At 9:15 am we arrived in San Diego
At 10:15 am we waited in the cell phone lot for Marit while playing “Match the Rush song to the album it came from.” I win by throwing Chris a loop with “The Trees”
At 10:50 am Marit has arrived
At 11:00 am Marit waits for one of her two bags
At 11:15 am Marit is still waiting
At 11:30 am Marit finally has both bags
At 12:00 pm We arrive at Brad’s place and Chris builds up bikes
12:30 pm Marit and I go to the grocery store; I teach Marit how to properly select a piece of vanilla frosted cake
12:45 pm Chris tells Marit 100 things that are wrong with her bike
1:00 pm Marit is still listening to Chris
1:15 pm We depart for the canyon trail run
1:30 pm We start an easy warm up of 2 miles
At mile 1 we are all running together and Marit is talking
At mile 2 we are officially warmed up
At mile 2.25 we begin 8 miles of tempo descend
At mile 3 Marit is pointing out fighter jets in the sky while I am looking down at the ground to avoid sending myself face first into the rocks
At mile 3.25 Marit cries Camelback Dysfuction requiring a stop which really might be a new way to sneak some rest
At mile 3.5 the hills begin…..and Marit talks
At mile 4 Marit talks about more things
At mile 4.5 we climb a hill so steep and hard that I shout 184 and Marit shouts 179 and we soon discover we have roughly the same LT
At mile 5 I know the turnaround is just up ahead
At mile 5.5 the last climb quiets Marit down
At mile 5.75 We make the turnaround
At mile 5.8 We realize the way back must be faster and harder and I want to cry
At mile 6 We are climbing the steep descents in reverse and shouting our peak HR numbers at the top
At mile 6.25 it starts to feel hot
At mile 6.5 Marit admits “this camelback is f-in with me now.”
At mile 6.75 Marit admits that she has overzealously been trying to keep Chris in sight
At mile 6.8 Chris is no longer in sight
At mile 7 I started moaning up the hills
At mile 7.25 Marit is still talking up the hills
At mile 7.3 I am throwing up in my mouth
At mile 7.5 Marit gives me a lesson of figther jet identification 101 so I ask her what her heart rate is, “177” she says and I realize while I am huffing and panting she is conversing close to her LT
At mile 8 we climb a hill so hot, hard, steep that I say “I JUST NEED TO STOP”, put my hands on my knees, my head hanging down realizing that I have just reached my breaking point
At mile 8.5 I realize there is less than 1.5 miles to go
At mile 9 Marit starts talking about gels
At mile 9.25 Marit informs me that we are approaching a rattlesnake that has settled into half of the path, I am going so hard and the pace is fast that I don’t realize rattlesnake is a rattlesnake and there it until we are past it and then my HR is once again at….LT
At mile 9.5 Marit educates me on how she can make a tourniquet out of her camelback if we were bitten by a rattlesnake
At mile 9.75 I tell Marit we have a 400 to go which she thinks is a mile and then I try to shout quarter mile but there is not enough air to shout more than “quarter” which she still doesn’t hear so I shout it again
At mile 10 we are done; I stop and realized this is one of the hardest runs I have ever done. I worked harder than I thought possible up those hills and found my breaking point. I also found the one athlete in the world that can hold conversation at their LT.
At mile 11.5 we watch Marit skip back to the car
Afterwards we find Sherpa Thomas at Brad’s and we go for what was supposed to be a recovery ride. Thomas takes that as his cue to bolt out at 24 mph. On the way to dinner we play a game of Do, Date or Dump. Sherpa Thomas would do Hillary Clinton, date Hannah Montana and dump Queen Elizabeth. We introduced Marit to new thing #259095 in her life – falafel. Chris eats two dinners. Thomas has a sweet tooth fit and then discovered a bag of Raisenets in his bag. Chris impresses us by correctly spelling the spanish word “penasquitos”. Then Chris pulled all of Brad’s personal belongings out of the closet asking us “what do you think this is?” Too bad Brad isn’t here.
Marit reads the first version of my blog and says “it’ s a blog about me talking!” No, Marit, it’s a blog about how you can make something so hard look so darn easy and how much I admire you for that and for bringing me to my breaking point today.
Now we are tired and talking about tomorrow. Palomar awaits. And a new breaking point. And a lot more about jet planes and gels from Marit.
I better bring my conversation cards.
