Categories
running

Palo Alto / Dish Loop

This run kicks my ass. Almost every time, I expe­ri­ence infer­nal car­dio and quad pain dur­ing the climb from the Stan­ford Ave entrance. The best stretch of the run is imme­di­ate­ly after this climb — it's an S‑shaped quar­ter-mile head­ing due west (usu­al­ly into the wind) and it pro­vides a great view of the dish against the coastal range. But I'm usu­al­ly fight­ing to catch my breath dur­ing this stretch, and spend most of it just try­ing to keep my shit togeth­er. This par­tic­u­lar run was okay … I keep think­ing that I'll get back to the good old days when I reg­u­lar­ly clocked sub-50-min­utes on this run. But I'm a long, long way from that right now. I ride my bike more. I run hills more. But can it be that I'm just not as fit as I was in those love­ly, peace­ful days of July 2002? I will remem­ber July of 2002 as a series of qui­et evening runs through the Stan­ford cam­pus, punc­tu­at­ed by bliss­ful­ly fast, fast times. Ah, to be young(er). Sim­pler times. Sim­pler, faster times.