Friday 061314

AM – slow to rise (again, sleep this week has been spotty at best but good enough I guess).  5.1 miles.

Excellent podcast with Greg Weich. 

Strava data from yesterday’s grind.  Here is another view I got of it from my run out of Sporttracks. 

Seems like I get different results as to how long it is.  My watch has it at one and a quarter miles, but it is listed on Strava as 1.5.  Wikipedia has it at 1.8.  Whatever.  Looks like I came up with an average grade of 37.6% (wow), with some grades in excess of 60 or even 70%.   Fun stuff.

In the evening, a coworker friend of mine and I coordinated back for another trip to the Grind.  This was a hike which was nice as it let me take in the Grind a bit more closely than my run the night before.  There was a lot less traffic on it on a Friday night than the night before.

Once on the trail, it is actually a bit dark in there as the area is densely covered with moss covered pines and green.  The trees will periodically have a marker as a number – giving a reference as to how far along you are.  There are two types of markers from what I can gather:  a 1/4, 1/2, 3/4 marker and just a numeric sequence marker (I think the top was 42)

Just past 3/4 of the way up, a guy came up on us.  We had dealt with this the entire hike as we were not moving too fast.  He was maybe 20 yards behind us when he yelled “HEY” pretty loudly, and threw out some other grunts to make his presence known and to give us an overly loud hint he wanted us to make way.  We stepped aside and he grunted on by.  There was a woman just ahead of who we had exchanged places with over the course of the walk and he did the same “HEY” as he came up on her.   I guess she did not move fast enough and he yelled “HEY.  MOVE. IT.”  in a pretty harsh tone. 

I get the guy was trying to make way up the trail quick but I was a bit irked at his needing to be somewhat rude about it and so I said, “Go get it man.  More hip, less lip and you’ll move faster.”  Not missing a beat he look back and down at me and said, “Did you see how I blew by you?!  It was like you were standing still.”  I laughed and grinned.  Whatever buddy. 

But he wasn’t done.  He kept pressing on and muttering crap to me.  “Hey talker.  You gonna come?  Oh you are done, eh?’”  I was sort of cracking up buy my coworker friend Geoff was a bit incensed.  “Go get him” he said.  “Nah, no biggie.”  “No go get him for me cuz that guy is a dick.”

Suddenly feeling licensed to have a bit of fun I went from our casual walk and started jogging up the trail.  It was nice to have the pep in the legs that far up the trail compared to the last night.  The guy had probably made it another few hundred yards up the trail.  He was moving well, but not real fast.  And he was occasionally hooting and “wahoo”ing to himself and well everyone else on the trail as he was pretty loud.

I slipped up behind him and then as the trail opened I came by to pass and gave a loud “HEY.”  Apparently he missed me coming on him and it spooked him pretty well as he shouted in surprise.  I gave him a little “Come on now, let’s go?”  He muttered something looked to stay with me for a stride or two but then fell back quickly.  I jogged the remainder of the hill with little effort, amused by my actions but also a bit ashamed that I let it get me.  Bush league moves all around but there you go.  It didn’t bug me so much that he yelled at me to get out the way but it bothered me that he was intent to holler at everyone as he made his way up the trail … in an aggressive fashion.  I got a touch of satisfaction at tossing some of that back at him in a way that seemed to surprise him.  Maybe someday I will be an adult.

And then I thought of how easy this effort felt but how different it felt from the night before when I was probably moving slower at that spot but had expended much more effort to get there. 

It was foggy at the top. 

Grabbed a beer with Geoff at the top house.  The Olympic torch from the games here a few years ago is housed here.

 

We took the gondola down.  I thought it was going to be a car like at a ski resort but it is a very very large car.  It holds like 30 people or so and the operator sits in it.  As a result there are only two cars on the line (one going up, one going down).  I was a bit disappointed to see this because I thought it you really wanted to get after doing a lot of laps that could mean you’d be waiting on a car to arrive versus just hopping a continuous line.

The whole thing opened a line of conversation between me and Geoff as to how many runs of the Grind you could get in a day.  Apparently some kid did 16 last year.  He hopped the fence at the base to get a first lap in so that he could time it so that when the cars started running down he’d be at the top.  That is around 6AM.  They stop around 10, but this guy took advantage of an event up there that sent the last one down at midnight.  So if you wanted to do more laps, you’d not have the car available.  16 laps in an 18 hour period seems pretty solid.  That seems to be about a 60 minute average run up and then about 15 to get on a car and down to me. 

So solid but I think breakable.  But what do I know.  I have been on the thing twice.

Anyway, another 1.5 on the day.