Anton's Blog

2010 Running Statistics

2011-01-02T16:41:00.003-06:00

I am pretty happy with my running for 2010. In ran more than I did in 2009. This last year I ran 1293.4 miles. I walked/hiked 110 and I rode my bicycle 730 miles. I like being able to track my miles and seeing how far I can go in a specific time. I only wish I had ran more during the summer. I did a couple of big runs, but for the most part the mileage in the summer dropped off. I ran a couple of races including the SLC Marathon, the Halloween Half Marathon and a couple of 5Ks. I like getting the shirts from the races. This fall, I ran up Mount Timpanogos and also up Kings Peak which was really fun. For an early Christmas present I got a Garmin Forerunner 305. I've been using it quite a bit and it has helped me get out the door on some days that I have little motivation to get outside when it is so cold and/or wet.

Anyway, here are a couple of graphs of my running. The first is my weekly totals for the year. The second is my monthly totals for the year. Enjoy.

Kings Peak, Highest Point in Utah (13528)

2010-10-13T23:30:00.008-05:00

I've been wanting climb Kings Peak for some time. I just hadn't had the opportunity to do it. For those who may not know, Kings Peak is the highest point in Utah with an elevation of 13528 feet. Last night at about 9:30 I made the decision to go today. I packed up all my stuff, all ready to leave really early. I wanted to be on the trail by the time it got light. I actually got there a little earlier than planned. Since it was still dark, and not wanting to venture onto an unknown trail in the dark, I took a little nap in the car before heading out. I set my alarm to get me up.

Here is a picture of me trying to get the courage to get out of my car. The outside air temperature was 19 degrees, really cold! I did get out of the car, and once I got moving wasn't too bad.

Here I am signing my name on the trail register.

This is just a short way up the trail.
The sun started to shine through the trees and I thought it looked cool. The photo doesn't look as cool though as it really did.

And this is my destination. The one in the middle with the sun shining on it. That is Kings Peak. I was a little surprised to see all that snow on it. I knew it had snowed last week, but I figured it would have all melted. It doesn't get warm enough up there to do much melting, so there is snow. I started to wonder if I'd be able to make it all the way up. There couldn't be that much snow, could there?

About four or five miles up the trail I cam across this thing. If you know what it is, please let me know. My best guess is some weather thing. It looks like maybe a UFO landed and planted it there to run some tests.

This is from Henry's Fork Basin looking up at the ridge and you can see Kings Peak there behind the ridge.

Kings Peak looks pretty cool from this angle.

Here I am posing with the sign. Right above where my hand is, you can see the ridge that I climb over. It is Gunsight Pass.

And this is a close up of it as I am climbing up. From there it is about three miles or so to the top.

This is Kings Peak. See, it looks better from the other side. From here there was not much of a trail. It was pretty much just climbing up over the rocks.

This is a view from the top of Utah. Here we are looking North into Wyoming. The valley right below is Henry's Fork Basin and it is where I hiked/ran up through.

This view is looking towards the west. These view were definitely worth the trek.

And on the left here you can see South Kings Peak. This is looking Southward and slightly west. Somewhere down there is Moon Lake. I don't think it is actually visible because of other mountains that get in the way.

And here I am at the top. Proof that I was on the top of Kings Peak.

And another one of me. The Peak on the right of the photo is South Kings Peak. It is only about 25 feet lower in elevation than the north peak. In fact, until 1966 the south peak was believed to be the highest point in Utah.

I saw several of these zebra like rocks and had to take a picture. I thought my kids would get a kick out of it.

And here I am back at the trailhead.

I don't know why I took a photo like this, but here it is.

So, in all it took me about four hours to get up and three hours and fifteen minutes to get down, seven hours and fifteen minutes total. The mileage was about 28 round trip. And I think the elevation gain is about 5000 feet. Overall this was a very nice, runnable trail. I really liked it. It wasn't until I got up to Gunsight pass and started getting into the snow, that I had to slow down.

I got up this morning at 3:00 am, got on the trail about 7:45 am, got back to the car about 3:00, got back home about 6:30, and it is now nearly midnight. What the heck am I still doing awake?!? I hope the kids sleep in tomorrow. I'm taking the day off of running tomorrow. I need a break after a 28 miler.

Twin Peaks

2010-10-10T21:11:00.007-05:00

So, the other day I decided to climb Twin Peaks, which is visible from where I am living. I decided to start from the Mill B trailhead. I started up the Broads Fork trail, which was really nice. It looked like this:

The fall colors were brilliant in a few places along the trail. It climbs the canyon westward before heading south up the trail. The first two and a half miles were very nice and pretty runnable. There were only a few places that were too steep for me to continue running. I crossed this creek about a mile and a half up the trail.

I think it looked awesome.

I passed through this one grove of aspens and just had to snap another photo. I love quaking aspen trees and this was just an awesome view up the trail.

Up the trail a little bit more, I passed this meadow and there were several dear along the side of it. I didn't get any good pictures of the dear, but here is the best one. You can see one off to the left side of the photo here and one in the middle.

This next one was the first glimpse of the peak I was heading for. I climbed up to the right of the photo. The point on the far right that you can see is where I climbed up to first, but the next one over is the one that I was actually aiming for.

Here is a view looking back the opposite direction to the north. The farther peaks you can see are on the north side of Big Cottonwood Canyon.

This was the first view that I had of the Valley. You can see Salt Lake City there in the center of the photo and the lake beyond.

This view is looking north over the Wasatch Mountain range. I love the views in these mountains.

I hiked passed that lake. The trail ended right about where that lake is and I had to stop running at that point and climb up some pretty steep rock slides. You can see at the bottom of the picture where I climbed up.

This was the little point that I climbed up to first. According to my map it is 10,530 feet elevation. From there I had a better view of the valley.

See...

That's me from the point there.

Now this is the view from the higher of the two Twin Peaks. At an elevation of 11,330 feet. The second peak there is in the way of the view, so I climbed over to the other peak there which stands at 11,328 feet a whole two feet lower in elevation that this taller one.

Great views of the valley. You can see the dark clouds hovering over my head. I was a little concerned about thunderstorms rolling in, so I didn't stay up there very long at all. I never heard any thunder, and there was only a little rain/snow mix when I started heading back down.

Here is a close up of where I live. I can see our church, but it is hard to see our house because the road is going north/south and the houses/trees across the street kinda block the view of our house from here.

You can barely see the mountains over there, so I knew I had to get down quickly. The rain didn't actually hit until after I got home. That was nice.

Even though I was only able to run the first two and the last two miles, it was a very tough outing. I think that because of the lack of trail this is the most difficult ascent that I have done in the Wasatch Mountains. Everything else I have been up has had a trail at least most of the way up. This one the trail only came up not even half way. It was really steep coming up the last little bit. I almost felt like I was rock climbing in a couple of places. I think it is a category three climb according to some other stuff that I have read about it. Well, enjoy!

Little Cottonwood Trail

2010-09-27T13:45:00.006-05:00

So a friend asked the other day about this trail. I had only attempted this trail once and it was closed. That was about a month after the flooding earlier this year. I was a little surprised to see this sign at the trail head indicating that the trail was still closed. Since I didn't see any damage or trail blocks, I decided to go up to see where it was actually closed. I passed several people and then I didn't feel as bad about being on a trail that was supposedly closed. On this lower part of the trail I passed to places where the trail was actually closed. It looked like they had been doing some work to fix it up a bit. One section was closed for 200-300 yards and then another section was closed for about 50-100 yards. There was no one working on the trail, and I saw others going up, so I continued up the trail. I felt bad about this and so when I reached the top (Tanner Flat Campground) I went out onto the road so that I didn't have to run on the closed trail.

That's me on the lower section of the trail.

It was actually a very nice runnable trail for most of the way.

Like I said, most of the way. This was a short section towards the top before I got to Tanner Flat.

I love the fall colors that are now very prevalent in the canyon.

This is as I was leaving Tanner Flat Campground. The trail came into the camp on one of the loops. The upper portion of the trail looked a bit newer than the rest of the trail, but it was still a well developed trail. Even though the trail was closed in a couple places, it still seems like a popular trail. I saw many mountain bike tracks and foot prints. I saw a couple of people hiking, and a couple of mountain bikes too.

I like getting pictures of me as proof that I've actually been somewhere. This is where I came off the trail and down the road. I drove this portion to measure how far it was and my car said 4.1 miles down the road. I'm guessing it was a little more, like 4.5, on the trail, I'm not really sure, but that seems about right.

I thought that this run on the road down the canyon would prepare me a bit for the Halloween Half marathon that comes down Provo Canyon. My pace coming down was about 7:20, my pace going up was about 11:30 if it was only 4.5 miles. I guess that is about right.

I like the view down the canyon into the Salt Lake Valley.

That was a pretty good run overall. I won't be back thought until they fix that trail. It seems like they are taking there time getting it fixed up. It seems like it would be a good trail for snowshoeing in the winter. They just need to get it fixed. I wonder if the trail continues up the canyon on the other side of Tanner Flat Campground. I was a little surprised to see that it was still open. There was a sign that said the campground is open until October 11th. Maybe I'll come up here with my family before it closes. Probably not though.

Last night I was reading about this crazy run that people do in the Grand Canyon. They call it a R2R2R, which means rim to rim to rim. It is about fifty miles and they start from one rim of the Grand Canyon, go down to the Colorado River and back up the other side, then they turn around and do it again the other direction. I really want to do it. I think it would be a good training run for the Moab 100. I am still planning on running that in March. I just hope I am still here to run it. I might actually be gone and if that is the case, I just might go down there and run it on my own. I got so excited that I could hardly sleep. I just kept thinking about getting out of bed and going for a run. I could have ran all night. I finally fell asleep about two hours after lying down in bed. I plan to run either the R2R2R run or a Zion traverse (from one end to the other in Zion National Park, also about 50 miles) in November with a running friend of mine.

Timp Run

2010-09-20T15:22:00.005-05:00

Last Friday evening I decided I wanted to go for a good trail run. Since I had yet to climb Mount Timpanogos this summer, I decided it was about time. I figured that if I got up at five I could get to the trailhead by six and be up and down by nine, be home by ten and Amanda wouldn't get upset at me for being gone all day. It started out as planned, but then when I got to the trailhead it was packed. There were tons of people and I ended up having to park about three quarters of a mile from the trailhead. That added a bit to my time. There were also so many people on the trail that I kept having to slow down and ask to pass them. I'm not complaining, but if there weren't so many people I surely would have been home by ten. As it was, I didn't get home until eleven thirty.

This is the first picture that I took. It is a couple of miles up the trail, looking out to the east. The sun was just coming up and this is the spot where I put away my headlamp.

That's me and the uphill part of the trail behind me.

Not a very good picture, but that is looking up toward Timp. I think Timp itself is actually to the left side out of this picture.

Even with all the people I managed to reach the summit in almost exactly two hours. I always enjoy the view from up there. It was cold because the last little bit of the climb from the saddle is on the west side of the mountain which is still in the shade at this time of day. In this picture you can see Deer Creek Reservoir and Heber City.

This is looking down from the top to Emerald Lake. If you hike up from Aspen Grove, that is where the trail will take you. If you look closely, you can see some tents.

This is looking down into Pleasant Grove. I just thought that all of these cool fall colors were awesome.

This next one is looking to the north. The highest point that you can see towards the left side of the picture is the Pfiefferhorn. I did that one earlier in the summer one Saturday morning. It was also a fun one, and much much less crowded.

I had someone take my picture, so for once here is a picture where I am not holding the camera.

And here is another one.

On the way back down I almost missed these mountain goats. There was a guy with his video camera and I just thought that he was filming the mountains. After I passed him, I turned around and these four or five mountain goats were only about 20-30 feet off the trail. They are very, very common to see up here. I don't think I have ever been up here without seeing at least one. You just have to look for them sometimes. They are not usually this close to the trail.

After I got back down and started driving down the mountain, I noticed more awesome fall colors so I stopped the car and took this photo of the mountain. Have I mentioned that I love the mountains?

And that was my run. It was lots of fun. Oh, yeah, half way up I ran into a guy I'd run with a couple of times before. He was on his way back down. He talked about doing a 50 mile run in Zions National Park, or at the Grand Canyon. I have been wanting to do a R2R2R run for a while (Rim to Rim to Rim). I've heard a lot about people doing that where they start at one rim of the grand canyon, run down to the Colorado River then back up to the other rim, then turn around and come back to where they started. It is about a 50 mile run. I think it would be a perfect training run for the Moab 100. I think I will really try to do that with him some time in November.

Wasatch 100

2010-09-20T14:29:00.003-05:00

So, a few weeks ago, I decided that since I was still in Utah and the Wasatch 100 was coming up, I would try to participate some how. I got onto the website and noticed that there was a section for people looking for pacers. I thought that sounded like a good way to help, so I emailed one of the people and they said they were happy for the help.

The race came and I met up with him on Thursday at the mandatory pre-race meeting. We talked about a few logistics and talked about where I planned to meet him. We decided on Brighton, mile 75, and that was that.

This is a photo he took at the top of the first mountain they climbed. It was probably some time around seven or eight when he took this photo. It had snowed earlier that night up there, but it warmed up enough durring the day to melt it off.

I'm not certain where this photo is taken, probably somewhere before Lambs Canyon (mile 50).

This is the Brighton aid station at Brighton Lodge. He was hoping to be there by about ten o'clock, but he didn't get there until about 12:40 am. Luckily I was able to follow him online. They had a good system of posting the times into and out of aid stations, and they were pretty good at estimating the time of arrival at the next aid stations. I left my house about eleven o'clock. Amanda came with me so that the car wouldn't be left up there.

It was freezing cold, I'd say it was 25 degrees at the top of the climb out of Brighton. The car thermometer said it was about 30 degrees at Brighton. We left this aid station just before 1:00 a.m.

From there, it was a climb up and over Catherine's Pass. That was the highest point on the whole course, 10,450. Phil was pretty tired after having already traveled 75 miles on foot, so it was mostly just walking. It was a pretty steep climb and the trail was not very good for running.

When we started going down the other side, the trail was steep and slippery. It was only about five miles to that next aid station, but it took about two hours. We were in and out of Ant Knolls aids station pretty quickly. As we were leaving they said that it was only about three miles to the next aid station. When we had been going for more than an hour, we started wondering if they were telling the truth. They were, but it was just really slow going. An hour and a half later, we got into Pole Line Pass aid station (mile 83). They had a big fire going, so I warmed my hands just a bit. I let Phil go on so that he would loose any time, and I stayed for another minute or two to grab an extra bite and warm up a bit. I caught up to him pretty quickly.

