Relating to the title of this post, “best” does not refer to the quality of my run but rather to the quality of the scenery during the run. The themes of my posts from this past weekend are all related to the unusual water conditions experienced over the weekend in Southern California (more on that in another blog post). Saturday morning, driven by an unusually low tide and a running group starting point just down the road at La Jolla Shores beach, I had one of the coolest runs ever. The tide was so low we were able to run all the way on the beach from La Jolla Shores up to Del Mar and back. Overall for me it was a 10.2 mile run.
Part of the reason the scenery was so amazing was the waves were up to seven or eight feet, which drew an unusually high number of surfers out to the water by our 8 a.m. start time. In fact, I wasn’t able to park in the regular lot down at the beach and had to look for a parking spot in the neighborhoods. After a rocky start – I realized as I was walking toward the group my iPod Shuffle was dead and I had a hole in the cap of my water bottle – I was excited to have dragged my butt out of bed for the run. The most challenging part of the run was at the end of La Jolla Shores beach. Both there and on the way back the runners had to stop our running and climb over a bunch of rocks to get to Black’s Beach. On the way back, my body was glad to have several minutes to rest from running.
We continued through Black’s Beach (more on this later also), up toward Torrey Pines State Reserve and to Del Mar. Kirk, Sara and I stopped for a brief rest/stretch/bathroom break at the bathrooms at the beach at the foot of Torrey Pines State Reserve and then headed back to La Jolla Shores. We also enjoyed a bit of cloud covering, which kept the weather nice and cool during our run. I learned that Sara had just completed the San Diego Marathon in May and Kirk also has a lab puppy – though his boy Prince is just a pup compared to Reg at 10 weeks. We recounted puppy stories and shared the joys of being a puppy parent during our run.
After climbing back over the rocks and finishing up through 10 miles on La Jolla Shores beach, we took a quick dip in the ocean. The lifeguards whistled at us and we had to move because we were swimming in an area designated for surfers only. After running 10+ miles, the water felt amazing and I was a bit slow to react to the scolding. All in all, probably the coolest run I’ve been on and nearly perfect conditions.
