CrossFit Oakland

Happy bitthday Journey. xoxoxoxox

*pushing Lance out of the way of the computer* Happy birthday, lovely woman! Yikes, that's a big picture. I do love me some metcon. The cemetary at the end of Piedmont is a personal favorite. Beautiful, challenging, and a little creepy. Lance is making me run Marin this week, something I haven't done in a few years. I think it would be fun for a bunch of us to drive up to the Dipsea trail. It's a pretty retarded run. All uphill, all the time. CFO would have that run handled! Good CF Games training, for sure.

Patrick et al.

How about running the Marin Hill either this Saturday or Sunday?

strawberry canyon fire trail. start at the dirt parking lot about 1/4 mile up centennial from the cal stadium.

- steady uphill for a little under 1 mile
- very steep up "connector" about 150 yards
- flat for about 2/3 mile
- uphill again for 1/3 mile to the bench
- 1.5 miles flat if you feel like going 7+
- back the way you came

good footing all the way. great views from the top. very tough if you push it up the connector. good place to work on speed on the downhill.

If you guys run Marin on Sun then I can drag my big ass along.

Joe, the fire trail and the connector is a good run for people like me that don't run any more than a mile. I prefer the mile run to the connector and then "sprint" the connector a few times and run back. The one time I ran the entire trail as you listed, I ran down down Centennial on the way back. It's hard on the joints to run downhill on such a steep hill but you can't beat cutting the time by 2/3.

I think hill repeats are a good way to go to prepare for a hill run...it seems like the CFO games run was relatively short so going super long might have limited utility...

Sibley Park - where Grizzly Peak and Skyline connect.

5k route, mostly rollers with two big hills. Downside is rocky and rooty in portions. The downside of the rollers provides nice recovery and them bam....uphill.

Honest question - is it even possible to "run" up Marin? Or is it a fast walk? That thing is a beast. What do you North Berkelites do?

reporting from ny:

trail runs, yes!!!! the fire trail connector in berkeley is awesome, also if anybody wants to run in marin on sunday, i would love to go, maybe just shoot me an email, or post here if anybody is going. i get back from ny sayaturday.

There's a book called "Trail Runner's Guide San Francisco Bay Area: 50 Runs Around the Bay" There's a bunch there. It's a good place to look.

Think I can join you guys for a trail run? I'm not a CFO member or ever done CrossFit.... Thanks.

Im down for sat or sunday...somebody pick a day. One last suggestion on the run is the 3 something mile loop that starts across from the little ponies in tilden. It was the St. Mary's cross country home course...the first mile next to the river is relatively flat, the second mile is a challenging uphill, and the third is a gradual downhill.

But, personally I think running Marin would be much more beneficial...

Somebody with more running experience chime in on the benefits of running Marin vs. the benefits of running a LSD. Marin wouldnt take any of us longer than 15 minutes, even at a brisk walk. My guess would be at the games since last year they had an actual long trail run, that they wont have that again this year. I would guess it would be in one of the hopper style workouts where the a run of a shorter distance steep hill is one element of a workout like the video posted a couple days ago of the workout the did at the games site...

Marin is very very steep, but a more realistic steep is Moeser ave in El Cerrito. Still steep but you could run it, unlike like Marin where you'd basically 'climb stairs' the entire way up to grizzly peak. Start at the Cerrito vista park on moeser at Pomona, then run up to Arlington blvd. I would say about 1/2 - 3/4 mile tops. Great views too, less cars thus less exhaust.

Lester,

Once we figure out the run, we'll post it to the blog.

Feel free to join us for the run.

I am going to have to second the cemetery for a short, but intense hill run. You can always run it twice :) And the view at the top is unsurpassed.

Also, I like running up Moraga or Oakland Ave and across the top of Piedmont for a longer hill run (5-6 miles). The Piedmont running club does this at 6am every Tues and some of us do a similar run on Thursdays (6am) if anyone is open to that. Meeting place: Bank of America on Highland Ave.

For a true trail run: East or West Ridge trail in Redwoods. This one starts going downhill and you get your ass kicked on the way back. Fun!

