Saturday Mornings With the Tamalpa Runners

by Susan MacTavish Best

So, the Bay to Breakers is over, summer is approaching everywhere but in San Francisco proper, long days are here, fog is rolling in during the evenings, and you're probably taking a keener interest in outdoorsy stuff than you did on, say, January 28^th.

Do you run? Do you hike? Do you feel chuffed when mud splatters up onto your calf while slodging along a trail? Then, read on.

This Saturday I met the Tamalpa Runners for their weekly rain or shine Saturday morning jaunt on Mt. Tam. I was a little scared to tell the truth. I'm fairly laid back about my running: I almost always run on my own, I never enter races anymore, and talk of a track workout invokes cramps in my calves. Most people walk faster than I run. In fact, I walk faster than I run.

About 30 folks met up at Mountain Home parking lot at 9:00am. I saw them there, but I made sure I approached them slyly from the other side of the street. You know, so that if I needed a last minute, chicken-out escape, I could pretend that I just happened to be strolling along Panoramic Highway in my skimpy running shorts, and then I could make a mad dash off onto Matt Davis Trail. It would be pure coincidence. I didn't chicken out. How pathetic I can be!

Runs are casual. There are no pre-set routes. The group decides along the way which trails to take. By tradition, every few miles the faster folks wait for the slower ones like me. After the first mile, everyone introduces themselves. Don't worry, it's merely your name, you don't need to give an account of your life or anything. There were five women in the entire group and we were all welcomed for sure.

We ended up breaking into two groups. I chose the runners taking the shorter route which was about 10 miles long up and down Mt. Tam, over the Dipsea trail and back up to Panoramic Highway. Our group had a brilliant leader who was filled with all sorts of fun tid-bits: he pointed out the derelict mountain logging mill, gave a running commentary on how to avoid the flourishing poison oak and many other pieces of random info.

The mountain is small. And you can be sure that most people who are motivated to be up at such an earlyish hour on a Saturday morning know each other. There were shouts back and forth on the trails when a lone strider would see us struggling up an open grassy trail. At one point we stopped and chatted with last year's Dipsea Race winner. (He was on a solitary training run, the Double Dipsea which is from Mill Valley over Mt. Tam to Stinson Beach and back again.)

The views from Mount Tam are breathtaking. And even if it is a foggy day, the trails smell good. Poppies are out in full force at the moment and I even heard a woodpecker chattering above our heavy breathing.

This isn't road running so it took us over two hours to get back to our cars despite the fact we only ran 10 miles. And for those of you who don't have too much experience running on trails, you'll be a bit unsure on your feet at first. Wear trail running shoes as they'll give you better grip going downhill and, more importantly, they'll give you more confidence. If you do feel like you need a practice run out there on your own, I'd recommend parking at Mountain Home on Panoramic Highway, taking the Matt Davis trail to Bootjack, crossing Panoramic Highway over onto Bootjack, and then following Bootjack onto Troop 80 back up to the Mountain Home. This run is about an hour long. Give or take. And it's a mixture of open faraway views as well as forests with a bathroom right in the middle should you need it! And Mountain Home is within quick access from San Francisco, about 30 minutes from the City.

Best of all, by running at 9:00 am on Saturdays with the Tamalpa Runners, you have the rest of the day ahead of you. And you can get back across the bridge without any of the annoying Saturday traffic that clogs up along the scalp of Sausalito.

Check out the Tamalpa Runners site at http://www.tamalparunners.org. They have a number of other organized runs during the week. Call ahead to get more details on them. I was going to run the Saturday Morning Fun Run at Ross Common for "runners of all abilities" and found out that it was going to be a minimum of 13 miles of scrambling up and down Mt. Tam which was a bit excessive for what I was looking for.

The 1999 Dipsea Run is closed to entrants and has been for some time. However, two weekends later, on the weekend of June 26^th is the Double Dipsea race which goes from Stinson to Mill Valley and back. I did this a couple of years ago and it is very fun! Despite the fact that the distance is twice that of the famed Dipsea, this race is laid back and breathtaking.

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