Weekend Warriors

Duane and me trail running on Angel Island!
I had another fantastic "weekend warrior" weekend. Friday night, Duane and I went to go see Chris Botti live at the Mountain Winery! We had bought these tickets back in May and were really excited to go see him play his trumpet. One of our favorite songs by him is "Look of Love" with Paula Cole! His concert was better than expected... he is funny, charming and very talented. And looked fabulous in his black suit and trumpet. Why are trumpet players so sexy??? (And Mr. Chris is so good looking!) He is coming back to the Bay Area in December and can't wait to see him again. ;-)

Saturday morning, Duane and I got up early, drove over to Sausalito to meet up with the Bob and Rick's Fun (BARF) Run group for a 9 miler trail run on Angel Island. The BARF Run is organized by Bob and Rick (obviously) who don't belong to any particular team or race group... they just go on long trail runs and invite interested runners to come along to enjoy their trail runs in various locations of the Bay Area. I've been on their mailing list for a few months now and never really had any interest in going on a trail run... I mean, trails runs are mostly all about climbing hills, running on lots of dirt and well... it just sounded DIFFICULT. But, when I got the email saying that they had 2 spots open for their 3rd Annual Sail & Trail run, I just had to respond! Fortunately for us, they still had spots open for us. Yay! The 10 of us sailed from our chartered sailboat from Sausalito, which is about 5 minutes north of Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco to Angel Island. Which was a very short "drive" from the marina. Soon after we docked on Angel Island, we took off for our 9 mile of trail run. They did reassure me that they were going to go slow and really, walk up the hills. Not that I was really afraid of the hills, I was more concerned for my Achilles tendon. I hadn't run ALL week and wasn't even sure if I could keep up with these guys. For the most part, I did take it easy and did walk up the hills... and surprisingly, the tendon didn't bother me at all. My knees sure did but the Achilles tendon behaved quite well. (The photo above is the view of the Golden Gate Bridge from Angel Island.)

Most of the BARF runners that I met on Saturday are seasoned road racers and marathon runners but they found that once they got started on trail running, they never looked back. And most of these trail runners were really into the ultra distances - anywhere from 50k to 100 MILES. Wow. But, they also took the time to walk up the hills, if they had to and stopped to enjoy the scenery. Thank God! (The photo to the left is the group at the summit of the island before we ran back down.) They were all very inspiring and really fun to run with. Duane and I had such a great time with them. And the trail part really wasn't as bad as I thought! Trail running and ultras is very possibly in my near future, I think... :-)

After the trail run, we changed/cleaned up and quickly ate our brown bag lunches on the sailboat. Then we headed out to the open waters! There was a buzz of excitement in the air because the Maltese Falcon was making a historic voyage into the Bay Area waters! Maltese Falcon is supposedly the largest (289 feet clipper yacht) and most expensive yacht ($100 million +) ever built!! The yacht's sails are over 200 ft tall and they had to wait to very low tide to enter under the Golden Gate Bridge. There were TONS of sailboats and other boats on the water to witness the maiden voyage into the SF Bay... It was like paparazzi trailing Britney Spears! I had never seen so many boats on the Bay before. Not sure if you can see all the boats around the Maltese Falcon in the photos here... When the Maltese Falcon made it under the bridge, other boats were honking and people were shouting! It was wild. There was even a helicopter circling around the yacht. Many boats tailed the Maltese Falcon around the Bay (us, being one of them) just awed by the size and grandness of the man made wonder. I'm not a yacht fanatic or sailing connoisseur... I mean, this was only my 2nd time sailing. But I felt like I was part of something historic and I think we all caught the excitement in the air, happy to witness something out of the ordinary.

The Maltese Falcon right after it crossed under the Golden Gate Bridge... successfully!

The Maltese Falcon up close and personal... without the sails.

Duane at the helm*! (He looks so good! ;-)

Duane and me on the sailboat

D and I ended the evening strolling the streets of Sausalito, eating fish & chips and clam chowder... and of course, topped it off with very large ice cream cones. (Yes, as you can see, I fell of the no-sugar wagon again! But then, we did run 9 miles... Ok, starting over again tomorrow!) But we had a really really great day!!

Sunday, I rested again. I had thought about doing the Almaden Classic 10k but since the Rock n Roll Half Marathon in San Jose is next week, decided not to push it. I'm just happy that my Achilles tendon didn't act up on Saturday. D and I ran bunch of errands, instead. And spent a nice quite evening having dinner with my family, remembering my maternal grandmother who passed away a year ago.

Hope everyone had a great weekend, too!

* The sailboat was chartered as a group and one of the guys (Dan) from BARF is a sailor and he sailed for majority of the time. On calmer waters, he gave others the opportunity to "drive" the sailboat and Duane jumped at the opportunity!