When running feels like flying

I went for a run this morning at one of my favorite places. The place is Rancho San Antonio Open Space Preserve. Rancho, as its known in the running/hiking community around the bay area, is a large open space area in the hills near Los Altos, CA. There are miles and miles of trails, meadows, trees, open spaces, dear, turkeys, quail, bunnies, birds, bobcats and mountain lions (and I haven't even talked about the farm!).

One of my favorite runs there is going "up and over". We start at the bathrooms near a parking lot, run up Rogue Valley trail which does a slow climb through more open space, goes past a wet season pond, along side a creek to the hairpin. From the hairpin you run up what we call 1 mile hill. Its about a 500ft climb in a mile. Get to the top and run the ridge for a bit, then you go down Upper Wildcat Canyon trail. This is where it gets really fun.

Upper Wildcat Canyon trail runs through, get this, Wildcat Canyon... yeah, amazing. The canyon is full of trees and another creek, the trail is a narrow single track that hugs the canyon edge and crosses back and forth across the creek on little wooden bridges. The air is always cooler than the ridge line and the trees are either beautiful green or have dropped orange and yellow leaves to carpet the path. This picture is of one of the bridges from the website of Alan Dean. I hope Alan doesn't mind me using this picture, but its perfect.

This is the great part... the angle of the trail is a perfect downhill that lets you get up some really good speed with very little effort. Just lean forward and let gravity do the work... the faster you go the lighter you have to be on your feet. On a really good day, like today, the air is cool, the ground firm but not hard, traction is good.

Then its like flying... I can hear the wind of my own passing, I dance from step to step, light on my feet, the ground rushes below me and rocks and branches flash into and out of my view. Its exhilarating.. and I feel primal and whole. On a *really* good day, like today, everything just clicks and it feels like flying.

I've always said that it feels like flying when the run is like that. Even long before I ever sat in a small plane, much less flew on my own. But now that I've flown, it really does feel like flying. Or maybe flying feels like running down that path?

More specifically, the part of flying that most closely matches the run is a great landing. I've had a good share of great landings. In a great landing, the ground rushes up and below me. The wind rushes by and, in a great landing, its a fine dance of small and light adjustments to the wind and the air as it moves past me. I don't even feel like there's a plane and me. All I feel is me and wind and adjustments for what the wind does.

I haven't had many great landings recently... but, I think this run was a good reminder for me of what its like and what I need to do. The other thing my CFI always talks about... never stop flying, don't let it touch the ground. That's like the run too... you certainly don't want to touch the ground suddenly in the run. That would hurt. The only way to do that run is keep light on the feet and always adjust.

I'm very glad I'm a runner.

A long time coming...

Did my first cross country yesterday. Unfortunately, I totally forgot to take the picture I promised. I'm not feeling very verbose tonight.. but there are a few notes to make.

1. Flight planning works amazingly well. Flew the flight as planned on the way to the destination and the heading, timing, checkpoints... it all worked. Ended up landing only 2 minutes later than I had planned. Just amazing. Scott was right, of course.
   
2. Bad checkpoints are hard to find, but fun if you have someone with you that knows what the hell he's doing. We didn't find the checkpoint we thought would be easy to find, but lucked out on the tower and found the buildings, ranches and race tracks that we figured would the hardest to find basically by knowing what the big picture should be and comparing that to what it was.
   
3. Northern California's hills are absolutely beautiful in the winter... the most gorgeous emerald green from the sky. And there are little hidden valleys with lakes and even landing strips. Ranches with cows looking like black dots on bright green pillows.
   

I'd been waiting for that flight for a very long time, a very very long time. I'm not going to say where I flew, it really doesn't matter. What mattered was the journey. Life's like that sometimes, the journey means more than the destination.

Cross Country Flight Planning

In this life after solo I have been learning and practicing Cross Country Flight Planning. This is a picture of the table at home with almost all of the "stuff" needed spread out. The thing I'm missing is the E6B flight computer which my awesome sibs got me for Christmas...

In this picture you see the Sectional (that's the map you use to fly, it has land data and airspace data), the spiral bound book is an airports directory with details on all of the little and big airports and airstrips in CA, a rotating plotter, a flight log, the piece of paper in the back is airplane performance data... a pencil and, most important, an eraser. You really need the eraser when you're a beginner like me.



This picture is a completed flight log with all of the details filled in... I am having a lot of fun filling in the details. You take the course the plane needs to travel on the map between checkpoints (true course), adjust it for wind direction and speed to get the direction you'll be pointing the plane to maintain the true course, this is the true heading. Then you have to adjust for the variation of the magnetic field of the earth where you happen to be to get the magnetic heading, then you have to adjust for the affects of the electronics and metal stuff in the plane on the compass in the plane to get the compass heading. That's the actual direction you fly based on the compass in the plane.

Of course I haven't even mentioned stuff like calculating actual ground speed, how long it will take to fly each leg, how much fuel will be used (including the fact that you use more fuel on a climb than you use in cruise flight). Fuel is VERY important, without fuel, the plane becomes a glider, and not a great one. A good one, yes, but not a great one. Lucky for me I have the super awesome E6B my sibs got me for Christmas to make these calculations easy.. but you still have to DO them.

Of course, there are programs that will do almost all of this stuff for you. They'll even file your flight plan for you. But I'm enjoying this part, I get to put my science brain into action. My scientifically and mathematically and musically inclined siblings would love this stuff.

Then you need to know stuff about where you're going... for instance, will there be clouds there? What runways are available? Is there fuel available? What frequency do you use to communicate with other planes at the location? What frequency do you use to get wind, temp and visibility information? Is the runway long enough for you to land on?

Anyway.. with luck tomorrow will be my first Cross Country Flight. Not solo, not yet... but I am really looking forward to the adventure! I'll make sure to get pictures of me somewhere NOT at RHV :)