Rancho San Antonio County Park

This was not a new place for me, since back in January, I went hiking with my colleague Eric.
So when I went back in San Jose in July and had a Sunday there, I decided to go again to enjoy trail running here.

D-Day

The route

The day before, I draw a route using Suunto's Heat Maps and uploaded it on my 9 Peak watch.

I went for a 24k route, since I had time.

This park is a bit hilly, which was also a reason I wanted to run here: get some elevation, since it's a bit flat where I live, and I am running a 50k trail race at the end of September, so getting some elevation as part of my training is a real plus.

As you can see, 900+ meters of elevation is not bad - at least it's a lot more than what I would get where I live ;)

Start

This park is quite popular and it can be difficult to find a parking spot, so I went there early (well, sort of: 7:30 am, but with the jetlag I was up at 5 am anyway).

Also, being there early had 2 other advantages:

less crowded trails,
temperature was cooler.

Run!

I had no constraint so to me it was really a "run like you feel" session, meaning I am running with no goal - if I want to run faster, I do it, if I want to take a few pics, so be it!

Here are a few pics I took :

The fun part of running in this park is that you are really in the wild, but at the same time, there are parts where you can see the Silicon Valley in full: for instance, you can see Apple Park in the distance on this pica:

The temperature was fine but eventually got up, and there were parts with no trees and quite hilly, while other parts were under large trees, bringing fresh air.

Overall a very nice trail.

I ran those 24k in a bit less than 3 hours (2h50), which again I wasn't aiming for, so I was quite pleased by that time.

Water wide, I brought my Salomon running bag, with 1.5 liter, as well as an additional 0.5 liter flask - 2 liters was fine.

Wrap Up

A very nice trail run - next time I'm in San Jose, I will try to run a longer route, since the park is quite big and there are a lot of options!

Tags: Running, Trail