This section seemed about as bad, it was just slow going. But we did manage to pick it up a bit because we realized how slow we were actually going. It was four miles to the next aid station and it took us about an hour and forty minutes. This was Rock Springs aid station at mile 87. This was a remote aid station and they didn't have much. We filled our bottles up and took off pretty quickly. Shortly after we left Rock Springs, Phil's headlight went out. It's a good thing I was there for that. He probably would have gotten lost or had to slow way down and gotten hypothermia. It was really cold up there. I handed him my mini mag (my spare flashlight) and let him continue while I replaced the batteries in his headlamp with the AAA batteries that I had brought. When I caught up with him, he just wanted to keep the hand held light, so I put the headlamp away. It was dark for about another hour after his light died.

We hit the plunge and the dive and it seemed like this section just kept going and going, but at least we were moving faster. He was able to jog for most of this section, any time there was a down hill, we were running. The ups slowed us down, but there were not many along this section. We made it into Pot Bottom Aid Station from Rock Springs in about and hour and forty five minutes. This was the last aid station before the finish line. We were moving along at a pretty good clip coming into this aid station and Phil did not want to stop for long. We came in and he left within a minute, I stayed an extra minute or so to finish filling his bottle and putting in an electrolyte tablet.

The next stretch was a hill for about a mile. We walked up the whole hill, but when it started coming back down that was it, it was down hill to the finish, and we were jogging at a pretty good clip for most of this section. There was one place just after we passed the water tank, that Phil didn't turn when he should have, so I yelled after him and we had to turn around and climb back up that hill about 50 yards. That was it though, after that there was no stopping, we jogged the whole way to the finish. We started seeing more and more people. There were a couple of photographers, there were people cheering when we came out onto the street, then we just had a little more than half a mile to jog down the street.

When we arrived at the finish line, there were lots of people cheering. Amanda and the kids were there. They had arrived only a few minutes before, just in the nick of time. We crossed the finish line at 9:54 a.m. His time for completing the 100 miles was 28 hours and 54 minutes. Great job Phil!!! Here we are just after we crossed the finish.

And here we are just resting. It hadn't hit me yet that I hadn't slept all night long.

I am very glad that I was able to help Phil for the Wasatch 100. It was a great experience to participate in a 100 mile race.

This race has helped motivate me to really get out and prepare for my own 100 mile race. I have still only done the one 50 mile race two years ago. I've been looking around and I see that there is a 100 mile race in Moab in March. I think I will plan on doing that race and I will train for it. If I happen to still be in Utah for that race, then I will do it. If not, then maybe I will plan my own 100 mile run or something. Who knows? I just really want to run another big race. Right now I am planning on running the Provo Halloween Half Marathon on October 30th. I think I can get a PR. My best half marathon time is something like 1 hour and 36 or 37 minutes. I'm pretty sure I can break, 1:30.

Mount Olympus

2010-09-20T12:35:00.004-05:00

So, if you are looking for a trail that is sure to challenge you, then this is it. It is 3.5 miles to the top and it climbs over 4000 feet. That is a very steep climb. I had the intention of running this trail, but it was mostly a walk. This is what the trail looks like right at the start. It climbs up, imagine that. It starts right at the foothills. Throughout the entire hike you have a great view of the Salt Lake Valley.

So this next one is more than half way up the trail looking down towards the valley. You can see the copper mine on the other mountain over there.

The last twenty minutes or so is spent almost rock climbing. It is not true climbing, but it is about as close as you can get without actually climbing the rocks. I never felt like I was in danger if I slipped. I would have just slid a little bit and knocked some loose rocks down.

Here is a view from the top. I think this is looking West northwest from the summit.

And that is me enjoying the sun and a short break at the summit.

I don't know why I took this picture. I guess I was really out of it from hiking so hard. I'm just a little weird. Maybe I need to send the picture to Amphipod so they can use it as an advertisement photo. That would be funny.

This is on the way back down the mountain. Since it was so steep, it was very difficult to run any of it.

There were actually a few spots that were pretty nice like this. This section was pretty runnable.

And I made it down safely.

I like this one for the fact that there is so much climbing. If I can manage to run up this one the whole way, then I would be in great shape. I'll keep trying and working towards it. For now, I'll stick to the other trails up big and little cottonwood canyons.

Grandaddy Lake

2010-08-29T17:09:00.005-05:00

I'd been wanting to hike up to Grandaddy Lake ever since I read about it in the spring. It sounded like a nice easy trail for kids to come along. It was not very steep, and it was only about four miles.

We drove up to the Grandview Trailhead up in the Uintas. And here we are at the trailhead around three o'clock.

This is Alex about twenty to thirty minutes up the trail. He says he was pretty tired, but every time we stopped to take a break, he was bouncing off all the trees and rocks. He was a trooper.

He wanted a turn with the camera, so there I am and there's the trail going up behind me.

This next one is just before we got to our camp. We were probably about a half mile or so from Grandaddy Lake.

When we arrived in the area, we first found a place to set up camp. Then we went exploring down to the lake. It was very pretty with the sun already behind the mountain, but still shining on this mountain and reflecting off the lake. It was awesome.

The next morning after we packed our bags up and ate some breakfast, we went down to the lake again. This time to a different spot. I couldn't believe how still the water was, and with the sunrise coming up over the lake it was really pretty. When I pointed the camera at Alex and asked him to smile, this is what he did. I don't know where he got this from, but he has done this for a year or so at random times. He just likes to be goofy.

The trees reflecting in the lake here was awesome. It was very nice to be able to see this before heading back down the trail. It would have been nice if we had been able to stay up there for two nights.

And here we are together. I had a lot of fun spending some one-on-one time with my son.

Again, just beautiful.

I only carried him this little bit down to and back up from the lake. He walked the four miles up to the lake and four miles back down to the car.

We needed a rest about every twenty minutes. I think it was a focus thing more than anything else. He just couldn't focus on walking for very long at a time.

He's a cutie.

And this is our last little rest before reaching the car.

Yeah, we finished.

I think Alex had a good time. I sure did. I think I'll come back here again. It is a really nice area. Maybe next time I'll have more time to explore some of the surrounding lakes.

Desolation Lake

2010-08-26T22:57:00.006-05:00

I have done this run several times. I enjoy this trail because most of it is pretty easy to run on. I also like the fact that I can run up to a ridge and look down into park city. Like I said, I've done this run before but this is the first time (recently at least) that I actually brought my camera. Here is a picture of the lower part of the trail.

I start this run at the Mill D North Trail head. It starts of by climbing the canyon while paralleling the hwy for about a half a mile or more, then it turns north and heads up the canyon. About a mile or so up the trail there is a little stream that it comes close to and the trail opens up a little bit. It is a nice little spot. Continuing on another 0.6 miles it continues to climb. There is a fork in the trail you can either go to the northwest up to Dog lake (which is a short steep climb of about 0.6 miles) or you can head right (northeast) up towards Desolation lake.

Heading northeast now the trail climbs quite a bit in just a short while, then levels out to a more gradual climb. From that fork in the trail according to the trail signs it is 1.9 to desolation lake and 1.6 back to the trail head. Both up and down I can cover the distance in just about the same amount of time.

It's too bad that all this water is part of the Salt Lake Watershed. It would be nice to take a quick dip in the lake to cool off. It looks so like it would be so nice.

When I am limited on time, I turn around here making the whole trip about seven miles. I really like going up the next 0.6 miles to the ridge that looks down into park city. In this photo you can see part of Park City.

That is usually where I turn around making the whole trip about 8.2 miles. But this time I decided to find a way up to the top of the peak that is right there. It does not have a name on my map but the elevation is listed as 9990, so that sounds like a good name right? I thought that there would be a trail to the top of it since the main trail goes pretty close. But I was wrong. I was on the north side of it and I followed the main trail (which is the Great Western Trail) around to the south of the peak and didn't see any trail that went up, so I had to slow down and just hike the last little bit up. I tend to be pretty cautious with things like this because I really don't want to twist an ankle. So, I've conquered 9990 once and I don't think I need to do it again. Next time, I'll continue up the Great Western Trail until I need to turn around.

Here is a kind of blurry shot of me as I'm coming down off that ridge back towards Desolation Lake.

I really enjoy being able to fly down the mountain coming down the trail. Going up I do about a 12-13 pace and coming down I can do about a nine minute pace. It seems like I should be able to do more than that, but like I said I tend to be really cautious, maybe overcautious, because I really don't want an injury. I am usually by myself up there and wouldn't want to get stuck because I twisted an ankle so bad I can't even walk down. anyway...

Here I am back at the trail head after finishing the run. As much as I love being up in the mountains it always seems nice to get back to the car.

Moon Lake Run/Hike

2010-08-15T19:01:00.011-05:00

So a couple of weeks ago, we went up to Moon Lake with a bunch of my cousins, aunts and uncles. We got up there on Monday afternoon. I really like moon lake because of the mountains. I also like the fishing, but I didn't get a license to be able to go fishing. Well one of the things that I wanted to do when I was up there was to go up the canyon to Brown Duck Lake. I decided that Tuesday morning would be the best time to go off by myself for a couple of hours.

Tuesday morning my alarm went off at 5:45 a.m. I didn't hear it though and at 5:50 Amanda nudged me and told me my alarm was going off. Sure enough, I'd slept through the alarm. I'm glad I didn't completely sleep through it. I climbed out of the tent and finished getting my bag ready and my running stuff ready. I knew I'd be gone until noon, so I packed three powerbars, a couple of energy gels and I filled my three liter camelbak. I thought that would be enough. So, I got on the trail by about 6:10.

The trail leaves Moon Lake Campground and goes up to the west following Brown Duck Lake. After a couple of miles you cross into the High Uintas Wilderness Area. The first "wild"life I saw was cows. It surprised me because I thought that since it was a wilderness area, ranching wouldn't be allowed. That's alright though. I managed to fight of the cows and survived. It was about eight o'clock when I got to where the trail split off to East Basin. I kept going on the trail to Brown Duck Lake and then on around to Island Lake. I wanted to go to Kidney lake but that would have added about a mile and I didn't feel like I could take the time. I had a long run in front of me, and I didn't want to fight any more cows. So I turned around and went back to the trail that split to the north to East Basin. I still hadn't seen any people. I was a little surprised that I didn't see anyone one the trail, or camping at the lakes.

This was a photo of Brown Duck Lake.

And here is a photo of Brown Duck Creek that goes down to Moon Lake about six or seven miles down the trail.

Well the trail up from Moon Lake to this point was mostly runable. It was a bit steep but at least there were not too many rocks in the trail. The next portion of it was mostly level, but there were lots of rocks in the trail that made it hard to run on. I still kept up a pretty good pace (well, good pace is relative here, it was probably like a 10 minute mile here). After a couple more miles, I passed a lake and thought I had lost the trail. The trail went straight into a meadow and I couldn't see any sign of a path through the meadow or a path on the other side of the meadow. I turned around and thought maybe it followed the lake a little bit. I came upon a guy camping with his son. They were having breakfast. They pointed me in the right direction and walked with me across the other side of the meadow. When we got to the other side it was obvious which direction the trail went. After running for another couple of miles, I came up over East Basin Pass. I didn't realized I was coming up to it, but then I passed it and the trail went down a pretty steep rock slide area. I paused to see if I could tell where the trail went. I couldn't see the trail, but I could tell where it went based on the map that I have.

The trail continued down into East Basin and then up a little into a nice little forested area. Pretty soon I came to a sign that said "East Basin Creek." It was located in a nice little meadow area with a creek running through it and several little lakes. I took a break right at that sign to eat a powerbar and take a good look at the map.

I continued on and crossed the creek. I ran up the last little hill from hear up to Cleveland Pass. It was nice up there. It was pretty flat, not many plants, and there was a cool lake up there. If I had more time, I probably would have hopped in for a little swim. Maybe next time. By the time I got to Cleveland pass it was about eleven o'clock. The GPS said that it was 14 point something miles. I had been going pretty darn slow. oh well I was having fun and it was all downhill from here. I told Amanda that I'd be back to Moon Lake by about noon, well, I knew that wasn't going to happen but I figured I should be able to get there by about one since it was all down hill. By this time I had eaten two powerbars and had probably drunk about half of my water. It was really pretty up there too. I took several pictures before continuing on down the trail. Here is a picture of the peak right behind Cleveland Pass.

Here is where the trail splits. I came from East Basin and I was headed over to Ottoson Basin. It was all down from here.

I think this lake was pretty cool. It might be a fun lake to camp next to some time.

This picture is looking down the valley to the east coming down from Cleveland Pass.

This is a picture of Ottoson Basin looking to the North. I think that peak on the right is East Lavina. It could be one of a couple others, but as best as I can tell from Google maps right now, it looks like Lavina. I don't have my good map with me right now. I really love the mountains. I really love being alone in the mountains. It is so peaceful up there. I love being in nature. Every time I see the mountains I am in awe. I sometimes wish I could live in the mountains.

Here is a picture coming down Ottoson Basin. As I was running I startled a couple of elk that were near the trail. I grabbed my camera in an attempt to get a picture of them, but I couldn't. I thought maybe there would be some more, but no luck. I took this picture of a meadow like the one where I saw the elk. I enjoy seeing wildlife. It was much better than the cows I saw a couple hours earlier.

And here is a photo of a river I had to cross. I stayed on the north side of this creek the rest of the way down Ottoson Basin to the junction of Lake Fork Trail. In fact it was a mile or so on that trail before I crossed that creek.

It only took me about 40 minutes or so to get down this portion of the trail. My guess is that it was about four or five miles. I was able to go pretty quickly. I was getting pretty tired by this point, but I figured I had about seven or eight miles to go. Afterwards I now realize it was probably more.

Here I am as I am leaving the High Uintas Wilderness Area. I ran completely out of water right in here somewhere. It was another 15 or 20 minutes before I could see Moon Lake, and then I really felt like I was close. I kept worrying about the time. I knew Amanda was expecting me about noon and it was already two o'clock.

It took about thirty minutes to get to the other side of the lake once I saw it, and about half way through this portion I noticed that I stopped sweating. My skin was sticky and there was no sweat. I didn't feel faint or nautious or anything like that, I was just tired. It was like the end of a marathon where if I kept running it was okay even though it was taking a lot of energy, but if I stopped to walk, it was practically impossible to continue running. I was chanting cadence to give myself motivation to keep going. It worked well too. I would have just slowed down and walked, but I knew everyone back at camp would be worrying about me and thinking I was eaten by some wild animal, so I kept my pace up. I got back to the cabins where everyone was located about 2:40.

