Before I get to Death Valley, I need to post about the events leading up to it. Basically, the weekend before, I realized I needed to do some kind of training before running a 30k. Friday ended up being mostly a rest day where Josh and I just hung out, ate food, and relaxed (this almost never happens because I am usually driven to be doing something else - such as bodyboarding, running, or climbing. and if I'm not, Josh is. so this was rare and very enjoyable. thanks Josh!). I was going to go running early but we did errands and went shopping instead. By the end of the day, I had to get in a run so I planned on meeting up with some running group in Venice. So I took off, but a little too late. They had left long before I got there. Instead, I made up my own run in the general direction of the Venice Pier (I started before the Santa Monica Pier). It was kind of creepy running on the sidewalk because it was dark and late and people were giving me weird looks. When I turned around, it made sense to run on the beach by the water to avoid running into strange people. It was much, much nicer way down by the water, mostly because there were less fluorescent lights. Plus I could run barefoot. Give me ocean, sky, and sand over crowded city any day. All in all, it was about a 10 mile run and took over 2 hours (lots of looking at things and running in sand).
Saturday, Josh and I went to Malibu Creek to go climbing. We walked over to the back wall and did three climbs we thought were a couple grades easier than they actually were. That was a pleasant surprise. Mostly, we just enjoyed the climbing.
We had been watching the European climbing video "The Fanatic Search" and I think that is why we were able to climb so well (joking...maybe). The routes were just flowing. The area we were climbing in was closed in by wet rock on all sides and required scrambling through a cave, but our wall was dry. After we sent the routes there, we wandered around looking for more fun climbs. I spotted a really hard looking face across the river, so of course Josh had to go try it.
After some interesting scrambling over boulders over a river of running water we made it to the bottom of the climb. Someone had glued a bunch of the holds and spray painted over them. It took us awhile to figure out it was because the rock tended to fall apart. Josh decided to try the coolest looking section and made a ton of progress. It was sweet to see Josh trying hard on a hard route. Unfortunately I didn't get any pics of him actually climbing because the belaying was a little intense.
Josh had to leave before he wanted to because it was getting dark and I was not excited about the prospect of reversing the path we took to get to the climb in the dark. We packed up and made it out to the actual trail before the daylight totally disappeared. The rest of the hike out was in the pitch dark though, but after so much night trail running we were perfectly happy to be wandering along the trails in the empty park (well, empty of people. can't say the same for the frogs and rabbits, of which there were many).
On Sunday, I had every intention of going bodyboarding. Being out of the water for an entire weekend means angry and stressed out me. Unfortunately, I just didn't see anything I really wanted to surf. The last biggish swell (for socal anyway), kind of reminded me of what kinds of waves I used to ride, and that those kind of waves are what I love. There is always joy from just being in the water, but that kind of surf takes it to another level. In the end, I was checking the surf online for the 20th time or so that morning when Sada called and asked if I wanted to go on a run. I had signed up for the Death Valley 30k because I don't like being around for Super Bowl Sunday and usually try to find something fun to do. I didn't have the training though, and me racing distances I haven't trained for can be pretty bad for my body. So I did the responsible thing and went on the run. Granted, I forgot running with Sada means a lot of hours on the trail. We accidentally met up with John and had a great 15+ mi run. It went by fast even though my legs were pretty dead after about 12 miles. We left at 2:30ish, and by the time we got back the sun was setting. I'm glad I got the miles in though so maybe Death Valley will be a little less detrimental to my health.
The week following was pretty intense too. No running monday for once, flew to Denver for work on Tuesday, visited the Denver Bouldering Club to stretch out after flying, worked in Denver on Wednesday, flew back to LA, went to work on Thursday, then off to Death Valley on Friday (next update)!! Denver was nice, but I'd rather be IN the mountains than near them, and wow its far from the ocean. Its confusing to not know exactly where the coast is.
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