This wasn't my first 50k, and it sure won't be my last. But it was quite a memorable one.

My first 50k was back in December 2011, at The North Face Challenge Championships which are held every year in the Marin Headlands. After completing my 30k in 2010, I went on to do really well (for a first time 50k) on The North Face Course. I had a goal of finishing within 8 hours, and then I ended up completing the ~32 mile course in 6 hours and 45 minutes, demolishing my goal.

Since I had done so well, and enjoyed the 50k, I was easily swayed by my friends to sign up for another 50k; the Tahoe Rim 50k. The run starts at 6900ft above sea-level, has around 6800ft of climbing, reached a low of 6500ft and a high of 8900ft. I signed up for the run in January and decided to start training. Then I forgot to keep training.

Months kept going by where I would remember to train and that I should be ramping up the miles. Then I'd get busy and forget to run far. I was still running, but not the double digit runs that I probably should be have doing. Around late May is when I really tried to get more serious about running. Looking at my GPS logs, I see that I ran about 30 miles in May (mostly back-loaded), before stepping it up to 72 miles in June. And my longest run in June was a crazy 11 miler with 1300 feet of elevation gain (end sarcasm). Before I knew it, it was July, and just a few weeks remained. Plus I was supposed to taper at some point. The longest run I went on was somewhere around 16-18 ...

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A few months back, around the beginning of September, my sister, a friend and I all decided that we wanted to do a longer trail run. We actually decided this while on a run through some redwoods together. Since we enjoyed trail runs, we decided that the best way to do a longer distance run would be to sign up together and commit to finishing instead of focusing on being competitive in the race.

When we got home, we looked up to find a 30-35 kilometer Pacific Coast Trail Run that was several months out, giving us plenty of time to train. We settled on the Rodeo Beach 30k, on December 18th. It was on the shorter side (30km instead of 35km), it was plenty far out, giving us a lot more time to train, and it was in the Marin Headlands, a beautiful area that we could train at. I signed up almost immediately, as I knew the act of signing up would get me to commit mentally. My sister signed up and so did my friend (at least I thought she did). I also got a couple people at my gym to sign up too. Things were shaping up nicely.

I didn't train as much as I wanted to while on my Balinese vacation, and upon returning, I tried to stick to a more rigid training schedule where I ran more frequently. Well, I didn't stick to that schedule as well as I should have. As of the day of the race, the farthest distance I had run in the many months prior was about 7.5 miles, not even half of the final distance of 18.64. I wasn't terribly nervous, I knew I could still finish the race, but I figured I'd ...

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After Thanksgiving at my parent's house, I took off with some friends to Bishop for 3 days of bouldering and some sport climbing. We arrived just after some storms had passed through the area, leaving a light dusting of snow in some places.

Eastern Sierras Under Shadow

Then, right in the middle of the trip, we got a couple inches of snow in the evening, electing to remain at our site camping in it.

Fresh Snow

In the end, Bishop was super cold (got down to the mid teens at night) but provided some great climbing in the Buttermilks, Gorge and Happys. Makes me look forward to another climbing trip soon!

Star Trails

Last Saturday was the last night game that will be played in the old Memorial Stadium. After this season, the stadium will be renovated for earthquake safety and to create a new and competitive student athlete center. Next season the Bears will play at AT&T park in San Francisco, home of the World Champion Giants before returning to a renovated Memorial Stadium in 2012.

Unfortunately for us, our last night game was against number 1 Oregon. Though we didn't win, we came really close, losing 13 - 15, which was a spectacular game for Cal's defense. I used the opportunity to take a couple pictures with my new camera.

Sunset at Memorial Stadium

This coming Saturday is the 113th Big Game at Cal. Cal has held the Axe for 2 years straight, and 7 out of the last 8 years. So far, for every Big Game I've gone to and every Big Game that Dean has been at Stanfurd during, Cal has won. The one year I didn't attend (I was in India) and Dean wasn't attending Stanfurd, Cal lost (2007). In other words, Cal is about to upset #8 Stanfurd.

Last Memorial Stadium Night Game

As far as my pictures I took with my camera, I have been extremely impressed with the Nikon D7000's very high dynamic range. All the pictures here are untouched JPEGs, straight from the camera (Aperture can't yet process the D7000's RAW images - plus I ...

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This post is pretty late, but I figured it is still good to post for record keeping. Back in July, I did the Tri For Fun just to get back in the grove. This was my first Tri since Wildflower, yet I had barely preped for the race at all. I think I rode my bike twice in the week before the race. Pretty much a poor showing on my part.

I'm pretty familiar with the course, having done it a number of times.

Not the blowout improvement I was hoping for (I only improved by 8 seconds off last year's time), but improvement none-the-less. I think I stayed up way too late the night before and was super tired during the run. I just sort of lost energy and couldn't finish strong in the run, which shows as it was one of my slowest run performances yet. Serves me right for sorting pictures late into the night.

Despite this being a bit late, I still wanted to recap my 2010 Wildflower experience.

This year, I elected to begin my training with some high altitude training in South America. So instead of doing a bunch of preparatory triathlons leading up to Wildflower, I went on a month-long trip to Venezuela, Peru, Bolivia and Chile. After I got back, I had 3 weeks to get ready. I pretty much started immediately by riding my bike to work every day. The 10 mile (each way) commute definitely allowed me to get comfortable on the bike and to keep a record (via My Tracks) which allowed me to strive for specific time and speed marks.

