Saturday run is planned to be long and slow, training the body to burn fat they say. Two hours and forty minutes, climbing to the upper edge of Muir Woods, then angling over to the top of Cardiac, fog draping over the Dipsea trail running along the ridge down toward Stinson Beach. Then reversing course for the second six mile stretch.
No need to run 2:40 to train for the Dipsea. No, this long training run is for the Double Dipsea (and early prep for the Bridger). The Double Dipsea, what a silly idea! The Dipsea alone is a crazy race, 7.4 miles of single track trail, 2100 feet of climbing, over rocks, roots and steps, countless steps, both at the beginning and then more in a tumbling downhill stretch into Steep Ravine. The Dipsea is hard enough, so why run it twice? But as my Saturday morning crazies told me, “You like pie, right? This is just more pie.” Who could argue with such airtight logic?
The Double Dipsea starts and ends at Stinson Beach, with the turnaround point at Old Mill Park, which lies at the base of the infamous steps. 14 miles (the course is slightly shorter than two Dipseas because of the location of the turnaround point), with 4200 feet of climbing. But those are just numbers. The hardest part of the Double is mental. You’ve just run a full Dipsea, come down the steps into Mill Valley, say hi to family (turnaround point is just a few blocks from our house!) and then have to climb back up those damn steps. Mentally, that’s a grind.
But I signed up and ran the Double last year, just a week after the Dipsea. Toughed it out through a nagging hamstring pull in the first two miles, and experienced the euphoria of cruising into Stinson Beach after two hours and fifty five minutes on the punishing Dipsea trails.
If you asked me then if I would ever run the Double again, the answer would have been a resounding, shouted out, “No.” But then I spoke with a young attorney in my office who had clerked for a judge in Bozeman, Montana. “If you can do the Double Dipsea, you would love the Bridger,” she said innocently. After watching several videos showing both the exquisite ridge line, and the pure challenge of the Bridger, I was thoroughly screwed. I was hooked, there was no way out except to run it. And, as a result, the Double was back on my plate, as a big piece of the training puzzle.