Before I left I thought that it was about a 25 mile loop. Afterwards I felt like it was more like 35 miles. Now, looking back at it, I think it was probably about 28-30 miles. On my running log on runnersworld, I marked 28. I think that was probably right. I am so glad that I did that run/hike. It was nice to be alone in the mountains. Afterward I hopped in the lake to help cool off my legs. The water was cool enough to be an icing, but without really being ice. Well, that was pretty long, but I hope you enjoyed seeing the photos.

Wildcat Canyon Run, Zion National Park

2010-08-06T13:44:00.009-05:00

After the run up Angels Landing we came down and had dinner. We then drove up to the Upper Kolob Plateau part of Zion National Park. There is a little campground up there with six spots, but it was all full. We drove up to Kolob Reservoir and camped next to the lake up there. It was a really nice spot to camp. On Thursday morning we drove back down to the Lava Point trail head.

We ran out about four and a half miles and back making it a total of probably about nine miles. From this trail head you could run out the West Rim trail, or the Wildcat Canyon trail. We took the trail to Wildcat Canyon. Despite the name, we did not see any wildcats. We did however come accross two snakes. The first was about two miles into the trail. This rattlesnake was coiled up right there on the trail. I didn't see him move at all. We walked around him keeping our distance, and we marked the trail so that we would know where it was when we came back.

The rest of this run was pretty fun. This was definitely a faster run than Angels Landing. We wanted to run out to a lookout point, but we also didn't want to run too far. We didn't make it to the point. We turned around at about 45 minutes. It took about the same amount of time to get back.

On the way back we saw a King snake. We also saw the rattlesnake again. he had woken up and was slithering up the hill away from the trail.

Here is a picture of that rattelsnake we saw. Ryan was running in front and he freaked out when he saw it. I would have to if I had seen it first. Since I knew it was there I was cautious when i aproached to take a picture.

Here is Ryan at the point where we turned around.

And here I am at that same point.

Here is a view from the trail.

And here is a picture of that king snake. We weren't sure what kind of snake it was, but I looked it up when we got back and it is some sort of King snake. It is kinda hard to see, but there it is.

Here is another photo of that rattlesnake. I guess the sun hit him and he warmed up enough to move by the time we got back to him.

And this last photo is of us running. I was holding the camera in my hand, turned it on, held it up and snapped this shot while we were running back up the trail to the trail head. I was pretty tired at this point.

In all it took us about an hour and half to do this run of about nine miles. Not great time, but I didn't stop my watch for the snakes and other photos, so overall not bad. After this run, we hopped in the car and headed home. It was a really good trip to Zion National Park. Next time I hope there will not be a threat of flash flooding so that I can do the whole Narrows hike.

Angles Landing

2010-08-06T11:25:00.004-05:00

So, After we finished hiking the Narrows, we rode the shuttle bus down to "the Grotto." That is where the trail starts to hike Angels Landing. We decided to ditch our bags and walking sticks in some bushes off the trail and run up it. It was a great idea for the first mile or so. Then the going got really steep. It was still a good idea, but Ryan is in much better shape than I am. After about a mile or so there are several switch backs that eventually lead right up the side of a cliff, literally. The cliff was carved away for the trail. It was getting pretty hot and I didn't have my running clothes on. I just had my normal shorts and a cotton t-shirt. Not the best running gear, especially when it is so warm out. Anyway, after about two miles we got up to the pass, then the trail comes back and up this really steep, narrow point.

This is where the cliff is carved away for the trail to go up.

Here is a video clip of how narrow and crazy it was up there.

They have these safety chains up there for people to grab onto because it is kinda dangerous and really, really dangerous if these chains were not there.

This is the top part of Angels Landing. See how crazy narrow and steep it is. I'm actually a bit surprised that they let people go up there. I'm surprised there are not more accidents or incidents.

And here is a photo of Ryan and I at the top. This is looking down the canyon back towards the visitor's center.

And this last one is Ryan having way too much energy. On the way back down he found this little crack in the side of the cliff, so he went and climbed up it. I managed to climb up to get the photo, but I didn't climb up like he did.

And that was the end of our Angles Landing run. It was really rewarding. We stayed up top for ten to fifteen minutes to rest and get some photos. Total mileage was five. It was 2.5 up and took us 42:43. Coming back down was also 2.5 miles and took us 33:17. Overall was 1:16:00 for five miles. Not the best time, but when you consider that we were basically climbing up a cliff for the last half mile and it was really steep with lots of switchbacks before that, yeah it was pretty quick. We passed a lot of people that thought we were crazy, what do you think? Are we crazy? I think we are.

The Narrows

2010-08-01T20:36:00.006-05:00

So, when we went down to Zion National Park, we were planning on getting a permit for campsite number 2 on the Virgin River half way down the Narrows from the top. The total hike is 16 miles, and campsite number two is about 8 miles in at the confluence of the Virgin River and Deep Creek. I had been really excited to do this and had been looking forward to it for several months.

We drove down on Tuesday afternoon and found a spot to camp at the campground just inside the park entrance. We got up at 6:00 am in order to be down to the back country permit office to pick up our permit for the hike. I had been watching the weather forecasts and knew that there was a chance of flash flooding. It had been moderate for the last few days, but in the morning when the forecast was posted it called for 50% chance of thunderstorms for Wednesday and Thursday, the days we would be in the canyon. The flash flood potential went up from moderate to high for both days. And they decided to issue a Flash Flood Watch. That means that "conditions are favorable for flash flooding." The next step is to issue a flash flood warning, which means that there is flash flooding occurring or radar shows rain heavy enough to produce flash flooding within the next 20-30 minutes.

Well, I was still excited and I got the permit from the back country office. When I got back to the car, my friend talked some sense into me and said that he did not feel comfortable going. We drove over to the place where we were going to catch the shuttle to take us to the trail head and talked with those people for a bit. After talking with them, I was convinced that it was not a wise idea to spend the night in the canyon with this high potential for flash flooding. They had already seen the river rise a little bit, and it had changed to a murky color. Rain and excess debris in the river are the other two signs of flash flooding.

Since we were not going to camp in the canyon, we decided to do a day hike up into the narrows from the bottom. The trail head is at the Temple of Sinawava. You have to take a shuttle to the trail head. They don't allow cars up that far to reduce the number of vehicles up the canyon. The first mile is on a paved path. It is pretty easy. After that you jump into the river and hike up the river for as far as you would like to go. Back at the Zion Adventure Company that was going to take us to the other trail head, we decided to rent a couple of walking sticks. On the shuttle ride up and for the first mile on that paved path, I was starting to regret the five dollars I spent on it. As soon as I got in the water though, I was very grateful I had it. It made walking through the river so much easier.

It was lots of fun and we stayed cool because of being in the river so much. I just had an old pair of running shoes on. They worked just fine. I was pretty cautious with my footing even though we were going pretty quickly. We passes several people. The first set of photos I took was at the junction of Orderville Canyon.

This was looking back down stream from where we had just been hiking.

And that is me enjoying a couple minutes rest. We decided to grab a quick bite to eat right here. We were stopped for maybe 5-10 minutes. Ryan ran up Orderville Canyon for a minute just to take a look around the corner. The canyon is coming out from my right (your left) you can see the water behind me.

We hiked up for quite a ways. I am pretty sure it was at least four maybe even four and a half miles up the canyon before we stopped to turn around. At that point we decided to stop and have some lunch. We stopped for 20 minutes or so. I took some photos there too.

This is where we took our lunch. This is looking up the canyon a bit more. It was a nice little area, until the sun hit us. Because of the slot canyons, the sun was not hitting us for most of the hike. It got pretty hot when we were not in the river and sitting in the sun.

This photo is looking up the canyon (north) at the top of the canyon walls. It was so cool to see these canyon walls going so high.

This one was looking straight up from where I was sitting, eating my lunch. We contemplated how we would climb out if a flash flood came and we needed to escape. In reality if a flash flood came, we would be able to climb to high ground, 6-10 feet above the river level and sit it out while the river drained out.

There were several places in the river that we had to go pretty deep. Here is a photo of the deepest part.

This is Ryan.

And that's me.

This is not a great photo of me, but you can see the walking stick that I was using. You also notice that I was carrying my backpack Even though I had all my stuff in plastic zip-lock bags, especially my camera. And all of that stuff was inside a big garbage back. All of my stuff stayed dry. I didn't want to completely submerge my bag though, so I took it off and held it above my head.

Overall this was a great hike. On our way back down we hiked about a mile up Orderville Canyon, so total we hiked 10-11 miles and it took us six hours overall. The next day when we were driving away from Zion National Park, we heard that they had issued a Flash Flood Warning, which means that flooding was occurring somewhere. I think I'm glad, even though I really wanted to hike the whole thing, that we decided to only go up for a day hike.

On that same day we ran up Angels Landing, which needs a whole blog post to itself. And the next day we ran Wildcat Canyon in the middle part of the park. It was amazing, so I'll save it for another post, if I have time to do it.

Zion National Park

2010-07-30T00:53:00.004-05:00

I don't have time to write much about it right now, but I'll upload just a few photos so you can see a little bit of my adventure to Zion National Park. We had planned on hiking the Narrows from the top down, camping half way down, but due to a high potential for flash flooding and a flash flood watch, we decided to not spend the night in the canyon.

This is the Zion Narrows. This photo is looking downstream from where Orderville Canyon enters the Virgin River.

This was the deepest pool we had to go through.

Angels Landing was absolutely amazing. There were chains for you to grab onto most of the way up the back of this ridge.

Great view from the top. This is me and my friend that went with me.

Pfeifferhorn

2010-07-25T16:32:00.006-05:00

So, Last week I decided to go up to Pfeifferhorn. I guess it is also known as Little Hatterhorn. I really enjoyed doing this peak. My plan was to go up and be back for breakfast. I managed to get back about 9:30.

It started off with my alarm going of at 4:45. I don't remember if I heard it or not but about 5:00 my wife nudged me and let me know that the alarm had gone off. So I got up and out the door. I had my CamelBak already packed because I knew I wanted to take pictured up there.

I got to the White Pine trail head up Little Cottonwood Canyon about 5:30 and jumped right out on the trail. It was still pretty dark, so I had my head lamp with me. Over the first mile the trail is pretty wide and climbs slowly but steadily about 500 feet. At one mile there is a split in the trail. The trail to the left goes up to White Pine Lake. The trail to the right crosses the river and then up to Red Pine. I took the trail that leads up to Red Pine. The trail gets a bit steeper here and climbs another thousand feet over the course of 1.6 miles. There is another trail that splits off to the west. It heads over into the next little valley named Maybird Gulch. I stayed on the trail though another two thirds of a mile up to Red Pine Lake. I saw a lot of people camping around the lake. On the far side of the lake I talked with a guy that was taking down his tent.

Looking up from here I could not see the top of Pfeifferhorn. There is a false peak that hangs out in front of the main one elevation 10897. The elevation of the lake is 9680. I followed a faint trail up above Red Pine lake to a ridge above the Upper Red Pine Lakes. I followed that ridge to the west and up to that unnamed 10897 peak. I could see Pfiefferhorn from there. It was a pretty short hike up from there but it was really steep over lots of big rocks. I had to scramble in several places. I stopped even trying to run at Red Pine lake because the "trail" got way to steep with too many rocks and too many ways to break and ankle.

I got to the top of Pfeifferhorn (elevation 11326) about 7:30, so it took about two hours to get up. I am pretty sure it is five miles up and five miles down. So overall from a running perspective this was really slow, but I also climbed about 4000 feet. I think it is actually a little less than that. My map does not mark the elevation of the trail head, but it is somewhere between the 7600 and 7700 contour lines. I guess that makes it more like 3500 feet of elevation gain.

I took several pictures from the top. I took a few on the way up and down too, so I'll let you see them here. I scrambled back down the two miles or so to Red Pine Lake. Then I ran the about three miles from there back to the trail head.

This is about two and a half or three miles up the trail where it splits over to Maybird Gulch. It is blurry because it was still a bit dark and the camera held its shutter open for too long for my hands to handle.

This is a ridge to the east of where I was climbing. I was headed up to the right of this picture.

This is me up at the same spot as this last one, but in the background you can see where I was climbing up.

This on is a view from the top looking to the west. You can see Salt Lake Valley down there and even the great Salt Lake if you look hard enough.

This is also from the top I just turned slightly to the south. You can see Utah Valley and Utah lake.

Here is a great view of Box Elder Peak and part of Timp.

Here is a great view of Timp.

Here is a struggling flower at the top.

Here I am with Pfeifferhorn right behind me. This was on my way back down.

And this last one is of Red Pine lake from above. You can see the trail that goes around the right side of the lake.

I hope you enjoyed looking at these photos and hearing about my adventures going up the Pfeifferhorn.

Butler Fork Trailhead

2010-07-24T20:13:00.002-05:00

So this was the same trail head I used a couple of days ago. I went right up to the top of Circle All Peak again only a little faster. It was 29:30 to the top of it. I passed a few people on the way up too. The trail is much busier on a Saturday morning than any other day of the week. There were probably ten cars at the trail head. The other day there was only two. Today I also slept in a little bit and didn't get up to the trail head until about 7:30.

After reaching the top of Circle All peak, I came back down to the main trail and headed up about a third of a mile to where the trail splits. If I had gone left, I would have headed over to Mill A Basin. I took the trail to the right though and headed over towards Dog Lake. This was a three mile section of trail that was relatively flat. Overall I probably lost two to three hundred feet of elevation, if even that. The only part that was annoying was that the sun was right in my face and it was pretty hard to see the trail. I really should have had my running hat today, it would have made the run much easier.

Along this stretch of trail I found a pretty feather sitting on a bush. It was about two inches long and a really pretty orange color. I picked it up and brought it back with me because I figured the kids would like seeing the pretty feather.

I met up with the main trail just about a third of a mile before Dog Lake. If I had known that it was so close, I probably would have made the little jog over just to see the lake. I didn't know it was so close though, so I just turned right and headed back down the trail. This section was pretty good to run on, there were no bushes growing over the trail and no stinging neddle. I don't know how much elevation I lost but it was quite a bit. The trail was not too steep for the most part. This section was 1.7 miles. Then I met up the trail again that I was on earlier. It was just a half mile from the trail head. Overall it took me an hour and thirty minutes. Not bad, but not great. That three mile section I expected to be faster, but since the sun was in my face and a lot of the trail was grown over with shrubs, it made it pretty hard to keep a good pace going.

