Cold and windy on the coast

Sunday I went out for a “longer hike”. Now to put this in perspective, a longer hike at this stage of my training (which doesn’t officially kick in until mid-January) is about 2.5 hours. I decided to go out to Tennessee Valley in Southern Marin to hike down toward the Pacific Ocean, up the Coastal Trail, and over and down to Muir Beach. There, a quick pit stop, then back up to the Coastal Fire Road to meet up with the Fox Trail and back down to Tennessee Valley to my parked car.

It was cold and windy on the exposed trails on the coast. Gorgeous. Clear blue skies. Magnificent views of the coast. But really windy. Stinging my face windy.

There were several times I thought about cutting things short, skipping the trip down to Muir Beach and just taking the one shortcut that was available to me. It still would have been about a 2 hour hike. My training hadn’t actually officially started yet. But I reminded myself what I signed up for. 292029 is not going to be easy. It’s going to be hard. That’s the point.

In the end, I did what I set out to do.

And as I got back to my car and out of the wind, I checked my All Trails app for my stats for the morning. 7.4 miles in 2 hours, 33 mins. And 1,706 vertical feet. Not a bad morning but I also did the math:

• I hope to complete 29029 in about 30 hours, so the time I spent on this hike is about 8.33% of what I hope to complete.

• And my 1,706 vertical feet is just less than 6% of the actual climb in June.

Yes, this is going to be hard.

Onward and upward!

-Matthew

(December 12, 2023)