Running by the Bay

Business trips are great opportunities to explore virgin locales on foot. I particularly relish the surprise that a trail / course has in store for me. While I do manage a race or two (last one being an Ultra), on my last travails, however, in an aberration, I only ran trails recommended by my friends in the Bay area. I ran almost round the clock and that added spice to the spread.

Bay Trail @ 6PM

This course was recommended by the Hotel receptionist. She stepped out of the hotel lobby to point me to the side of the road from where I could start. I passed a few "Keep Out" sign boards, the course taking me on a hillock with a few of the Hamilton hanger & the bay beyond. Ran down the hill into the bay trail.

Los Gatos Creek Trail @ 7AM

 When I mentioned my weekend-long-run-itch to NJ in San Jose, he led me to this one. I ran around 11 miles on this trail while my friend biked. The trail was much longer than what my legs could carry me for those 1.5 hours.

Stanford Dish Trail @ 4PM

"A runner hasn't really run at Stanford until he or she has done the dish loop.", says the opening lines on the Stanford Running Club site. The trail on the foothills behind the famous Stanford Quad and offers great views of the entire area including the main tower.

If you survive the steep (really really steep) uphills, you do pass the two large satellite dishes, giving the run its name, pointed at whatever scientists look at. I got 150m climb in a short 5km loop. Now you know why I stopped to take pics!

Redondo Beach @ noon

So on the Martin Luther King weekend, I drove down to LA (and nearly into a Chevy Camero) and then up via the beautiful coastal CA1 highway with views of Big Sur and the coast. My hosts at Torrance SH & VS suggested the Redondo beach towards Manhattan Beach for a run. I picked a hot Saturday morning and drove down with VS who joined me for a the first half. The running path was broken near the piers with their food-courts and watering holes. And oh and we did rent a Surrey bike and biked on Huntington beach to top it up for the long weekend.

Baylands trail Sunnyvale @ 6AM

At 6AM on a virgin baytrail, with crickets for company and no one else, running on a bund with water on either side, it was eerie and I jumped a few times when some ducks (?) hustled in the bushes. At the end of the run, I did shout "yahoo", which is perhaps what my cousin SS who works for yahoo had in mind (the bright lights on the horizon in the pic below is Yahoo)

Guadalupe trail San Jose

This was a tad boring - it was an exposed trail, a creek running alongside, didn't run. The only reason I did this a couple of times was because it was way more appealing than the treadmill at Double tree Hilton!

SFO terminal

This was a bonus. Turns out my Garmin was while checking my baggage in - see how much my bags moved at the SFO terminal