So for times we have

.5 miles 8:00

1.0 miles 18:26

.2 Miles 3:02

.2 miles 2:07

.3 miles 3:13

3.0 miles 33:58

1.7 miles 16:43

.5 miles 4:31

total 7.4 miles 1:30:00

Sorry no pictures this time. I didn't take the camera.

Running Again, Circle All Peak

2010-07-23T11:46:00.005-05:00

I've been going up into the mountains quite a bit lately and I figured maybe I could keep track of where I've been and stuff. So here on this first post of this series, I'll tell you about Circle All Peak. I guess it is not really a true peak because it does not stick up far enough from the surounding land. It is more of just a prominence. There is a ridge that comes down and it goes up to a small peak. The elevation according to my map is 8707 feet and the trail head elevation is 7210. So that is about a 1500 foot elevation gain.

I've been getting up and leaving the house by six in order to do these short little runs up the trails before heading off to work. this one was the shortest I've done so far. I got to the trailhead about 6:15. The trailhead I think is called Butler Fork. It is located about 8 miles up Big Cottonwood Canyon. The trail starts out following a small creek. After about a half a mile the trail splits. If I went to the right (northeast) I would have gone up to Dog Lake, which I've done before, but not this time. I took the trail to the left (west) that goes up to Mill A Basin. There were a lot of plants that were wet from the morning dew that hung over the trail. I got a little bit wet from that. There was even quite a bit of stinging neddle, which I managed to avoid most of. I got stung a couple of times, but I'm sure the sweat helped keep it from stinging too much.

After another mile from the split in the trail I reached a ridge. The main trail goes of the the right (northwest) and heads over to Mill A Basin. Maybe I'll go up that way next time. I took the little trail to the left that went up to the top of Circle All Peak. It was only about another quarter of a mile from the main trail, so in all I figure it was about 1.7 miles up. It was a really nice view from the top. It was definately not the tallest in the area, but it was still a nice little run. Coming down was slower than I wanted because of all the plants over the trail that made it hard to see any rocks or anything. After I passed the Dog Lake split the trail was more open and easier to run down. Overall it took me 33:22 to go up and 18:50 to come down, 52:12 total time. Not great running times but I was taking it pretty easy. Normally I see wildlife up the trails. The animals like the mornings before people get up there. But this morning I didn't see anything. I don't think I even say any squirls. Oh well.

Maybe soon I'll write about Doughnut falls, or desolation lake, or running Pfeifferhorn, that was a fun one and I actually took pictures going up and down that one.

Moab Camping Trip

2010-05-23T00:43:00.005-05:00

After we set our tent up at camp, we drove up to Arches National Park and did some short hikes. This first one is Double Arch. You can see it behind us. The kids loved climbing up under the arches.

When we were done hiking we went back to camp to eat some dinner of hot dogs. Yummy!

The next morning we set out for Delicate Arch. The trail starts here at this cabin.

Ella got tired pretty quick.

It was worth it when we got there though. It was very windy, but very beautiful.

In this next one you can see the family under the arch. It kinda gives you an idea of how big Delicate Arch is.

On our last day there, we hiked out to Landscape Arch. This was a really cool one to see. It is one of the longest spanning arches in the world at about 300 feet long.

I am very glad that I got to go camping and hiking with my family. The kids really liked the fact that our campground had a swimming pool. That was really nice to cool us down from the heat. The temperatures got up close to ninety degrees if not more.

Salt Lake City Marathon

2010-02-07T16:50:00.003-06:00

Well, I just did it. I signed up for the SLC Marathon. It is on April 17th. I believe I am already trained more for this marathon than any other marathon I have ever ran. I think this one will be my fastest. Maybe I'll make a goal of 3:10. My best so far was 3:26. I am certain I can do better than that, but my ambitions of doing a sub three marathon this time i think are a little too much. I do still have two months to get my speed a bit quicker. Yesterday I ran twenty miles, so I am good with mileage. I think I'll keep doing twenty on the weekend, and probably do a 22 or 24 mile run before the marathon too.

Anyway, I've now got a specific goal. I paid the price for the marathon. I was expecting to pay only 89 dollars, but there was a fee of $7.68 to register online. I think that is a bit rediculous. oh well, 96 dollars well spent I hope. That is one reason I hate signing up for marathons. they cost so much. It almost seems strange to pay a hundred dollars when I can go and run 26.2 miles for free anytime I want to. I guess it is just the comradory of running with other people, and the support on the course, the food, drinks, and the police blocking traffic just for me.

This will be my fourth official marathon. I first was was Top of Utah back in 2002. Then my next one was Baton Rouge Beach Marathon in December of 2007. In 2009 I did the Yakima River Valley Marathon. And now I'm doing this one. In August of 2008 I did the Bartlet Park 50 mile Ultramarathon, but that isn't really a marathon. There have been several other times that I have ran 26 miles or more just for training, but this will only be my fourth official marathon.

Now it is off to work to make the money I just spent on the race. I start my new job tomorrow, hopefully they won't hate me. I hope the job isn't too bad.

Quick Stats for 2009

2010-01-04T15:42:00.003-06:00

I didn't total as many miles as I did in 2008, but I didn't run an ultra-marathon either. I still feel good about what I did. in terms of running, I managed to get almost 640 miles. Most of which was from the first part of the year when I was training for the Yakima River Valley Marathon. I still ran throughout the year though because I just enjoy it. But it is easier to rack up more miles if I am training for something specific. That is why I am thinking of training for the Wasatch 100. I still don't know if I will. It would take a lot of time away from the family to train for something that big. Maybe I'll just pick a couple of marathons to train for and see how fast I can run 26.2 miles. I was thinking today while I was running that it would be nice to brake three hours. I don't think it would be too hard if I signed up for two or three marathons for the year.

Anyway, I also managed to walk/hike 250 miles. I think most of that is from the first half of the year when I was walked to and from school. It was only a mile from my house, but two miles every day really adds up over five months. also, I got some snowshoes for the last week of the year and managed to add a couple dozen extra miles to that.

On my bicycle I totaled 700 miles. I was training for a triathlon, which accounted for some of those miles, but I rode my bike almost every day to work and back, that was 10 miles a day for 8 0r 10 weeks. plus a few times, I rode the long way home which was about 20 miles.

And, for good measure, I swam five times to total 2.4 miles. Again, it was part of the triathlon training. I like swimming, but it is just so hard to go to a pool (I'd have to pay to use) or to a lake just to swim. I'd rather just put shoes on or hop on my bike and go.

Well, I hope to do more in 2010. I'm not too concerned with more swimming, biking or walking/hiking. But I would definitely like to run more miles this year. I think I could pretty easily run over 1000 miles. If I train for and do the Wasatch 100 then it wouldn't be too hard to get close to or even pass 2000 miles.

Here are a couple of charts. The first one is weekly totals for the last 52 weeks. The second one is monthly totals for the last 12 months. You can definitely see my running favored the first half of the year. There were even a few weeks that I didn't get any miles in.

Snowshoeing and a 100 Mile Race

2009-12-28T16:02:00.003-06:00

I hadn't been doing much of anything. But then I got an early Christmas present of a pair of snowshoes. In the week and a half since I've had them, I have gone up in the mountains four times. And I'm going again tomorrow. I love my snowshoes. Here are a few photos of my snowshoeing expeditions.

David and Camille on David's birthday.

I love my snowshoes!

so, now that I've been more active, I have more motivation. I started looking at the Wasatch 100 mile endurance run. I've been thinking of applying. It is in September and I would need to register by next week. I would have enough time to work up to 100 miles. Anyway, should I sign up for a 100 mile race? or is that too crazy. It would take a lot of work, but I think it would be worth it.

Move and a Mexican Cruise

2009-10-02T01:20:00.003-05:00

So, I had a temporary job for the summer and the day after it came to an end Amanda and I were talking and trying to figure out how things were going to work. I could get a job, even if it was just a minimum wage job, and we could stay put for four or five months before my job starts, or we could move almost a thousand miles away and live rent-free in my in-law's basement. We decided on the latter. I still haven't decided if I want to find a job or not. I don't really need one, it would just give me something to do. I think I will be content, getting Ella ready and off to school. I'll also take care of Alex and do laundry and other stuff to give Amanda more time to work.

Ella was in Kindergarten for two weeks before we pulled her out of school to move. Now she has been three days here. She loves going to school. She has so much fun and gets so excited about it. She especially loves riding the bus. This week when she was at school, I took Alex to story time at the library. i think that will become a regular thing. He just sat there when everyone else was singing and dancing, but I think he'll warm up to it.

On another note, now that we are moved and settled in here, Amanda and I get to go on our cruise. We leave in two days. The only thing that is concerning me is Tropical Storm Olaf that is looming off the Mexican coast where we will be. It will weaken, so it shouldn't be too bad, but it will still be raining, more than likely. I hope the seas won't be too rough. I'll have to let you all know how it is next week after we come back. Maybe I'll even have some pictures to put up.

Hey, I just decided to put some photos on here. These ones are from back in March. Enjoy.

I didn't realize how blurry these photos were. The kids were really running fast. The only good photo is the one Amanda took. This was at a waterfall. The overlook hung out off the cliff just a little bit. It was pretty cool.

Collective Soul

2009-09-07T22:51:00.002-05:00

Wow, a second post on the same day.

I normally only write about running, but hey it is my blog and I can write whatever the heck I want. If you have never heard or heard of Collective Soul then you are really missing out. Just a couple weeks ago they came out with a new album. I believe it is their tenth or eleventh album. I can honestly say that I really enjoy every one of their songs. I just bought this latest self titled album. I thought was a little wierd, this is their second self titled album. There are a couple of really good songs on it.

I went to a Collective Soul concert once and really enjoyed it. I almost went to one of their concerts about a year and a half ago in Alabama. If I had more money then I would go to their Seattle show that is in about two weeks. I think it would be a really good show. I guess I'll just have to wait until the next time they tour the country.

Well you should go to their site and check out their music.

Minimalist Running

2009-09-07T22:34:00.002-05:00

So, the other day I was reading through some blogs that I follow and I read about some minimalist running. there are some people out there that don't believe in shoes, or they do but only to protect your feet from getting cut up on the rocks and stuff on trails. Specifically I was reading about a shoe that I think I want to get. It is called the Vibram Fivefinger. It is basically a protective rubber on the bottom of your foot.

Anyway, I was motivated to try a little minimalist running myself. I went out on Friday afternoon for a short three mile jog with no shoes on. Now, this probably would have been a very enjoyable experience had I driven to a park and ran the three miles in the grass. I didn't to that however. There is a course that I run a lot. about 90% of my running lately has been on this same route. I didn't realized though how much I didn't really know the course. with bare feet I reallized that well over half is paved, and of that pavement about half is pretty rough while the other half is pretty smooth. the part that I ran on the trail was not as nice as I had expected either. There were a lot more rocks than I ever rememberd there being. Don't get me wrong, this was not a bad experience. My feet were not bleeding (although there was one spot where I had to dodge some glass). I am glad I tried it, but I think next time I will run in a grass field and build up to true minimalist running. There is this one guy I read about who runs on average of five or six miles daily with no shoes on. That is on top of his 20-60 miles a day with shoes.

We'll just have to wait to see if there are any prolonged negative effects of this barefoot run. I feel fine though and it has been three days. Fun Fun.

Not much motivation to write

2009-08-17T23:44:00.004-05:00

I'm going on vacation!! yeah,

I did the Whidbey Island Triathlon a few weeks ago. It was lots of fun. check out Amanda's blog to read about it and see photos, or go to my facebook page.

As of today I have ridden my bicycle over 500 miles this year. If I keep this up, I could easily top out over 1000 by the end of the year. Who knows maybe I'll do a ride some time in the near future.

Speed Record

2009-07-13T23:38:00.002-05:00

I have been riding my bicycle to work every day and today I took a new route home. It was about twenty miles and it was mostly a very nice ride. I found an awesome hill that went down to the river. I love trying to see how fast I can get going. I started pedalling hard and looked at my speedometer. I pedaled hard until it got to 45, then because it was such a big, steep hill, I kept accelerating even after I stopped pedalling. I watched the speedometer, 47, 48, 49, 49.2, 49.9, then finally 50.0. By that time I felt like I was going a little too fast for comfort. As I slowed up coming to the bottom of the hill I realized that if for some reason I were to crash, I could get hurt really badly. The rush was totally exhilarating. Next time I'll try for 51 or 52, maybe.

So Far This Year

2009-06-05T02:14:00.002-05:00

So, I really like keeping track of how for I run, bike and walk or whatever else I do. I've been walking to school every day, and at the beginning of the year, I started logging those walks which is about two miles each day. I probably to a bit more than that, but I log usually only two miles per day. So far this year I have walked 208 miles. And that is just what I have logged.

I have also started to ride my bike recently. I really enjoy riding the trails around here. I rode about only about five miles or so today, but it was really fun and I can't wait to get out there and do it again. So far this year I have ridden my bike ten times to total 140 miles.

My running has been pretty sporadic as of late. I went for a week without running, then I did a 17 mile run, and then since my knee was hurting after that I have only ran once or twice a week since then. And those have been short, very easy runs of only about three miles. My running has totaled 382 miles so far this year. More than a quarter of the total was done in February and another quarter was done in March in preparation for the Marathon I did on April 4th.

Anyway, I think this numbers are cool. maybe by the end of the year I can cycle 1000 miles and run 1500 miles and walk/hike 500 miles. Probably not though, because now that school is getting out I will probably not be walking two miles every day. I might increase my running and biking though, so those numbers are somewhat realistic.

I need to go to bed now, My mind is just rushing, so I probably won't sleep, but it is past midnight, so I'll go now. More later.

More biking

2009-05-29T16:29:00.003-05:00

Since my knee has been bothering me, I've decided to start riding my bike a bit more. I've been riding several times. Today, I decided to go for a 40 mile ride. There is a nice paved trail near here called the interurban trail. It is pretty nice because there is no traffic. It took me just less than three hours, averaging 15 mph. I'm pretty tired now, I think I'll go wash up.

Call me crazy

2009-05-19T10:26:00.000-05:00

yesterday when I got home from school, I decided to go for a run. It had been over a week since I had run at all, and a month or more since I had done anything this long. I ended up running 17 miles. It felt great except for the last two or three miles when my right knee started to hurt a little bit. It still hurts today. I hope I didn't really hurt it. I'll probably be able to still run on it, I'll just need to take it easy.

Ella's Ballet

2009-05-02T19:36:00.004-05:00

Here is a little video that I put together of Ella's ballet a few weeks ago. She was so cute. The video is about 13 minutes long. It is really low quality, so I hope you will be able to see it alright.

