It’s 4:08, feet hit the deck and my Saturday is beginning. Friend and client Bodo Schmidt and his very understanding girlfriend Cristine has opened his home to the tri club to watch the live webcast of the US Men’s Marathon trial taking place in New York. Start time 4:35 pst.
Bodo has an awesome home theater set up and the athletes were darn near life size. The webcast was awesome with mile split times and very good commentating. We had hopes up for local runners Josh Cox and Meb Keflezighi, but it became apparent fairly early that Josh didn’t have it as he struggled to try to bridge the cap on the first break of about 6 runners and just could not make it.
The sad news of the day came with the announcement of the death of Ryan Shay at about mile 5.5 of the race. Watching the webcast we could
hear the siren and after about a minute there was an ambulance trailing the lead group. In puzzlement we were all looking at each other wondering what the heck they were doing on the course. It didn’t seem to disturb the athletes at all and after about a minute and half more the ambulance left the course. It wasn’t until later in the day that I heard the news. Here’s more on Ryan Shay.
The excitement started at about mile 17 with American half marathon record holder Ryan Hall putting the hurt on the lead group. There was not one runner that had the legs to go with him and his winning time of 2:09:02 is not indicative at all of his true time as he spent the mile and a half or so celebrating and high fiving as he about a 2 minute lead.
With the pajama party finishing about 7:00, I headed to the office to do some paperwork and then it was off to Poway to do the Second Annual TCSD Ramona Ramble.
Ramona was founded in 1886 after Amos Verlaque built a store and post office in 1883 on the wagon road to the mining town of Julian. Ramona was known as the as the “Turkey Capital of the World” when turkey production flourished during the 1930s, and the industry was featured with popular annual Turkey Days celebrations. After the decline of the turkey, Ramona transitioned in to egg production and still is home to the 1,100,000 bird Pine Hills egg ranch which is the 5th largest in the state. Today Ramona is facing growing development and the agriculture heritage is transitioning to grape production for wine. For information on the current real estate market, go here.
The ramble is an out and back ride with two starting points. One starting from Solana Beach which is about a 60 mile ride with 3000’ of climbing and one from Poway which makes the ride about 30 miles with 2500’ of climbing with the turn and carne asada lunch at Dos Picos Park. There is a 6 mile run up Iron Mountain sandwiched in the ride for those wanting the full monty.
At about 9:30, once the Solana group showed, we rolled out of the shopping center and headed for the climb up Scripps Poway Pkwy. The climb is about 1.6 miles long and starts at approximately 850 feet and climbs to 1500 and is just a touch more difficult than Torrey. After the climb we made the turn on to 67, rode a couple more miles and stopped at Iron Mountain for the runners to their run. Myself and Jessica did not bring running gear
so we went off for more riding. Once arrived back at the trailhead there was a small group done with their run, so we headed on to Dos Picos park for some lunch.
Zarah, Denise and a friend of Zarah’s(apologies) had an awesome lunch of grilled veggies, carne and pollo asada, flour and corn tortillas, guacamole, salsa, rice, beans, sodas, water and some of Mike Larson’s homemade brew. While I did not have any, everyone that did gave it a solid two thumbs up. The park was full of old oaks and was empty. It was great to have lunch and just relax and chat as we laid in the sun.
After about an hour or so, it was back on the bikes, a nice tail wind and we were back in no time. Living on the coast it was nice to ride on nice open shoulders. I have become so accustom to dodging all the pedestrians in the bike lanes on Saturday mornings that I really appreciated just being able to ride.
I would like to thank Mark Kenny for organizing this and again to the surrogate moms that made sure we had plenty of lunch, bars and beverages!!
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