I did a little bit of running here and there, and a little bit of swimming. But for the most part, I went to CrossFit and rode my bike. Finally, and I think the most important part of the training was the motivation to try to beat my sister and friend Margo. However, with so little prep time and after a 6 mile practice run with Amy where I almost cramped up, I relegated myself to third place out of them.

As with last year, we went down Saturday morning and got to watch the long course athletes finishing on the bike. There were four of us that went down: Margo, Amy, Mike and myself. Margo's roommates came down later in the day. Once cars were allowed to enter the campground again, we drove down, found a spot to camp and proceeded to check out the starting line and the festival area. The evening was uneventful with a great dinner and sitting around the BBQ grill for some warmth before heading to sleep.

I woke up early, ate, and then Amy, Margo and I went ...

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This post is pretty late, but I figured it is still good to post for record keeping. In June, I did the Tri For Fun #1 and it was the first triathlon for a couple of my friends. Well, I must have some great powers of persuasion, because I convinced two more people to start and complete their first tri. After at least two years, my sister Amy Streeter decided to do the great introductory course. In addition, Amy's friend Margo Fahey also signed up for her first tri.

Starting the race, my goal was to finish in an hour or less. Looking at the last race, I thought that a 9 minute improvement was reasonable, despite the fact I spent a significant portion of the month between races in the Caribbean. I'd say my biggest weakness was still my cycling performance, though I was able to improve.

Not the blowout improvement I was hoping for, but improvement none-the-less. Plus I beat Amy, Margot and Joe :) I am definitely looking forward to the next tri I'm doing.

This past Saturday I did the first in the Tri for Fun series in Pleasanton. This was my first race since Wildflower, and my first race since getting injured. The race went well, and I felt pretty comfortable the whole time, though my legs were quite tired. Which is to be expected after not running for over 6 weeks.

In addition, this was the first triathlon for my friends Joe and Rachel. They absolutely killed it and did very well. After they came and watched me do Wildflower, they got motivated to try a triathlon themselves. I suggested the Tri for Fun series as those races are nearby, quite fun and an easy course that is great for beginners. Both of them finished strong and are planning on doing more triathlons in the future. Here's to the Wildflower Olympic race next year!

As this race doesn't collect splits, I collected them myself and posted them below.

Despite the year of experience since doing the exact same course, exercising more and, in general, being more prepared, I was slower in all three events. I wasn't too much slower in the run or bike, which is good considering that I was injured. But it is still disappointing. As usual, I passed a lot of people on the run, and got passed on the bike. However, I've been starting to look into improving my cycling legs. I've got another Tri for Fun in 2 months, so ...

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Wildflower: "The Woodstock of Triathlons". I can now say this seems like a very accurate description. This past weekend was the twenty-something-th running of the Wildflower Triathlon event at Lake San Antonio on the Central Coast.

I had first heard of Wildflower a few years back when my sister told me about an event she was going to where there was a giant party and, almost as an afterthought, a triathlon was held. As my interest in tri's increased, I of course heard more about Wildflower. I came to find out that there are 3 events: the long course (a half Ironman), an Olympic distance course and a mountain bike sprint.

Then, sometime in the last couple months, I decided to start my 2009 Olympic distance tri season with Wildflower. The first thing I did after signing up was to begin to round up a posse to join me at the event. I managed to convince my friends Dean, Joe and Rachel to come. My sister and her friend also decided to volunteer, so I'd be seeing them on the course somewhere. The plan was coming along beautifully. Until I realized the Olympic event was on Sunday, and the other two were on Saturday. This was a major bummer as I was hoping to totally enjoy the festival and relax and camp after my race. Instead, I had to go through another full day of anxiety as I watched the other races. I just hoped to find a camping spot that wasn't going to be too loud Saturday night.

So in the months leading up to the event my training consisted mostly of frequent CrossFitting, biking on some weekends, and when the event got closer, swimming a couple times a week. I really should have done more ...

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Over the weekend, I participated in a trail running 10k. I did the 10k distance, which turned out to be more difficult than my previous trail run. This course wasn't as aggressive as the Dip Sea trail, with a sloping 1000 foot elevation gain, followed by a steep downhill back to the start, where we also finished.

I opted to do the 10k distance, and convinced my sister to also do the race, which was her first race. And I was informed about the race by some CrossFit friends who all did the 50k distance. Saul, Samantha and Dustin are pretty crazy for doing it, but accomplished the monstrous achievement. Saul wrote up the summary from their race over at the Peninsula CrossFit site. He also has some great endurance training ideas there too. So congrats to them and to my sister.

I've done the 10k distance a number of times before, though this was my first 10k trail race (though the Stintson 12k pretty much counts). I really think that I wasn't as prepared physically as I should have been. My legs were still sore from my CrossFit workout the Wednesday before, where I did Barbara. So I ended up walking up the hill quite a bit more than I wanted to. But I'm pretty sure I made up some time on the downhill. The official results got posted, and my time was 55:53.7 minutes, for an average pace of 9:12 minutes /mile. This was good enough for 35th overall out of 255, 17th of 46 in my age division (ages 21-29), and 31st of 119 of all men in the 10k race. So I'm not fully happy with my result since I know I could have done better a day ...

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