Morning Bike Ride

2009-04-24T23:19:00.003-05:00

Yesterday morning I decided to go for a bike ride before school. It was pretty darn cold. I think the temperature was 39 degrees. I looked up a wind chill chart and 35 degrees and 30 mph winds (my max speed was 39mph) the wind chill is 22. At 40 degrees and 30 mph the wind chill is 28. Anyway, I guess my point is that it was cold. Especially since I was only wearing fingerless gloves. I should have worn sunglasses too, because my eyes were watering most of the ride. It was a 12 mile ride. The first two miles were down hill, that is why I got so cold so fast. Also, the last two miles were up hill, so I slowed way down and worked harder. I was warmed up a bit by the time I got home. Well, I took some photos, so here they are.

All but this last one were taken while I was riding. I didn't want to stop because I didn't have much time and I wanted to ride as far as I could.

This ride and a ride on Tuesday were the first time I had ridden my bike since almost a year ago. It feels good. I've been thinking about doing a longer, organized bike ride. The Tour de Whidbey is a ride that my dad had done a few times. There are a variety of distances including a 100 mile version. I think it would be fun to do that. I've also been thinking about doing a triathlon. I've wanted to do one for some time, and I might actually be able to do one this summer. I really just need to find one and do it. The one I am looking at swims in a warm lake, so I wouldn't need a wet suit. anyway, that is just me rambling on again.

Running Log Graphs

2009-04-23T01:06:00.003-05:00

I use runnersworld.com to log all of my running. Since I started keeping track of my running on their website back in October 2007, I have totaled 1957 miles in 290 hours. I have also logged 259 miles in 20 hours of biking. Just this year I started keeping track of some of the walking I've been doing. Mostly this consists of walking to and from school every day, 143 miles in 39 hours.

One of the things I like about the runnersworld running log is that I can graph my mileage and a number of other things. This first one is my weekly totals from the past 52 weeks. I've ranged from zero all the way up to 50 miles in one week.

This next one is my monthly totals since I started keeping this log. It ranges from about 10 miles up to just over 200 miles per month. I seem to do well when I log about 100 miles per month. Maybe I should make that my goal. If I can run 100 miles per month then I could run 1200 miles in a year.

Anyway, I just thought my loyal readers were getting frustrated with the lack of blogging on this blog, so I decided to blog.

The Mail

2009-04-16T00:19:00.004-05:00

It is not very often that I get something in the mail that is not a bill. So, I was a bit surprised to see an envelope for me. I opened it and found this.

In case you can't read it, it says "Yakima River Canyon Marathon fourth place 2009." That's right, I got fourth place in my age group out of 12. I also got 70th overall out of 441 finishers. that puts me in the top 16%. I didn't realize I did that well. I thought I was more like 150th place or something. anyway, hurray for 4th place. You can see all of the results if you care here.

The Yakima River Canyon Marathon

2009-04-07T00:45:00.004-05:00

Okay, I finally get to write about my marathon. I was a little worried because I hadn’t been getting enough sleep the last few days. I came home from school on Friday morning and took a nap. I slept for about three hours. I’m glad I did too. Friday night I finally got to sleep about midnight. We got up at five on Saturday morning and left at 5:30. The kids were quickly back asleep. The drive was uneventful. We arrived at the starting line in Ellensburg right at the perfect time. I had about 45-50 minutes to get my packet and warm up a little bit. I needed warming up because it was less than 30 degrees. Amanda thought that I was crazy for not starting out with long sleeves on or even gloves. I think the gloves would have been very helpful for the first mile or two, but after that I would have thrown them to the side of the road. By the end of the race it was in the mid 50’s, perfect running weather, not a cloud in the sky.

The race started right at eight o’clock. There was a countdown and then a big truck blasted its horn for the starting “gun.” That was a little different but cool. The national anthem that was sung before the start was not so cool, the lady didn’t do a great job and it was rather quiet. I was glad for the race to finally start. It had been a long time coming. I started about mid pack, which was probably a good thing. Even being mid pack, I still ran an eight minute first mile. That was perfect, not too fast, and not too slow. Amanda was waiting to take pictures with the kids about two to three hundred yards from the starting line. She snapped a few photos and Ella tried to take a video of me (which didn’t work, I guess she turned it off right after Amanda turned it on). That was it. I didn’t see them again until the finish line.

I had decided to run with my iPod since I have done a lot of my running with it. I figured I might get a little bored without it. I was pleased with my pace for the whole thing. During the first few miles I stayed behind a few guys who seemed to be going about the right pace. I felt like I could easily pass them, but I also felt like I really didn’t want to go out too fast and totally burn out for the last few miles. I resisted the urge to pass them, at least for a few miles.

It was really a pretty run. I really love the natural beauty of the great northwest and how green it is, but these desert hills were very pretty. There were several times when I turned off my music just to enjoy the natural beauty of the place. The road we ran on was closed except for support staff and emergency vehicles. There were no cross roads to the course either. It was in a very serene canyon that paralleled the main freeway.

The volunteers were very helpful and courteous. Overall I was very impressed with this marathon. Along the course at one point I saw a bald eagle soaring overhead. It was a good thing there was no traffic because I probably would have been hit by a car. I was jogging out into the middle of the road because my head was turned upward.

I kept track of every mile. They had markers at every mile and I got my split at every one. I stopped really briefly at about mile four or five, then again at mile nine or ten. Other than that I ran the whole way. I felt fantastic. There was one point about mile fifteen where there was a pretty big hill. This hill climbed up the side of a curving cliff so that the top of the hill was visible from almost a mile away. At the top, there was someone with a couple of really big speakers blasting upbeat music that made me want to run fast. I could hear it from almost a mile away. I thought that was pretty cool. It helped me out. I passed four or five people going up that hill. I didn’t feel like I was pushing hard, but I wasn’t about to walk up that little hill.

There was another hill at mile 22. This one was a bit larger. There were more people cheering us up it. Instead of the one set of big speakers at the top, there were three or four smaller boomboxes that you could only hear from a few hundred yards away. Just before I got to that hill, I realized that I only had about five miles to go and I was still feeling fantastic. I decided to pick up the pace. At mile marker 22 I called Amanda and told her where I was and that I was feeling great. I also told her that I would probably be there in about thirty minutes. Mile 22 was 8:10. Mile 23 was 8:50 that included a big hill and about 15 seconds for me to call Amanda while I was walking. Mile 24 was 7:18. I looked at my watch and thought to myself “holy cow!” I was still feeling great and I only had 2.2 miles to go. Mile 25 was 7:25. I slowed down a little bit, but that was still a great time considering it was mile 25. Mile 26 I was determined to drain my energy. I really hit it hard. This whole section was a nice gradual down hill into the finish area. I did mile 26 in 6:40. I felt great still. Was it true? I really ran my last mile of the marathon in less than seven minutes. My last mile was by far my fastest of the whole race. For the last .2 miles my time was 1:41. That comes out to be a 7:12 per mile pace for my last 3.2 miles. My overall pace for the race was 8:17. My slowest mile was almost ten minutes which included a quick bathroom stop. I think I probably passed ten or more people in the last mile or two. There was one point where I got a little emotional and a sense of overwhelming accomplishment came over me, but then I realized that I still had a mile or two to go. I got back into the game and finished strong.

Coming down that last hill during that last mile, Mount Adams off in the distance several hundred miles away, came into view. I thought that was totally awesome and thought to myself “what a way to end a great run.” It was really good.

When I got close to the finish line, I could hear Amanda cheering for me. That made me run even faster. I really appreciate my family for supporting me, even if I did make them get up at five am and drive a couple of hours. I was so grateful to have Amanda and the kids there to support me. I was so tired I didn’t notice if Ella and Alex were yelling for me. I’m sure they were.

I think I will run another marathon in a couple of months and keep running like I have been doing. I’ll probably even start doing more speed workouts and do more regular long runs. I was thinking that I would also start riding my bike. I might be able to get my dad’s old bike to ride on the paved bike paths around here. It will be some great cross training. Anyway, I guess this is long enough.

One more thing, on our way back from the marathon we ran into some traffic. Even though it was sunny and warm, they closed the mountain pass. They were doing avalanche control and so we ended up coming to a dead standstill on the freeway for about 45 minutes. We eventually hopped out of the car and let the kids play in the snow on the side of the road. They had fun doing that and were upset when we had to leave. We saw cars moving and so we quickly grabbed the kids and shoved them in the car, normally we can give more warning, but hey, we were on the freeway. What fun.

All in all, I’d say it was a really good day. I was really tired though. And even though it is two days later, I’m still tired and quite sore. My quads are the worst. I am fine except for going down stairs. I should probably have gone for a little run today. Oh well.

There, I’m really done now. Enjoy.

Okay, I'll share a few photos. This first one is right at the beginning. I was actually a bit cold.

Here I am coming into the finish line.

You can see by this photo that my "official" time was 3:37:10.

After the finish. I feel great

These last two is to prove to you about the traffic over the mountain pass.

Well, I guess that doesn't really prove anything. They could just be really close together. This is really how we were though for about 45 minutes. and here are the kids playing in the snow.

and that is really it.

Final Week

2009-03-29T02:00:00.002-05:00

I have just one week before my Marathon. To be honest, I could have trained more for it. I am ready, and I won't die at the end of it like I did for the last one I ran a year ago. At least I hope I'll be okay. I ran this morning for ten miles in the rain and it felt great. I even got totally soaked by that car that drove through the puddle. I think that is the first time that has happened to me. I had to laugh when it happened because I thought it was funny. I bet it was funny to see too. 39 degrees. raining. windy. a poor guy in shorts and a long sleeve tee shirt. all you need to make it a funny sight is a big puddle on the road and a car to drive through it... anyway, enough about that. I was pretty much soaked through anyway. It was toward the end of my run.

I ran 34 miles this week. I felt like it was perfect for the week before a marathon. This next week I'll probably run two or three times and keep them pretty short runs. I'll probably even do a short tempo run on Tuesday or Wednesday.

I guess I'm a pretty bad planner. I called up the other day to a campground to get a cabin for the night before the marathon. They just happened to be closed this weekend. We could camp at the local KOA campground, but it is supposed to get down to about 35 degrees. If it is windy, we wouldn't get much sleep with the equipment we have. We could get a hotel, but that would be like 80 bucks. I think we will just leave on Saturday morning. I figure if I get up at five and leave by five thirty, we'll get there with enough time to pick up my packet and warm up and be ready to run. I get up at five for school anyway. It shouldn't be that bad, except for my family who are used to getting up closer to eight. Maybe I can convince my Amanda to let us go camping. Then we would only have to get up at like 6:30. We'll see. However we end up getting there I am excited for the race. I think it will be a pretty run. I guess for the most part it is slightly downhill. There is one uphill about mile 20, but overall I guess there is several hundred feet of vertical loss, maybe even a thousand. If you really care, you can go look up the course profile and map on their web site.

Oh yeah, a few days ago I celebrated my birthday. I'm not old at all. Amanda and I went downtown and wandered around the market. It was nice to be able to ditch the kids. We grabbed some Russian Piroshky for lunch. I got some cool gifts including, itunes music, an inside/outside thermometer, toffee from English Toffee Anytime (check out the link on the side of my blog), and a flashlight that clips on my running hat for my night time running. Thanks everyone for all of those things. I bought myself some root beer. mmm mmm mmm. I love root beer but don't drink it very often because it is really not good for my, all that sugar and stuff. Amanda made me a great coconut cake too. That was scrumptious. She also made buffalo chicken for dinner. Overall it was a fantastic day. I wish it could be my birthday everyday. oh well.

I guess that's it for now. I'll give you a report about my Marathon next week.

20 Mile Run

2009-03-01T01:20:00.002-06:00

This morning I got up at 5:00 to go for a 20 mile run so that I could be back by nine to go and help someone move. It was a perfect morning for running. It was a little cold, but it felt great. I was a bit slow for the first eight miles or so because it was dark and I was running on trails. I think the greatest thing about my run this morning, watching the dark, starlit sky lighten up as the dawn approached. When I first saw Mount Rainier this morning I could just barely make out its silhouette. It was awesome. Then gradually as the horizon started to get lighter, it became a more defined silhouette. Finally I could actually see the mountain and make out features on it. Then the sun hit the top of the mountain and then slowly climbed down the mountain. That was just so cool to see. Maybe I should have had my camera to take pictures. Oh well. Sometimes you just need to enjoy the moment. The run went well. When it was dark I averaged about 9:30 per mile, then it lightened up and I averaged about 8:30-8:40 miles. My overall pace was 8:58. Maybe it wasn't the dark that caused me to go so slow, but the breathtaking views of Mount Rainier. By the time I was finished with my run the mountain was covered in clouds. It was good while it lasted.

I have just five weeks until the Yakima River Canyon Marathon. I just signed up for it today. I'm definetly doing it. There is no way that I would pay 65 dollars then back out at the last moment. I am excited. I think it will be a great run. Maybe we'll go up the night before and go camping or something, otherwise we'll have to leave here by about five in the morning.

Something Made by Me

2009-02-22T23:58:00.001-06:00

My brother posted this thing on his blog. I figured something made by my brother could be really cool. If you want something made by me, it is easy. Just follow the instructions below.

Well, all you have to do is be one of the first five people to comment on this post and offer the same thing on your blog! Easy, right? Well, of course there are rules.

1- I make no guarantees that you will like what I make!
2- What I create will be just for you.
3- It'll be done this year.
4- You have no clue what it's going to be.
5- I reserve the right to do something extremely strange.

The catch is that you must repost this on your blog and offer the same to the first 5 people who do the same on your blog. The first 5 people to do so and leave a comment telling me they did win a FAB-U-LOUS homemade gift by me! Oh, and be sure to post a picture of what you win when you get it!

Feeling Better

2009-02-22T00:08:00.002-06:00

Last weekend I mentioned that I was sick. This week I am feeling much better. It has actually been a pretty good week. I ran 33 miles this week. This morning was a 16 mile run. I felt great. The weather has been cooperating very well too. It has been sunny and clear all week. It was in the 50's most days. It is starting to rain right now though, and will continue to rain throughout the week. What? Rain? Never! Oh, yeah, I live in the Pacific Northwest. It is bound to rain at some point. Actually I enjoy the rain. A nice run in the rain is refreshing. As long as the run isn't too long. Then it could get miserable. I just have six weeks until the Yakima River Canyon Marathon. I just looked at the website and realized that I need to register for the race this week. Next Saturday the price goes from $65 to $80. I need to do what I can to save money, so I will register this week. Maybe I should just save the 65 dollars and not enter the race. I could just run 26 miles on my own, or something. No, I want to run in an organized event and get a race t-shirt and finishers medal and all that.

