It's Supposed to Hurt

Summer is in full swing on the Central Coast, and I thought I'd show you how it looks. The grapevines are filling in, the hills are a golden brown, and the sun shines daily. These are scenes I witness when I run and ride through the country.
I don't know what kind of flowers these are, but they sure brighten up a field.

The grapes will be ready to harvest in October. This vine is at the Turley vineyard, and I'm guessing it's a Zinfandel grape. It's the old Pesenti winery and the vines here are "head trained", rather than trellissed. I think that's customary for zin, but I don't know why.

This is more typical--they train the vines on a trellis. I'm not sure which vineyard this is. There are over two hundred wineries in the North County alone, and SD is trying hard to hit them all. :-) The California Central Coast comprises Monterey, San Luis Obispo, and Santa Barbara counties and wine is a big industry in all of them.

On another note, did you see the September Runner's World? The Athlete's Palate column featured my favorite chef: Vincent! I know I've mentioned him before; he has a restaurant in downtown Minneapolis. I've had many happy meals there, including a memorable lunch with running buddies AmyBee, Marcia, and Marianne. He gives his recipe for Salad Nicoise but I'm surprised he didn't feature his Vincent Burger. It's made with short ribs and many claim it's the best hamburger they've ever eaten! He offers them at happpy hour for $8.

There is a 5K coming up in a couple of weeks that I've been training for and I've been following a 5-week "get fast" plan. Usually I've done the workouts on a treadmill, because I didn't know where a track was. Now I do, and I headed there with another runner, who is also training for the Big Sur half. She's much faster than me, but that doesn't matter on the track. I did a 2.5 mile warmup, then ran 1.5 miles to get an average pace. Some article I read said to do that, but I have to find it to figure out what to do with this information. However, I was happy with the result: 14:29, 9:39 mpm!

Next, we did 4x800 with 2 minute recovery, only I forgot to set El Garmin to metric, so it was 4x.25 mile. I ran them hard: 2:19.75, 9:19/mile; 2:21.53, 9:26/mile; 2:17.71, 9:11/mile; 2:10.99, 8:44/mile (!). I'm not sure I did these right; aren't you supposed to maintain a steady pace and at race pace? I just ran as hard as I could, just to see what I could do. But I have to think that it was helpful in some way. Course, I was breathing really hard on those laps. The workouts were the reason for this post title.

While we were running, the drummers of the marching band were practicing. It was like some marathons I've run, having drummers beat out the pace. Well, you are supposed to simulate race conditions, right? :-)

Finally, a big "Way to Go" for Running By, who rocked the San Francisco half on Sunday.