To the Beach!

While planning a beach day for this weekend coming up (have I mentioned I have class ALL DAY on Saturdays?) on Sunday, I realized I never posted up the photos from our last little escape to the beach.  Which is unfortunate, because I snagged some rather cute ones.

So how am I going to swing a beach day while having very limited free time between school and work, and also needing to train for a marathon? First, I am planning to rope one of my friends into training with me.  (Hello, Kathleen!). The plan for Sunday is while our friends relax, chill, and drink beers at the beach, I’m going to take poor, unsuspecting Kathleen on a 10 mile trail run up to the top of Montara Mountain and back down.  Then we can meet everyone at the beach and enjoy a scrumptious Colombos Deli crazy sangwich reward.  Mmm, mmm.  I’m not sure how nutritionally sound those wonderful sandwiches are when it comes to recovery fuel, but… hey. If this human garbage disposal hauls her butt up a mountain on a 10 mile trail run, you she will be inhaling those sandwiches as a reward when she is through!

Seeing as the half marathon we’re training for (note the “we’re” … I’m lobbying Kathleen to do it with- she is not *entirely* convinced yet, but I am working on it) has a course elevation profile as follows (TWO LOOPS OF THIS):

Napa Half Marathon Course- two loops

I figure it’s time to start training by running up some mountains. Because… shesh, look at that elevation profile! At least the California International Marathon will be a cakewalk once December comes around, because that course is mostly downhill.

Backing up, here are the belated pics from our previous weekend beach escape. It was a foggy day, but we still had a relaxing and fun time.
It was practically deserted:

Our picnic spot

Some of us went for a dip

swimming corgi

and then needed to shake off

shake shake shake

a good post-swim shake calls for a good post-swim roll

nooooo don't get all sandy

Well, he’s already totally sandy, so might as well have some fun.

sand monster

Isn’t it funny that he lets us do that? He is totally complacent while you pile sand on him. It was so funny when we discovered this dogsonality quirk during our roadtrip at the Indiana State Dunes off of the Great Lakes. This remains one of my all time favorite pictures ze woofer.
My feet also got buried… with proper accompaniments.

nice

this was my view. also, i am loving these $10 Target sunglasses! Amazingly, I have managed to avoid sitting on them all summer.

almost too foggy for sunglasses

Earl took Linus in for one last “cleaning” while our friend Matt looked on with amusement

dog, you are coming in!

of course there was some fetch

the beach has squeaky toys!

and some chase. chase is Linus’ FAVORITE game. Favorite, favorite, favorite.

just try and catch me

All in all, I would take an overcast beach day over no beach day. I also ran staircase repeats on these stairs descending to the beach, and did a 40 minute jog afterward baywatch style along the water. I did NOT take any photos of running or stairclimbing because I was a gross sweaty mess! There were some Latinos playing fútbol near the bottom of the stairs and they kept laughing, pointing, cheering and waving each time I returned to the bottom of the staircase for another repeat (managed to pull out 7 ascents total). At the end when I was heading back to collapse at our picnic site, they called out to me “you are very strong, Mamí.”