This week we got an ad in the mail from a local chiropractor. He was doing a special intro rate of 35 dollars for all the x-rays and other exams plus the first adjustment. Amanda love the chiropractor, and I had never been to one, so I called up and scheduled an appointment for Amanda. I went the next day. It was interesting to see the x-rays of my spine. A couple minutes after my adjustment, I got light headed and felt like I was going to pass out. It was pretty weird. He said that was very unusual. I had to sit down and drink some cold water. I felt better after 20 minutes or so. If I had more money, I would probably go more often, but I don't have a job right now, so I just won't go very often. I'll probably go back in a month or so, but I'll have to review my finances and see if I can afford to go regularly. Maybe we can afford to send Amanda once a month.

Anyway, that's it for now.

I am still alive

2009-02-14T01:21:00.003-06:00

Yes, it is true. I am still alive. It has been a few weeks since I have written anything on here, so I figured I'd better satisfy my viewing public. Here you go:

for the last few weeks I have done very well at keeping up with my running. Last week I did a 14 mile run. I am building up too. I was going to do a 16 mile run tomorrow, but since I got sick yesterday, I am not going to run that far. I will see how I feel, but I will probably only do 6 or 8 miles. Being sick is no fun and it has interfered with my marathon training. I'll still be alright for this race though. I've been running strong.

School has been going very well lately. I have been getting a lot of practice time on the computer simulators for the Air Traffic Control classes that I am taking.

Well I really don't have much else to write about, so I guess I'll leave you with a photo or two.

Here is Alex about a month ago:

And here is Ella about a month ago:

More about my latest goal

2009-01-21T00:21:00.005-06:00

Well, I don't really have much more to say about the marathon goal I now have, but I'll just write some random things here and see how it ends up.

I only ran four times in December and I have now gone running twice in January. I felt like I needed to set some sort of goal (i.e. find some race to run) in order to get me out and working out again. So, Sunday evening I was sitting at the computer and looking up some random stuff. I could do the Whidbey Island Marathon, which I would like to do, but they run it on a Sunday and I don't do races on the Sabbath. Maybe I could do it just this once... well then I found a marathon just the following weekend near Yakima. That one was on a Saturday, so I decided I would go for the one in Yakima. It also gives me another week to be ready for a 26.2 mile run. It is also closer to where I live.

I got onto runnersworld.com and used their smart coach tool to help me get a training plan. I printed out what they had and I might add in or adjust the workouts here and there to make them work for me. The main thing is my Friday or Saturday long run that need to be building up each week. I'm starting out this week with ten miles. I know it sounds like a bit much since I haven't been running, but I think I'll be alright. I ran 5.5 yesterday, tomorrow I will to about 6, then I'll do about five again the next day. I think I will be ready for ten on Friday or Saturday.

I have been walking to and from school every day this month. I like the nice, fresh, crisp, cool air in the morning. It helps wake me up in the morning and I feel more ready for class. It is about a mile and it takes me about 15 minutes. It got me thinking about hiking up in the mountains. Last saturday I got up early and went for a 3.2 mile walk (acording to my GPS) down on the trails by the college. It took nearly an hour. If I figure that I can walk 3.2 miles per hour, then I could walk the 93 miles around the Wonderland Trail in 29 hours. If I jogged even just 10-15 minutes per hour I could easily do it (at least I think so) in less than 24 hours. The trick would be to pace myself. I have wanted to do the Wonderland trail ever since I first heard about it. This trail circumnavigates Mount Rainier. Lots of people do this as a multi day (5-7) day hike, but I really want to try to do it in one go. I would need someone to be my support while I do it.

But my mind has wandered off really far. Before I did that I would do the White River 50. The Yakima River Valley Marathon would be my warm up trainin run for the White River 50 and the WR50 would be my warm up training run for the Wonderland Trail. I really wanted to do the WR50 last year, but I couldn't get up here in time, and I ended up doing the Bartlett Park Ultra near Memphis last summer. I'm glad I did it, but I don't think I ever want to run in the heat like that again. Unless I get really crazy and try to go for the Badwater Ultramarathon. I would have to be really really crazy though to do that. I have thought about trying to go for it, but It would take years of preperation. Maybe sometime in the future.

Well, for now I'll stick to the 5-6 mile runs with weekend runs starting at 10 miles. I like running long. It gives my time to myself to think about something, nothing, or whatever the heck I feel like thinking.

I think you've heard about enough from me for now. I'll try to keep you updated on how my running is going.

oh, by the way, I did some looking back at the logs and in 2008 I ran about 1385 miles. That far surpassed my goal of 1000 miles. In 2007 I logged about 250 miles. I know for sure I ran at least 50-100 miles more than I logged, because I didn't start logging my running until about September or October. Maybe my new goal should be 1500 miles in 2009. no, I'll just run. If I get there I get there. I should be able to get there if I keep runing often.

Here is a photo of me on January first snowshoeing up American Fork Canyon with my cousin. It was pretty fun. That was the first time I had ever gone snowshoeing. Maybe I'll have to get myself some.

And I just had to throw in this video of Alex. Yesterday at dinner, out of the blue, he started doing this. Apparently he was trying to eat really fast, so that he could beat Ella. I think Ella ended up eating faster. I guess this is just not the way to eat really fast. I laughed so hard at this. Awesome!!!

A New Goal

2009-01-19T01:40:00.001-06:00

I have been a bit of a slacker lately, so I decided I needed to stop slacking off. In order to help me be motivated, I decided to run a marathon on April 4th. It is the Yakima River Valley Marathon. It sounds like it will be a good one. I'll be ready for it. It will also help me be ready for the White river 50 in July.

A Cold Swim

2008-12-14T13:33:00.003-06:00

Last week when my brothers were here, we decided to go for a little swim in the harbor. The air temperature was about forty degrees and so was the water temperature. We are just a couple of crazy guys doing crazy things. We have done this a few times before. Usually it is done after we celebrate the new year at about 12:30am new years day. The difference of just a few weeks does not really make that much difference. It is still cold. there was no ice floating around though, so I guess it wasn't really that bad. Anyway, enjoy watching us be crazy.

Maybe we should have waited until today. It snowed here last night and today's high is supposed to be about 30 degrees. I had fun playing around with my new video editing software. I think it is nicer than my other one, I just need to learn how to use it. I did manage to find the stretch tool to make a portion of it play in slow motion. I only spent about ten minutes on it, so there is not much to it. Anyway, I hope you enjoy it.

My Dad: August 30, 1943 to November 30, 2008

2008-12-02T02:01:00.008-06:00

This past Sunday evening November 30, 2008 at about 8:30pm my dad passed away after fighting a losing battle with Lung Cancer. He fought and fought. He really did not want to give up, but the cancer had taken its toll on his body. Heavenly Father took him and I'm sure has greater plans with him. It was a struggle for all of us especially during his final days and weeks because it was practically impossible to communicate with him. I know he is now in a peaceful place where he can get a good breath of air.

On Sunday morning I decided to go up and see my parents. I am glad I was able to be there and help support my family in this time of struggle. It is very different from the previous death I experienced because we knew it was coming and we had time to plan and prepare for it.

He was born on August 30, 1943.

Here is his sister holding him when he was about two and a half months old. He was a bit late coming, his other siblings were born in the 20's.

Here he is with his dad in 1949.

What a happy kid he was.

Right after high school he enlisted in the U.S. Navy and served on the USS Robison.

He was proud to have served in the Navy.

All growing up I remember how much he loved fishing:

and camping: here is his nephew Fred and his friend Ross.

In 1976 he met and married my mom Lois.

He was such a generous man and always willingly gave of his time when he had any. He worked really hard to support us.

I have always looked up to my father in many ways. He was always looking forward to that next big adventure. I remember when he would ride his bicycle from Seattle to Salt Lake City. I am glad I got to share that experience with him twice. He also had ambitions to ride his bicycle around the world. He wanted and planned to hike the entire length of the Pacific Crest Trail. He managed to hike a few hundred miles of it. His most recent big adventure was the Big Ride Across America where he and several others rode their bicycles from Seattle to Washington D.C. in support of the American Lung Association of Washington. They raised $250,000.

I got married on his 60th birthday five years ago. I was happy to share the date of celebration, I hope he was too.

He will be missed by us all. I just know that he is already up in Heaven looking forward to his next big adventure.

Dad, we love you and will miss you.

My Son Alex

2008-11-21T02:03:00.002-06:00

A few posts back, I posted a video I made of my daughter Ella. I decided that I would do the same for my son Alex. He is really a cutie. He usually love the camera, so there are many good photos of him. He was born in July two and a half years ago. In some ways it seems like such a short amount of time, but in others it was so long ago. He is my favorite son. I can't wait till he grows up just a little more so that I can take him camping and hiking with me in the back country, like I used to do with my dad.

Well, I hope you enjoy this short video. It is only a little more than two minutes. There is nothing fancy about this clip, I started working on it about an hour ago. I just chose the photos, one from each month of his life, plopped them on there, but transitions between photos, added a song and a few words in the middle and voila, a video. I enjoy putting these videos together. Maybe I'll have to do one of our road trip across the country, or all of my running stuff, or something. Maybe though I should focus more on schoolwork. We'll see. Let me know what you think of Alex and this video.

The Local Locks

2008-11-17T22:54:00.005-06:00

Well, I guess there are more people out there than I thought that actually read my blog. I had four comments on my last post, that means at least that many read it.

I'll tell you about something that we did a few weeks ago. There are these locks not too far from here that allow boat traffic to travel from the lake down to the ocean. It is like an elevator for boats. I used to go to the locks when I was a kid. The think I remember most about the locks is the fish ladder. This was designed to allow the salmon to swim back up the rivers and spawn. Well, we must have chosen the wrong time to go because we only saw one fish swimming around.

See!

At least it is a pretty area. Just look at these photos.

It was a fun family outing. After we wandered around and saw what there was to see, we grabbed the food from the car and had a picnic in the rain. Yep, it's Washington, so you can't really do anything without rain. The only thing that really irked me was where I parked. There was an oil spill. Luckily in was only on my side of the car. I didn't think it was that bad when I got out, but when I got back in I really had to scrub my feet. I used several baby wipes to clean off the bottom of my shoes, and even then I couldn't really get them clean. I had to put my feet inside plastic bags to keep from spreading the oil. There is only a little stain on the car floor mat. I noticed before I really put my foot down. Maybe we'll try going back some time when there is actually some fish swimming up the ladder.

October Happenings

2008-11-12T11:32:00.004-06:00

Wow, I just realized that it has been nearly a month since my last post. Not that anyone reads this blog anyway, but for the two or three loyal readers I have out there I figured I'd better write something so that you all know I haven't died or something.

It the previous post, I showed you a couple old photos from the 1920's. I've finished that project. I scanned all his photos into jpg format. There are 1159 photos that I scanned. It was fun looking through and seeing my dad in his younger years. These photos will now be easier to preserve and keep. Even if something were to happen to the original photos, we still have digital copies. I plan on making several copies on disks to give to family.

As far as running goes. Last Saturday, the 8th, I finished the cross country season with the college. Our last race was fun because it was in the pouring rain. The course was so muddy. It was lots of fun. I improved my time again, that means that for each of the four races, I got faster. I can still get faster too. My best time this year was slower than my times six years ago when I was running for Everett. I am a lot slower than I was in High school, and that was ten years ago.

I came into this season being trained for a long, slow race. But I was also injured. The injury is gone now, and I think that if I kept working at it I could continue improving. I want to do a 10K in December and then I want to run a couple marathons before next years White River 50 miler.

School is going just fine. All of my classes are pretty easy right now. I am signed up for 20 credits next quarter though, it should be pretty busy and fun. four of the classes should be a relatively easy review, the other two are going to be new information, but fun classes, I hope. only have two more quaters until I will graduate. I might not even need to finish because the FAA might hire me before. I have an application in and I will hear from them soon about taking their test. Once I take the test, depending on how well I do, I could get hired after that. It would be nice to acutally have a job again. My wife is getting pretty stressed out having to worry about making enough money to support us while I am in school.

How about some photos now. This first one is me and Alex. He is such a cutie. We went for a walk at a local state park and couldn't resist the photo opportunity.

This is later that day when we drove up to Mount Rainier. It is nice being so close to such good outdoor activities. I love the mountains.

And here is my cute little boy in front of the Mountain.
After we left here we went and picked a couple pumkins. Here's Ella. She wouldn't look at me and pose, so I just had to get a side shot.

And here is Alex, he was being much more photogenic that day.

Here we are carving some pumpkins at Grandma and Grandpas house. I didn't get very good photos.

Here is my nephew James cleaning out his big pumkin.

Here they all are at the pumkin patch.

This next one is my neice Sherri.

And this last one is at the Trunk-or-Treat

Well, that's all the photos this time.

Old Photos

2008-10-19T23:52:00.004-05:00

So, recently I've taken up a project of scanning some of my dad's old photos that he has kept from over the years. I figured they would be much easier to share and preserve if we had an electronic copy of them. Most of them have been from the 60's although there were some from the 50's and some from the 70's. I just came upon some that date back even farther than that to the 20's and 30's. I found an old photo of my grandparents. I really like this photo. My grandfather died before I was born and my grandmother died when I was really young. I never really knew them. I think of my grandparents as old people, but you know what? they were young once too. Who would have thought! Anyway, here is the photo.

It is interesting to me to see them so young. I barely even recognize my grandmother. My grandfather was in the Navy back in the early 20's and served on the USS Arizona. I think it is really interesting.

Here is a photo of just my grandmother. This photo is really interesting because on the front is written Aug 1923 but on the back it is written May 4, 1924. They were married on May 5, 1924. I don't know which date to believe. I guess it really doesn't matter does it?

I thought it would be interesting to see how a quick job in photoshop would treat an old photo like this. Since I don't really know how to use Photoshop, I turned to my expert wife who turned that crummy old photo into this:

It is amazing what five minutes with a photo editing program can do. If you have old photos that need touching up, my wife would love to help you out. For a small fee your old photos could look like new ones.

Okay, enough of the advertising. If you want to see some more of my old photos then take a look at them on my facebook page. You can also just click here, here, or here.

