Sunday on the Santa Monicas

When sixty-some runners bunch up at the first uphill section of a narrow trail, everything comes to a standing halt. Kind of like the Greeks holding up the Persians at Thermopylae, in Greece where that first marathon was run. Our fighting forces nowadays don't have to run a marathon just to give the latest battle news, of course. We have live satellite upfeeds. We have cell phones. We have pigeons. Anyway, this was a 50K ultra-marathon, on trails, going up and down with an accumulative elevation gain of 5,490 ft, in the Santa Monica Mountain near Point Mugu, with parts of the course overlooking the Pacific Ocean. At least one of the runners, the 2nd place female finisher, climbs, too. Cross-training to build extra cardio for climbing, so yeah, this is climbing-related. Besides, climbing up and down for many hours like that, that's practically alpine. 23 Nov 2008.