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I Used to Run

27 Friday Dec 2019

Posted by Ed Mahoney in Running

≈ 1 Comment

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Barton Creek Greenbelt, Town Lake

trail

Trails with safety chains are real trails.  Brit and I ran along this southern half of the Greenbelt, Wednesday.  We ran the northern half, Tuesday.  We ran on Town Lake, Thursday and Friday.  We joined the downtown Fleet Feet running team this morning at 6:30 am and experienced an awesome sunrise over the calm water.  This week in Austin might make me a real runner again.

eric n dan

My son-in-law’s college track buddy Dan introduced us to the Fleet Feet running team.  They meet up every Friday.  This is Dan in the red shirt standing alongside Eric at the 360 Greenbelt trailhead.  It felt good to run with the Fleet Feet team.  At best, they were half my age and some were fairly elite, but I didn’t feel out-of-place.  Runners are always such nice people.

brit n ed

I’m still a good twenty pounds over weight and super slow when I run on my own.  I don’t wear a watch but figure I run a ten minute mile pace or slower.  I surprised myself today with a nine minute pace.  Running with others is good for speed.  Running with Brit is helping me to run faster.

zzzz

Running six out of the last seven days might give me the momentum to become a regular runner again.  I’d like that, although I need to work on my stamina.  The 6:30 am start time was rough.  Brit snapped this photo of me at 10 am.

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Sweating Down in Texas

20 Saturday Jul 2013

Posted by Ed Mahoney in Running

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Barton Creek Greenbelt, BCRT, Camp Craft, Hill of Life, Twin Falls

Camp Craft TailheadMy first couple of runs in Austin were tolerable because it’s been raining down in Texas.  That didn’t help much with the humidity, but you can’t have it all.  Not sure which I’d prefer to avoid, melting under a blazing sun or drowning in humidity.  Probably end up drenched in a puddle of sweat either way.  I didn’t mind running in the rain.  It’s such a warm, comfortable rain in Texas.  Try running an hour in the mountains during the rain and you’ll die from hypothermia.  Colorado rain is really just a warm snowfall.

Per plan, I made it down to the Barton Springs Greenbelt today.  I’ve always launched from the Loop 360 Trailhead – which is about halfway along the trail.  Today I decided to learn some new trailheads and started on the Hill of Life Trail which begins at the Camp Craft Trailhead.  You find this trailhead at the end of Scottish Woods Trail, around the corner a few feet to the right on Camp Craft Road.  There are signs along Loop 360 for the Scottish Trail intersection.  You take the southwest street.  It’s a residential street that goes for maybe 200 yards before ending at Camp Craft Road.  There were tons of cars parked along the street, setting my expectations for a crowded trail.

The crowd began immediately at the trailhead where some organized training event was finishing up.  The coach was yelling out times for a couple dozen runners coming up the hill.  This trail starts down what looks like a creek bed, which is to say an extremely rocky 10% slope.  It reaches Barton Creek after a half mile.  I heard the coach counting off about four and a half minutes.  That sounds right for climbing a half mile hill.  I’m guessing he was having his runners repeat hill climbs.  Hard to say how many.

This crowd thinned out once I hit the main trail, but I was constantly passing hikers and bikers.  One guy passed me with a couple of dogs.  And I passed a couple of bikers that had passed me earlier.  The trail was too technical for them.  It’s fairly flat but has some big rocks in places.  I hesitate to say it isn’t well marked.  It has green mile markers every quarter mile.  But as you could imagine near a creek, the trail constantly branches out and it’s difficult to know which is the main path at times.  The branches typically fork back together so it’s usually not too critical but some decisions can lead you back uphill to the road and those are to be avoided.

SignAt one such decision point, I forked left which I quickly understood was going to lead me up to the road.  I decided to stay with it because others were on it and I figured I might learn of a new trailhead.  Plus this was near 3 miles and would give me a nice 6 mile run.  Had I continued on the right fork I would have encountered another option toward this trailhead, but marked by this sign.  The trailhead turned out to be what’s called Twin Falls.  You park along the MoPac service road on the southwest exit ramp of its intersection with Loop 360.  I returned back down to the main trail forking left to complete the Twin Falls loop clockwise.  I went in the direction of the red arrow on the sign which I expect points to Twin Falls.  The two miles of Barton Creek between Twin Falls and the Hill of Life contain some good swimming holes and explains where many of the hikers were headed.  I wouldn’t call these swimming holes billabongs exactly, but they can become isolated ponds when the creek dries up in the winter.  Sculpture Falls is another popular spot and there are actually restrooms near the creek where it meets up with the Hill of Life.