My Daughter Ella

2008-10-13T04:07:00.002-05:00

Every once in a while I have trouble sleeping at night. It is usually because I took a nap in the afternoon as is the case here. Well, I got out of bed and this is what I did. I love my daughter Ella. Yes I still love her even though it's two a.m. and she just peed her bed. There is one photo from every month of her life. I feel like it is a pretty good video for having thought it up and finished it in the last hour and a half.

What have I been doing for the last couple of months?

2008-10-12T12:34:00.005-05:00

Yeah, I know. I've only posted one blog post on here in the last two and a half months. I've been moving and trying to get settled in up here at our new home in the Northwest. I have some photos to share of me running. I also have some pieces of news. I'll start with the fun photos. While I was in Utah in August and September, I ran quite a bit up in the Mountains. This first photo is on my first mountain run up to an 11,000 foot peak up Little Cottonwood Canyon. I think the name of this lake is Cecret Lake. Yeah, it's spelled really funny.

It was tough running up here because I had been living down at sea level. It was lots of fun though, I saw a couple deer and even a moose.

This next one was from a couple days later on a run up Big Cottonwood Canyon. It is a self portrait.

Great shot right?

While in Utah I also ran up Mount Timpanogus with Thayne. It was a really great run except for the fact that I sprained my ankle pretty bad on the way down. It popped really loud. I thought for a minute that I had broken it. I had to take a couple weeks off. but it's doing better now. Here I am at the top of Timp.

We had to be down from the top to block the wind. It was cold up there. We left at five something in the morning and made it to the top at seven something. It took just less than two hours to get to the top. Here's another one:

And here is a photo I have of Thayne.

If it weren't for him I probably wouldn't have made this run. Thanks for your blog. This photo was taken at the saddle, still a mile or so from the top.

Well, we had fun in Utah, then we made our way up here to the northwest. I started school and on campus I saw signs up that they were wanting runners for their new cross country team. I thought that sounded like fun and I've been running with them now for three weeks. I've already had two races. I took it easy at first because of my ankle, but I think my ankle is pretty much completely healed. It is still slightly swollen, but it doesn't hurt anymore.

Here are a couple photos from my first race. This was on October 4th.

My team is in the middle wearing the black uniforms. I'm the second from the right, in the second row.

And here I am running really fast right after the race started. I'm in front, my teammate following close behind me. He ended up finishing about 30 seconds faster than me. We run 8 Kilometer races. It's a lot different than running a marathon or a 50 miler, but it's still fun. I'm definitely not one of the faster ones.

Other than running, I've been doing a lot. My classes are all pretty easy. I already know most of the information and they are all online right now. Amanda is still doing her scoping work. It's been about a month now that we've been here. We still have a couple of boxes laying around that need unpacking. It will eventually get done. Probably about the time that we are ready to move again.

My parents live about two hours away from here if there is no wait for the ferry. I love going up to visit them. We have been up now three or four times. My dad is dieing of lung and brain cancer and I've been trying to get up to see him as much as I can before he goes. It is nice to sit and talk with him and help him out around the house. I think my mom needs just as much support as he does right now though too.

This is a nice three generation photo of my son, me and my dad. We all love my dad very much and can't stand the thought of loosing him. I hope you enjoyed the video I put together of him in my last post. It is a work in progress.

Well that's about it for now. I'll keep you posted on how my running is going. I only have three more races in this season. I'm not sure what I will do after the last race of the season, probably find a marathon somewhere to run.

A video of my dad

2008-10-02T23:45:00.002-05:00

I'll try the video here on my blog and see if it does any better than that other web site. For some reason it was going really slow there.

Bartlett Park Ultra 2008

2008-08-03T18:09:00.006-05:00

Well, I did it. It took me almost 12 hours but I did it. 50 miles. Wow that was tough. I feel pretty good about it but it was slower than I had hoped, but the heat kinda killed us all.

The race started at 6:30. I showed up about 6:15. I got my stuff the previous night, so I already had my number pinned on my hat and everything was ready to go. I had prepared a bag of stuff so that I could change my socks and shoes and shirt and shorts because I knew that I would be soaked through with sweat. It was a loop course that took us six times around an eight mile course. the last two miles were an out and back.

Anyway, it started at 6:30. I found myself in the probably about ten people back from the start. I knew I had to really focus on holding back for the first two or three laps. I felt like I did a pretty good job, although I probably still could have gone slower and had more at the end. It went about as expected for the first lap. The first eight miles were done in about 1:30. That is about an 11 minute mile. That is the pace that I wanted to be able to finish in. I was doing pretty good. Even though the day started out at 82 degrees It didn't seem that bad. I knew it would get worse though. Amanda and the kids were there to watch the start. They also went out to the aide station that was at mile four. It was probably less than half a mile to walk out there. The course was kinda shaped like a lopsided three leaf clover. The first little loop was four miles, then two then another two. There was one aide station that was accessible from mile four and mile six and another at the start/finish area. The family were there to cheer me on. I was glad to see them. It was still early in the race though and I was still feeling pretty good. I finished out the first lap and said bye to the family. They were leaving for the rest of the day to go see a children's museum. I can't blame them for not wanting to wait around there all day. First loop 1:28 total time 1:28.

The second loop was a little bit slower, in fact each loop was progressively slower than the previous one. I was still feeling great on this loop. I was just treating it as another one of my long runs. Slow and easy. I stopped each time at the aide station to fill my bottle with ice and water. I grabbed a few pretzels and cookies to eat each time too. I also put ice in my hat each time I saw the aide stations. That was key to keeping me cool. The ice in my bottle would keep my hands cool and the ice in my hat would keep my head cool. It was nice. Second loop 1:34 total time 3:02.

The third lap was probably my best. Not for time, but I just felt great. I knew I was still trying to hold myself back but I was into it and feeling just great. After this lap I changed shoes and socks and shorts and shirt. Everything was soaked through with sweat. I purposely put my race number on my had so that I could change shirts easily and not have to worry about switching the number around. Third loop 1:43 total time 4:45.

The fourth lap, what can I say about the fourth lap. It was on this lap that I was really beginning to be tested. I was still feeling pretty good, still taking some crackers, pretzels and such for salt, and cookies and PB&J's for more energy. This was when I really noticed the temperature. I later looked it up online and the temp for Bartlett for that day was 106 with a heat index temp of 125 or something. If I'd have heard that I might have dropped out. But in actuality, it was probably no more than about 95 in the forest. The race was 99 percent shaded. It was really good. I was actually contemplating only doing the 50k race (32 miles). Since it was a loop course you could choose to run four loops (32 miles/a long 50k), five loops (40 miles), or six loops with an additional two mile out and back (50 miles). You could choose while you were running. I'm sure there were a lot of people who started out planning on doing the 50 miles but dropping to the 40 mile or 50k. for a very short while I thought about stopping at the 50k. That quickly passed though, mainly because Amanda wouldn't have been there to see me finish. At that point I was telling myself (and others) that I was definitely doing at least 40 miles. This loop was the longest one. I saw no one for the first four miles. Then after the aide station I came across some people, but I passed them. It was lonely. I changed socks for the second time. I was now on my third pair of socks. Fourth loop 2:11 total time 6:57.

When I left the aide station for my fifth lap there was another young man right behind me. I though he might want to pass me, but he didn't. We walked with each other for the first mile. He then jogged passed me and I realized that I needed to stay with him or else I might not finish the full fifty miles. I had just called Amanda and told her that I was thinking about dropping at forty. Well I stayed with him. This guy, his name was Lee, was a life saver. We helped each other out. we actually "ran" the rest of the race together, 18 miles. At the aide station I told him how much he has been helping me. He told me that I had been helping him too. I noticed it when I took the lead for a bit. It was motivation knowing that someone was right there behind you and that you can't go too slow. When I was following him it was harder to go faster, but easier too because I just had to make sure that he didn't get out of my sight. Well, after doing this four miles with him I realized that there was no stopping me. I was going to make the full fifty miles. I had fourteen to go and I knew I was going to finish. It was tough going the rest of the loop, but we I stuck with Lee and we managed to make it. One lap to go. I changed my shoes again back to the ones I started with. I figured they'd had a few hours to dry. I also changed socks again. I knew my feet had blisters on them and I really did not want to look at them otherwise it might hurt worse. fifth loop 2:16 total time 9:13

Well, we didn't stay too long at the aide station and we were off on our sixth and final lap. After the first mile I called Amanda (like I had done on every other loop) and she had actually just arrived at the start/finish area. It would have been nice to see them as I came through the aide station, but I also was kinda glad that she wasn't there. You see, I wanted here to see me finish the race and if she had been there, she would have seen me finish the 40 mile and that would have been good enough. On my fifth lap I was thinking that, only for a short little bit, and I probably really would have kept going because of Lee, but the thought did cross my mind that if she were there I might just stop. Anyway, I wasn't a bit concerned about time for the race until about half way through the last lap. I realized that at the pace we were going, we might be able to finish in 12 hours. When we got to the aide station it was about 10.5 hours into the race. That would give us an hour and a half to finish the last six miles. Now on any given day, six miles could easily be accomplished in less than an hour, in fact on a good day I could do it in less than 45 minutes. But after running 44 miles, 6 miles seems like a really long way. We were walking most of the time anyway. We would walk then jog some, then walk then jog some. That's just how you have to move when you've gone for so long. I was actually surprised that I noticed it cool down. Then I realized how hot it was. Sure it "cooled down" but you can hardly call it cooled down when it is still 95 degrees out. Well, we had passed the aide station the second time and we had about a mile to go before the start/finish area (three miles left) when all of a sudden, another runner comes plodding along from behind and passes us. We took that as a sign and used him for some motivation. We picked up our pace a little bit and I'm convinced that if it wasn't for him I wouldn't have made the twelve hour mark. Well we didn't keep up with him completely but we did speed up. sixth loop 2:21 total time 11:35

We made a short stop at the aide station and left for the final two miles out and back. There was a sign on a tree that said Bartlett Park Ultra 1 Mile. When I was leaving the aide station I was told that I had 25 minutes if I wanted to get under 12 hours. Well, I ran 95 percent of that mile. I ran it pretty hard too. I'm pretty sure it was my fastest mile of the whole thing. It was a nine minute mile. Then I turned around and headed back and ran the final mile in 9:30. Wow, who knew that I had it in me. I really didn't think I had that kind of speed in me at that point. Lee took off in front of me from the aide station. I was trying to just catch up to him, but I couldn't do it. I came in about ten seconds behind him. And the other guy that passed us, we were both within fifteen seconds or so of him. mile 49 9:04, mile 50 9:30, total time 11:54:08.

After the race I sat in a chair for just a few minutes before walking over to the car. I changed into some cry clothes and took my shoes and socks off. I had some flip-flops to wear to let my fee dry out. My calves felt like they might cramp up at any moment, so I had to keep my legs stretched out and relaxed. My feet had blisters on them too. I knew it from about mile forty. From that point on every time I stepped down I could feel the sharp tingling of the blisters. It kinda went numb after a while, but I could still feel it. I would feel it again when I started running, but then my heart would start racing and my body would tell me I couldn't run, so I would walk. It's the same loop I was talking about earlier.

Anyway, now, a day later, I feel fine. We went and saw Graceland here in Memphis today, then we went down to Beale Street, ate at the Hard Rock Cafe, then went on a bus tour. It was really hot. Hotter than I remembered it being yesterday. My blisters are bothering me and I am limping around because of that, but it's not too bad. My legs are just a little bit sore and I really only notice the soreness when going up or down stairs.

I know that whatever my next 50 mile race is, it will be faster than this one. The heat really killed me. I feel good about finishing my first Ultra marathon. I'm hooked. When is the next one? Where will I run? Who Knows? Right now I'm on vacation. I'll think about it later when I can think a little more clearly. Maybe I'll look it up tomorrow night when the kids are sleeping.

And now for the photos: Here is the start of the race. I'm somewhere in there, I promise.

Here I am just a few seconds after the start. I look great.

This is coming in to the aide station at mile four. Only 46 more to go.

I'm enjoying some snacks here.

Here I am coming into the start/finish area at mile 8. Still feeling great.

I'm getting a quick snack before I hit the trail again.

Here are my kids in front of the sign showing the map of the trails we were running on. We did most of the trails shown here.

Okay, here I am finally coming into the start/finish area at mile 48. On the left side of the picture is Lee. He was trying to get out of the way so he wouldn't be in my photo. He's the one that kept me going. Thanks Lee.

Alex is running faster than I am right here. I just think it is cute that we are both looking back.

Coming into the finish at mile 50. I'm finally done!

I like this one because you can see Alex start running after me.

The aftermath: this is my right foot about twenty minutes after the finish. You will notice how wrinkly it is.

Here is my right foot a day later. It's not wrinkly anymore, but you can now see the blisters on my foot. I think there are five. The ones that hurt most are towards my toes. They are long and skinny, you can't really see them in the photo here.

Here on my left foot you can see the long skinny one really well. There are two just like this on the other foot.

Wow, that was one long post. Sorry if that bored you too much. I hope you enjoyed my little report. If you didn't then you shouldn't have read the whole thing.

Just to finish off I'd like to thank the race staff and all the volunteers for being out there all day in the heat and for putting on a great race. They really did a great job. I think everything about this race was great except for the heat.

Runners Funk

2008-07-21T21:48:00.002-05:00

Sometimes I just don't feel like running very much. Don't get me wrong, I love to run. But sometimes it is just hard to gather the motivation to go for a run. Maybe the 99 degrees today is what held me back. I think I'll get up early and run tomorrow. In that case maybe I should go to bed right now.

I think it is because I am pretty stressed out about moving and all that needs done before I go. It also probably has something to do that I am now going to be jobless. Oh, well. I just need to go running to clear my mind. If it wasn't so blasted hot I might go for a run right now. It is still like 85 degrees and it is ten o'clock. No, I'll go in the morning.

Moving and Running

2008-07-18T13:31:00.003-05:00

I am finally getting separated from the military. They told me this would happen almost a year ago, they are just really slow about doing it. In two weeks we will leave here and head up to the Pacific Northwest. It is just in time too. Our first stop on our trip will be Memphis Tennessee to run the Bartlet Park Ultra. After the 50 mile race, I'm not sure what I'll feel like but I plan on spending a couple days after that touring Memphis. We will then stop in Louisiana for a few days. The next stop will be Utah but we might make a fun road trip out of it. We will be there for two or three weeks before we continue our journey up to the great state of Washington. I'm going to have a lot of places to run over the next month. This will be fun. I'm really looking forward to the Utah mountains and also the Washington Mountains. It has been way too long since I have seen any mountains, let alone run in them. Oak Mountain in Alabama is still just a hill in my book.

