san bruno mountain

i switched up my schedule a little while ago, and started running with my friend j. on wednesday mornings instead of climbing, so i could get more miles in during the week.

(j. is hardcore; she does adventure races, and recently set a course record for women on a trail race she did. i can keep up with her if i'm having a good day.)

she's more of a trail fanatic than i am (running on fire roads pains her) but we've been running on san bruno mountain because it's near her work, and on the way to mine, and it's the closest (and hilliest) dirt we can find.

for those who aren't from here, san bruno mountain is a not-very-lovely, steep-sided, grass-covered pile, that runs from runs from west to east between the 280 and 101 freeways in south san francisco. its flanks are gradually being disfigured by creeping developments, there is a high-tension-line running along its spine, an antenna farm on the higher western end, and a quarry eating a huge hole in it on its northern flank.

despite all that, it's not SUCH a bad place to run, and there's a state park on the top of it for some odd reason.

we've run there a couple of times, leaving from the north-western end, and this time we decided to try the east end. j. had scoped it out on her bike, and had found parking and what looked like a way up to the ridge.

so we headed out there around 6:30, and after i nearly got us killed by backing up for about 50 feet on the busy two-lane road that runs along its base because i missed the tiny turn-out, we got out of the car, circumvented the chainlink fence (ok, we walked around it, but circumvented sounds better) and started up.

holy steepness batman! the sides of the thing are steep, way too steep for me to run, and there aren't really any trails, but eventually we made it up to the top, hit the fire road, and took off for the antenna farm.

more steepness followed in the form of rollers, with jarring downhills and quad-crushing uphills, but the sun was coming up, the dew on the grass looked really pretty, and at times we couldn't see the power lines.

it wasn't dipsea, but it wasn't pavement either.

it took us about 75 minutes car-to-car, and we made it to the antenna farm, which was the whole point.

you can see the route here if you care (click and drag the map to move it around).