Ohlone Steep Training

It's two weeks until O50K, and my training plan calls for shorter runs to taper to the event. Today I chose to start from Ohlone and run up and over Mission Peak then over to the bench at Mt. Allison. It was a total of 9.1 miles with a 2520 foot climb.

The route I chose was to go up "Buttburner Hill", which you can get to if you take a hard right turn after first gate after the initial long climb from the Ohlone parking lot. Buttburner Hill is 0.6 miles long and gains 821 feet (27.5% grade). There is 0.2 mile section that climbs almost 500 feet -- a 40% grade! It's a great workout for the quads and achilles.

From there, the route meets up with the normal Ohlone trail after the steep part of that trail, then continues up the peak.

This was the first time I ran all the way up the last big climb of Mission Peak -- Cardiac Hill as Arti calls it. It was pretty tough toward the end just before the peak, but my legs were feeling great today so I pushed through it.

Over the peak, then Mt. Allison is a couple more miles of easy running. The way back from Mt. Allison yields one of my favorite views of Mission Peak...

I chose to run on the trail behind the Peak to go back to Ohlone and encountered two Gopher Snakes. One was reallllly long (5 feet I'd guess)...

... and one was reallllly tiny (less than a foot)...

That makes 4 snakes on the last 3 runs. It's snake season!

All in all, it was a super fun run. With longer runs I have to hold back on the steep stuff to conserve energy, so being able to really give it my all on the steep stuff is really gratifying. Hopefully it serves to build up climbing strength that will help on O50K.