Ran ten and a Half Mile Run at Pt Reyes National Seashore

I woke up extra early and was out of the house by 6:45 to meet my running group to run at Point Reyes National Seashore. 

Heidi, Denise, Sue, Brittany and i climbed into the SUV and drove south to Point Reyes... our chatter sometimes silenced by the beauty of the landscape around us.  Fog laying low on the earth.. the sun above shining so brightly touched down into the low-lying clouds and looked like fairy dust... it really felt magical!


We ran nearly 10-1/2 miles this morning in Point Reyes National Seashore and it was truly a spectacular run... breezing past the Douglas fir forest and along the rushing Bear Valley Creek.  The Bear Valley trail ended here at the end of the california coastline called Arch Rock and so we stopped and took pictures. 

It was incredible!!! This part of of our coastline is not anywhere near roads and cars and people. It probably looks much like it did a hundred years ago. The photo below is probably where the name Arch Rock got its name.

I soaked in the beauty and then sat down on the ground and emptied out a small rock out of my left shoe and smoothed out the wrinkle from my sock on my right shoe... and headed back.


Through the ferns, moss-covered trees and forget-me-nots framing our trail.


In two weeks I will run this again. I plan to film this on my Flip. It really truly is an amazing trail.


By the way, this is along the San Andreas Fault. Apparently it's one of the most scariest places to be if you're ever in an earthquake here.  So.. it's an obvious great place to run if you wanna quicken your pace ... as I did as I ran toward the car.

During Dinner

He blows his nose onto his cloth restaurant napkin... digging deeply with his finger into each nostril and then blowing hard, sounding like a fog horn.

I lift up my shoulders in a cower and bend forward and want to tell him, Can you maybe do that after dinner or can you walk away from the dinner table and maybe use a Kleenex instead?

He does one more wipe around his nose and says, So what's a great girl like you still single? Why hasn't a guy captured you up already!

And I want to tell him, Well, I wouldn't be captured by you, because whenever I see you blow your nose at the dinner table, I want to turn my eyes away in fear of dry-heaving.

But.  I don't.

Instead I just feel kind of embarrassed about being myself.

And he keeps on digging and blowing his nose and says, That’s so weird that you are single....
  
And I silently sit there across from him, as I focus on his fingers indenting into the cloth napkin rubbing up against his nose while he blows even harder.

This is why I enjoy trail running

UltraRunning from Matt Hart on Vimeo.

This video expresses why I enjoy trail running. (And by the way, the beginning of this video shows the beginning of the 100 Western States Race up at Squaw Valley in Lake Tahoe and finishes in Auburn, CA. Kelly has raced it two or three times. Each time I have been there and have crued for her. Waking up and seeing them start out in the early morning in the dark, still makes me cry).

I went running with my sister Kelly tonight after work. I think we ran 7 or 8 miles. It kicked my butt. I felt sore the entire run. My calves felt like they were about to pop. My knees ached. My tendons hurt. My toes cramped. But I just kept moving. Jumping over rocks and roots and mud puddles and it was getting dark and I wondered if we'd run into a mountain lion... because a lot of deer and turkeys were out strolling about and why not the mountain lion? And, I was happy the mountain lion was not out.

In a few days, I'm off to Palm Springs to enjoy the warmth of the sun. Not much running there, so I am happy for the run tonight.   I plan to run another Half-Marathon in May.

I need these races to keep me running....

Bravery

And in that moment... feeling resentment of picking up my next door neighbor's dog poop week after week and throwing it away in my garbage can...  I picked up a pile with my gardening shovel and without thinking of the consequences, I flung it as far as I could over her car in the driveway so it would land in her yard. I misjudged my throw as the poop was only as heavy as cotton and it landed instead, on her car rooftop and some of it slid down her windshield and onto her hood.

The noise of the poop hitting her car, however, was not as quiet as cotton. Suddenly, the neighbor walked outside with her dog.  She had heard it and was coming out to check the skid marks.

It was a moment of sheer panic and embarrassment and I knew I had two options.  To either drop and roll out of sight   ....   or be brave and fess up to the mess.

I decided to side on bravery (and do the right mature thing) and started to rush toward her when she and her dog turned and walked on down the street oblivious to me or the brown smears down her car window.

i stood there, breathless with my heart beating out of my skin and realized that I had just experienced a miracle.

I whispered, thank-you-god, thank-you-god, thank-you-god  while I cleaned up the mess on her car in neck-breaking speed.

And then, after observing the lesson I had just learned from my experience, I shoveled up the rest of the poop, and this time walked closer to the edge of her yard before flinging it.

Just as I should have done from the beginning.

Perspective Tea Party Rug

I was commissioned to draw this tea party scene to be a children's interactive rug. The idea behind this is for the children to have make-believe tea parties with fake plastic food that was packaged with the rug. But... if I were that little girl, I don't think I would have enjoyed eating the plastic food nearly as much as the real thing.