Twin FallsI drove around after today’s trail run looking for the Greenbelt map I expected to find for sale.  I started at the REI Store on Lamar.  They directed me to Lance Armstrong’s bike shop which is named Mellow Johnny’s.  They weren’t selling it either but printed me off a free copy of the trail and called around to find it for me.  They discovered I could buy a copy at Whole Earth located a few blocks up Lamar.  I did buy it there and can highly recommend it for the detail of all the unmarked trails and the six different trailheads.  Proceeds go toward the Save our Springs Alliance.  These pictures probably look the same but the first one up top is at Camp Craft and this one here is at the Twin Falls Trailhead.

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Return to Austin

22 Saturday Jan 2011

Posted by Ed Mahoney in Running

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Tags

Austin, Austin Marathon, Barton Creek Greenbelt, Denver Marathon, Round Rock, RRHS, Running

Round Rock Cross Country

Look at those boys in Jeff Graham’s 1978 drawing of five fit athletes enjoying their time in the sun running cross country for Round Rock HS back in the day.  From left to right, we are Doug Hall (RIP), me, Joe Cepeda, Robert Graham, and Johnny Martinez.  The countdown to my Austin Marathon is less than 30 days and I can’t help but reminisce on my training runs of fun times running in my youth.

My very first road race took place on a golf course actually in South Austin.  Doug Hall organized a handful of us on a Friday night and drove us down Saturday morning.  It was such a kick, a 3 mile dash over grass and water traps.  I ran it barefoot.  Doug and Rob were sporting the game-changing Nike Waffles.  That was the late summer of ’77.  The next spring we ran what really was technically my first road race, the inaugural Capitol 10,000.  I can’t leave out the 100s of runs along Townlake, now named Lady Bird Johnson Lake.  And my all-time favorite run is the coolest inner-city trail ever – the Barton Creek Greenbelt.

I had a nice run today on one of my favorite Boulder County trails – the East Boulder and White Rock Trails.  I ran 8 miles at what felt like a pretty good clip.  I went the 3 days prior without getting out.  Work has been like cramming for college finals; never-ending days of phone calls, powerpoints, copy/pasting between docs and spreadsheets.  I was prepared to train this winter regardless of the weather.  I’d snowshoe if that was all I could do.  I didn’t expect work to rule like it has.  My goals for the Austin Marathon have gone from beating my time in the Oct. 2010 Denver Marathon to simply finishing without walking.  Despite having lost the edge on my conditioning, I’m still committed to running it.  I’ve booked my flight.  My mom’s excited I’ll be staying with her for the weekend.

Today’s run felt so good.  The work week ended on a bad note.  All work and no recognition.  I presented a piss-poor PowerPoint to my VP on Friday afternoon and I felt exhausted.  Today’s run was like breathing for the first time.  The weather started out perfect – maybe 50° – and sunny.  I wore shorts and two shirts – one short sleeve covered by a second long-sleeve.  Both high tech fabric.  The wind picked up on the return and I would have benefited from having wrapped another long-sleeve shirt or light jacket around my waist.  Had I, I’d have put it on.  Likewise, my ears would have preferred a warmer fleece cap than the runners cap I wore.  But it was tolerable, I didn’t freeze.  The hills sheltered me from some of the wind’s wrath.  Halfway through my run, the Chinook winds dropped out of the Boulder foothills with a fierce velocity that nearly ripped the cheeks off my face.  My legs were warm enough but the sweat on my chest and armpits chilled me beyond comfort.  I’ll layer smarter next time.  I’ll need to put some thought into how to dress for Austin in February.  The humidity magnifies the cold.  I’ll take all my gear and look at what the locals are wearing.  It’s all about the gear.

40.137598 -105.107652

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