climb. That suited me just fine, so off I went.

The first trail was the “Rogue Valley Trail”, a wide dirt trail that meandered through a valley, with view of the hillsides and forests all around. The sun was just rising over Black Mountain to the east, casting its rays on the valley. Soon enough, the trail started its steady climb, turning into the Chamise trail after about 1.5 miles. The Chamise trail had a steeper grade to it, as it climbed the northern side of the valley and brought me to about 1000 feet.

At that point it connected to the Black Mountain trail, which quickly turned into a single track trail under the forest canopy. Since it had rained earlier in the week, the trail was soft, covered with a thin layer of leaves, and there was still moisture lingering around in the trees and bushes. As I climbed higher and higher the air got cooler, and every once in a while I managed to get a glimpse of the sun, until at a certain point, on a section of the trail going north-south, the trees cleared and I got an amazing view of the entire silicon valley, laying below in a slight haze. I could see the outline of most of the bay, and everything from San Jose to what looked like SFO. It was a great view.

At 2300 feet my time ran out, and I had to turn back without getting to the summit, I got back to the parking lot in 3:02 hours, having run just over 17 miles with ~3000 feet of total elevation. Not a bad morning.

I’ll definitely go back in a few weeks to summit the mountain, and next time I’ll take a camera!

Below is an Everytail map of my run,
Enjoy,
E