The coincidence of a 14 mile training run and a 14 mile trail race falling on the same weekend was not to be ignored, so I signed up for the Malibu Creek Challenge, another race in the Xterra Trail Race series that I tried out last fall. We rose early Saturday morning to head out to Santa Monica State Park, and I enjoyed a tough run in great weather. It was pretty much all hill, all the time, both up and down, and 14 miles is a long ways to go. I walked occasionally, but then again, so did everyone else around me, and I didn’t do it for too long before I started jogging again, so I felt alright. Best overheard conversation: “I’d like to run a marathon, but then I’d finish, and be like, ‘Well, what next?’ It’s like making a $100,000 – I did it, and now it’s like, ‘What’s next, $200,000?’ ” Wow.

Even harder, perhaps, than the race itself was the 7 mile marathon-pace run I had to do the next day. I was pretty sore, but managed to get it done in an ok time. Aimee and I took in the beautiful print of Raging Bull at the Goldwyn on Monday night, and we had a successful night at trivia last night, coming in first after a disappointing finish (4th, maybe?) last week. Last week started off poorly and we only barely recovered; this week, no one did particularly well, and we managed to stay in the thick of things despite getting a total of negative one point over rounds three and four. Thank heavens we’re on a team with people who know video games; I can’t tell my Katamari Damacy from my Metal Gear characters, and would have failed the final round abysmally. Then again, I also thought Flickr was a more popular photo-sharing website than Facebook, so what do I know… I feel like a real fuddy-duddy when I can’t even answer all of the questions in the “Internet” category properly.