Kerry's Running Blog

One of the last of our long runs. Got up with Laureen about 5:00 am and took the grand tour of Cedar Hills, Alpine, Highland and even a little bit of Manila. It was quite cool before the sun came up and so we didn't mind it at all when the sunlight finally hit. It was a nice time to catch up on everything and although tiring, wasn't too bad. When I got back I took a little nap, mowed the lawn and drove back to San Diego. I was a bit stiff after sitting in the car, but other than that it wasn't too bad.

I haven't been blogging my runs lately, but I'll have a little more time to do that now. I'll be running with Laureen on Saturdays, but during the week I'll be going solo (as I'm now working weekdays in San Diego).

The building that I work in has a gym (pretty decent equipment) and showers. I took off a little before noon, just to explore the neighborhood. After about a mile or so on the streets, I found some dirt roads to run on. The first one I tried ran into a dead end after about a half mile and the second one I tried was really steep and covered with loose dirt. It was tough going down and even tougher coming back up. I could see other dirt roads off in the distance, but couldn't see a way to get over to them. I'll have to try to find someone that really knows this area well.

Great noontime run. Not being familiar with the area, I looked at the mapmyrun website and found a little loop nearby. After about a half mile of running along a busy street and through a parking lot I found the path I was looking for. It was pretty narrow at the start and then opened up onto a dirt road that quickly dropped down into a little valley, which eventually led to a parking lot adjacent to a wilderness area. There was a dry creek right next to it and I ran along that for a ways, through a strand of trees and along the base of a steep brush covered hill. For a mile or so you could completely forget that you surrounded by freeways and big office buildings as you can't hear any traffic there or see anything except wild country. After running along a mostly flat section I saw a sign that said something like "Old Lopez Road". I decided that was probably the way back up and so I started running up that path. The trail started to climb and became fairly narrow in spots. It was quite an effort to keep going with the sun beating down. After a mile or so I was back up on top and running along a nice trail behind office buildings. When I got to what I thought was the end of that trail, I turned back into a parking lot and ran back along what I thought was the street leading back to my office. It wasn't. I kept running along the street hoping to  catch sight of some kind of landmark. The further I ran, the less familiar everything looked. I finally stopped and asked someone for directions and he told me that the street I was looking for was in the opposite direction. Running that way I started to recognize some of the buildings and was soon back on familiar ground and found the way back to my building. You'd think that seeing Qualcomm on the side of a building would be a good landmark, but it turns out that there are thirty-eight buildings of various sizes with the Qualcomm name on them (they have twelve shuttle vans that are kept busy taking employees from one building to another). It's certainly a lot easier to get lost than I would have thought. It turned out to be quite a good run as I was still sweating a half hour after a cold shower.