I look forward to eating all of your dust :)

Joaquin Miller Park. Start up on the sunset trail run down into the park and any of the hills to get back up are brutal. The chaparral trail is a great hill. Very steep and and is about .35 miles long. You can Google the trail map on line and pick any one of the many trails to make a loop.

Plus, it will provide a great change-up now that the weather is getting nicer.

The weather is getting nicer? When is it ever not nice here? It never rains. It is sunny and clear everyday. It never gets hot and never gets cold. Pardon me while I tell you tales about walking to school uphill both ways in the snow.

You should all come with me for a Pennsylvania (or New York, or Maine) field trip in January. We'll go running on the ice when it's 4 degrees F and dark. That's a good time.

Happy Birthday, Journey!

happy birthday journey!

i'm down to run

Robyn, you are far too modest!

Journey - HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

This is some what tangential, but there is a set of stairs in the City called “The Lyon Street Stairs” located in Pac Heights. From bottom to top it takes approximately 1- 1 1/2 minutes to complete. The effect of running these stairs once is similar to how I often feel after “Fran.” If anybody is interested, I might do these in addition to either Marin or whatever other hill run we finally decide on.

I'm game for the stairs in The City.

I am in for running/stairs

Lyon Street Steps:

http://www.yelp.com/biz/lyon-street-steps-san-francisco

Happy Bday Journey.

I love you too, Sierra.

Well aquainted w Lyon St stairs.

There is always running the stadium bleachers at Cal!

Of course Lance and Lau are down with running the stairs. You guys are f'n animals.

HIJACK ALERT!!

A friend of mine is trying to sell his REM ticket for Sat night's Sold Out show. I think it costs $60-$70. Ed and I are going so you might have to sit w us ;)

Any takers?

so saturday/sunday stairs????

East Ridge Trail - Redwood Regional Park

I think Robyn mentioned it.

About a 10k, big rollers. Let's set up a shuttle. Mass start at the Pinehurst entrance and then run all the way to where it hits the parking lot.

And then have a keg of lite beer waiting for us. And Seagrams Twisted Raspberry Gin shots.

I work until 3:00 on Saturday, so late Saturday or Sunday works for me to do some stair running.

lame. I posted a couple links to trails yesterday but I got that stupid "we are reviewing your post" message. I guess they think my posts are spam.

my ideas were the stairs behind the claremont hotel called "eucalyptus path" or the fire trail up behind Cal's football stadium. The stairs are awesomely brutal.

Lots of good trails already posted-

Strawberry Canyon to the Connector (with repeats prn) or to the the top.

Joaquin Miller and Redwood Regional parks in Oakland have a ton of great loops and out/backs (for that extra-special scalability...).

- Sequoia Bayview in JM, starting on Skyline. Can do a mostly flat out/back to the equestrian center or add sections of WestRidge to Graham to Dunne back to SBV to make a pretty big loop.

-Ditto on the Sunset Trail - Chapparal - SBV loop. If adventurous, keep exploring all the options at the north end of the park.

- East Ridge from Skyline Gate parking area. A couple of loop options in addition to the one-way already mentioned. East Ridge-far end of Phillips Loop-Eucalyptus-Stream back to the parking lot. Easridge-Prince-Stream back. East Ridge-Canyon-Stream back is MUCH longer.

-#1 Best: West Ridge from Skyline Gate pkg lot to Chown to French to Star Flower to Tres Sendas to Stream to parking lot at Skyline Gate. Good warmup out West Ridge, technical descent on Chown, blissful rollers on French with some short climbs towards the end, hard steady climb up Stream. A little hilly...

www.ebparks.org/parks/maps
www.oaklandnet.com/JoaquinMillerPark/map.html

Happy Trails...

ps- Stairs: The Cascades/Woodminster stairs (137 of them) just off Hwy 13 on Joaquin Miller road offer a great venue for weighted repeats or speed work- good view, slightly irregular footing to aid in concentration and the occasional opportunity to be "cruised".