Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Ashok Srinivaspur's Blog on: Redwood park trail run in Oakland

When I received the mail on the Redwood park trail run, I just signed up. Never realized what I was getting into. Naren said that it would be a 30km run and this would be same as the 18 miles regular weekend run. I trusted his words and signed up.


Naren, Jay and me participated from the Ekal team. We had four more runners from the Asha team. It was a nice gang. We started the run at 8:30 AM. We had to first run 20km loop, followed by 10km loop. The total elevation was 2780 ft. It's just a number right? I realized how much was 2780 ft when I started running the steep elevation. It was hard, but not impossible. 10km second loop was the hardest. In most of the places, the steep was very much. It was hard to run on these steeps. We just had to walk.

Every 10km there was aid stations with food to eat. This helped us in getting the energy for the run. It was a well-coordinated run. At the end of the run, the thrill of completing the run was amazing. Jay had got nice Indian food. We treated ourselves to Indian food and soup. Truly we deserved it after the long run.

Running in the woods, stopping at the scenic view was a great experience for me. In fact, the woods and scenic view gave me energy to press ahead with the hard run. Unlike the marathon, I had few people running around me. Somehow I liked this run better than Marathon because it was running in the woods and it was not crowded. I guess it's a different experience. Marathon and trail runs have their own charm.

Next time anybody asks you whether you want to do the trail run, don't think too much. Just sign up. You will have an amazing experience.Woody Allen said, "80% of success is showing up". He is so right.