I wonder how difficult it will be run run while traveling around the country like this. I'll just have to see.

I am so looking forward to my race. My only concern is the heat, but then I remember that the longest I will go without an aid station (ice is what I will really want) is four miles. That is not bad. I'll just run and see how my body feels. I hope I will be able to finish. I really think I will be able to, I've been feeling great. I did 28 miles on trails last Saturday and I did 30 miles a few weeks ago. I'm ready to run 50 and get it over with.

Running and Meditation

2008-07-07T10:09:00.002-05:00

I am not the kind of person that would normally go and meditate. It seems like something a monk would do, not a runner. But over the last couple of weeks I've been turning more to cleaning my inner self. I don't know, that sounds weird, "cleaning my inner self?!" Come on Anton, what are you thinking? Well I grew up pretty religious, always going to church. I even devoted two years of my life serving a full time mission for my church. But over the last year or so, I've been struggling to keep up my spirituality. I've started reading scriptures everyday. I'm not perfect, and nobody is, but that is the first step I guess in becoming more religious again.

A week or so ago I found out about a race that is 3100 miles long. It is called the Self Transcendence 3100. It is in honor of Sri Chinmoy. He started it seven or eight years ago and he just died last year. He was a spiritual leader that was also very athletic. He taught that running was an excellent form of meditation. I started thinking about it and it is so true. When I run I am able to either clear my mind and think about nothing, or I am able to ponder a question or problem that I have.

I think of scriptural prophets who fast and pray to know the truth of something and I am able to liken that to me just a little bit. I don't fast very often or very faithfully, but I run a lot and I am able to ponder life's problems while I run. Two of the few times in my life that I have been overwhelmed with emotion were at the end of both of my previous marathons. I can't really explain it, but when your body is so exhausted and broken down, it is just hard to hold in any emotions. It is an experience like none other to cross the finish line of your first marathon. I hope it will be a similar experience when I cross the finish line of my first 50.

Here are two excerpts from Sri Chinmoy's website. "Sri Chinmoy believed that a balanced lifestyle fosters harmony and inner peace. His integral approach to life encourages physical fitness and sports as a vehicle for personal transformation."

"There are countless people on earth who do not believe in the inner strength or inner life. They feel that the outer life is everything. I do not agree with them," he says. "There is an inner life; there is spirit."

Sri Chinmoy is not of my faith and he has probably taught many things that I would disagree with, but I agree with him on this. We can draw upon the strength of our inner selves. I, being christian, believe this power to be the Holy Ghost helping us out when we need it.

Now, I don't mean for this post to be a religious sermon or anything. I've just been thinking a lot when I run. It a way I feel like I am wasting time when I run. I could be spending time with my wife and kids, or reading and studying, or cleaning the house, or whatever else. But then I realize that I wouldn't be doing anything else anyway. I've been pretty lazy lately. If you take out running from my life I really have done absolutely nothing for the last few months. Well, anyway, I have started to listen to talks and books as opposed to music. I'll still listen to music, but I'll be listening a lot more to books and religious talks and stuff.

This morning I listened to half of Hamlet. I'm pretty sure I've seen it before, I may have even read it. This morning though it was different. I was able to mostly pay attention to it and enjoy it. It really struck me this morning when Lord Polonius was giving this speech to his son Laertes giving him words of counsel. Among other things he said:

"This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man."

I know this is one of the famous lines from Hamlet, but I like it. I also like the other line, even more famous. I've heard it thousands of times before, but now I realize that there is more meaning behind just the words "to be, or not to be." Hamlet starts his speech with this:

"To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;"

I think we all go through different stages in life. We struggle from day to day. It is hard for us to imagine any good coming into our lives in the next day, week, month or even year. But "to be" is much better than "not to be." For, if we seek for God and the truth in our lives, then there is always something better to look forward to. There are other times in our lives when nothing can stop us and we feel like life is great. It is during those times that we can not turn our backs on God, or he just might turn his back on us.

Well, I think this post is long enough. Maybe next time I'll tell you all to repent or your going to go to hell. Probably not though, that's not like me. Enjoy!

Bartlett Park Ultra

2008-07-01T09:59:00.005-05:00

Well, I have made a decission. It was easy and difficult at the same time. I have decided not to run the White River 50 on July 26 and instead to run the Bartlett Park Ultras 50 miler on August 2. It was difficult because I really wanted to run up in Washington in the Cascades. It was easy because I am not up there and I decided that I would rather not spend the money on a plane ticket to go up there right now. The downfall is that this run will be in the south in the hot, humid summer. It shouldn't be too bad though because this is the weather I've been training in. Maybe my hat will get some good use.

The Bartlett Park Ultra is located just outside Memphis Tennessee. It is about an eight hour drive from here. I'm going to take leave and spend some time with my family up there visiting all the sites.

Bartlett Park looks like a pretty nice place to have this race. There are some trails and this race will run several eight mile loops. Durring the race you can choose which distance to run 50k(really 32 miles), 40mile and 50 miles. I of course will strive to do the 50 miles. If it is extraordiarily hot and humid that day, and I'm am literally dieing, then I might consider stopping at the 40 mile, or if is really really bad, the 32 mile mark. so, I will do six, eight mile laps and then one mile out and one mile back to finish the fifty miles. It is a mostly flat course. The website says that the highest point is about 75 feet higher than the lowest point.

I guess I don't have much else to say about it. I'm really looking forward to actually doing an Ultramarathon. It is just four and a half weeks away. Until then I have a couple birthdays and a holiday. I hope I can resist the cakes. I need need a fruit and veggie cake.

A new running hat

2008-07-01T09:37:00.005-05:00

I bought a new running hat a few days ago. It came last night in the mail. My wife thought I was wierd because I wore it around the house for like an hour. This is a sun hat designed to keep the sun off head and neck. Here it is:

Isn't that awesome! I can't wait to go running in the hot sun and try it out. I've been running with just a regular ball cap, but this one is designed for running. It is really light weight. It is called the Outdoor Research Sun Runner Cap. For days that are not so hot or that have more cloud cover, I can remove the "sun skirt." I can also pull back it back so that it is just covering my ears and the back of my neck. I think that is how I will mostly use it. This will be a perfect hat for my 50 mile race that I am planning. Oh, yeah, I'll write another post about that.

Anatomy of a 30 mile run

2008-06-23T16:26:00.003-05:00

So this weekend I thought it would be fun to get up at three o'clock (after having gotten to bed just after midnight) so that I could run thirty miles before it got too hot. We also had a church BBQ to go to that started at ten. I needed to be done by then. I figured seven hours would be plenty to run the miles and get cleaned up afterwards.

When my alarm went off at three, it seemed a bit early. I turned it off and just laid there for a few minutes, I finally realized that I could only run if I got out of bed, so I hopped out and got ready. Downstairs I ate a banana and a Powerbar. I also drank quite a bit of water. I had prepared everything the night before so I didn't have to think about things too much. I loaded up my ipod, energy gels, cell phone, money, water bottle and flashlight (that's right it's dark that early) and took off. I left the house about 3:30AM. My route for the day would be an out and back and out and back and out and back and out and back. I would go five out then four back, then four out then four back, then four out then four back, then two out then three back. Was that confusing, or what? Basically, I ran along the same five mile section of road the entire time.

The first couple miles were going well. I had to slow down though at about mile four because I needed a bathroom. That was still a mile away, so I just had to go pretty slow.

Mile 5, 56 minutes, this is where I made my first stop. At the gas station, I used the restroom and bought a Gatorade. I felt much better and was able to pick up the pace quite a bit.

It was a little tricky carrying the flashlight and the water bottle and a Gatorade. I drank the Gatorade within the next mile though and threw the bottle away in a dumpster. It is really nice that early in the morning. It was not too hot. There were not many cars on the road, although more than I would have thought. Running south now, I could see lightning off in the distance. That was pretty cool to see.

Mile 9, 1 hour 44 minutes, this is where I ditched my flashlight. I could tell it was going to get light in the next half hour, and I was only a mile from my house, so I dropped off the flashlight behind a fence post. It was really neat watching it go from complete darkness, aside from the stars and moon, to daylight. This next section of running was perfect. I didn't need the flashlight, but the sun was still below the horizon. It was very nice.

Mile 13, 2 hours 23 minutes, sun still below the horizon. This was the same place I had stopped before. I just filled my water bottle with ice and water. I talked with the lady there for a couple minutes. Turns out she is a sports massage therapist. She works at events like the Panama City Ironman. Maybe I should have gone back after my run. oh well. I went on my way now feeling pretty good.

Mile 17, 3 hours 3 minutes. The sun rose during this section, but it stayed behind clouds most of the time. On a long run like this you have a lot of time to think. You'll probably think I'm weird, but I imagined myself on a fifty mile or a hundred mile race coming in to an aid station where my family was there cheering me on. I thought that they might have a video camera rolling and ask me what I was thinking about. I told them that I had been thinking about my dad. He is really an inspiration to me. Not that he ever ran. He rode his bike a lot though. He thought it would sound fun to ride his bicycle over 3300 miles across the country. I think that sounds crazy enough to try one day. But, just like that is the ultimate distance for a bike ride, an ultra marathon is the ultimate distance for a runner.

Mile 21, 3 hours 42 minutes. At the gas station this time I bought a bag of sunflower seeds and another Gatorade. I also filled my water bottle with ice and water. I didn't have the flashlight this time, so it was easier to carry. I was a little tired though and needed to walk just a bit to eat my food. I walked for a half to three quarters of the next mile while I ate most of my sunflower seeds and drank all of the Gatorade. By the time that I started running again, my legs had started to tighten up. It didn't hurt, they were just tight. It took a mile or so before I loosened up again and felt good running.

Mile 25, 4 hours 35 minutes. I was getting just a little tired at this point. I was motivated though to see that I only had five miles to go before I was over. It was getting pretty warm too. I had to ring out my hat to prevent the sweat from dripping into my eyes. It was about this point that I got sick of listening to music. That doesn't' happen very often, but I needed to focus more on my body, breathing and the like. Besides that, four and a half hours of music in your ears will make your ears ring. I took the ear buds out of my ears for the rest of the run and felt pretty good about it.

Mile 27, 4 hours 55 minutes. Now I am half a mile from a gas station, and three miles from home. There is no question that I will finish, but my legs are definitely heavier now than they were 25 miles ago.

Mile 28, 5 hours 12 minutes. I stopped at that gas station just to buy a Gatorade. There were two people in front of me and one of them had to buy like 50 lottery tickets. It seemed to take forever. I was so close to being home, I just wanted to keep running. While I waited I filled my water bottle with ice and put the Gatorade into my bottle. I finished the Gatorade, then I paid for it. After leaving the store there was a nice down hill.

Mile 29, 5 hours 22 minutes. I had told myself absolutely no stopping for this mile. It wasn't that hard to keep going when you are that close to home. I picked up my flashlight and kept going. I felt a little foolish carrying a flashlight when it was several hours past sunrise. There was plenty of light to go around, but you never know when the lights will go out and you'll need a flashlight. Anyway, just one mile to go.

Mile 30, 5 hours 32 minutes 35 seconds. I realized there would be no way to finish this last mile in less than eight minutes, so I just jogged it on in. I guess if I really wanted to I could have ran my guts out and tried for a fast mile, but I wasn't too concerned, it just would have been nice to break 5:30. Oh well, it turned out to be a good run. It averaged out to be a 11:06 overall pace. That is including all the stops along the way. If you take those out my running time is probably more like a ten minute pace, but in a 50 mile race, they don't care how long you stop at aid stations, the clock doesn't stop until you cross the finish line.

I was done. Normally I get home and lounge around a little bit. Today it was straight to the freezer for the ice. I got some ice water and chugged. Then I realized I had some of that new low sugar Powerade Zero, so I chugged some of that. Then I went straight up to the bathtub with all of the ice from the freezer and started filling, within a few minutes I was soaking in an ice bath with some magic minty alcohol juice. That felt good except for when I got in the water I realized that I was chaffed pretty bad. It stung really bad for a few minutes, then I got used to it. I really need to get something for that.

I normally try not to take any Motrin or anything too, but I could tell that I was going to be stiff after this run, so I took a couple to help relax my muscles. Within a half hour we left the house to go to the BBQ. It wasn't like after the two marathons I did where I could barely get around for a few days. I was able to get around just fine. It was just standing up that took an extra few seconds.

After only having had about three hours of sleep and then running thirty miles, I was pretty tired. I managed to get about a three or four hour nap when the kids were napping. That felt good. I didn't really want to get up, but I did.

Yesterday afternoon I looked at my running log and it told me that I burned 4000 calories. Wow! I immediately felt very hungry and had the urge to eat 4000 calories to make up for all the calories I had burned. I am still feeling more hungry then normal, but that's alright. I have the right now to eat as much ice cream as I want, right?

So, who's going to run the next 30 mile run with me? I am going to run 32 to 35 miles on July 5th. Let me know and we can run with each other for six hours or so. Seriously, let me know. Or, am I the only crazy one around here. Actually I found a guy yesterday at church who runs a lot, he's done the JFK 50 several times.

Lack of Running, Ouch!

2008-06-17T16:20:00.007-05:00

So, I've been a bit of a slacker. We had family in town this week and so things got really hectic. I managed to run eight miles last Monday then ten on Tuesday but then I didn't run the rest of the week. My legs really didn't like that. My left calf even cramped up pretty bad on Saturday night. I managed to go six miles yesterday and I did 5.4 on the elliptical today. Now that our visitors are gone, I should be able to get back into the swing of things. I really want to do a long run this weekend. It's been a few weeks since I've done anything more than ten except for the 20k race.

On top of not running for six days I was eating terribly. There was junk food gallor and a big birthday cake and ice cream. After my race on the seventh i weighed 169. I weighed myself just one week later on the 14th and i was 179. I know some of it was just water weight, but even after my workout today I was still 175. Don't get me wrong, I'm not really complaining about my weight, I'm just letting you how badly I ate this week. It'll probably take a few weeks to get back down to what I was and to flush out my body of all this crap food I ate. I really should eat better.

I have just five and a half weeks until the White River 50. I'm getting pretty excited. My family might actually decide to come up with me. We'll have to see how that goes, it would be fun, but we'll see. I think I will run close to 30 miles this Saturday, then do a 32-33 mile run on July 5th two weeks later. That will be my peak. Three weeks after that I will run 50 miles. I don't really have any expectation for the run. It is my first ultra marathon and so I just don't want to really set any time goals. The main thing in a race like this is to just finish. I'd like to think that I can do it in about 8 hours, but that more than likely is way out of my reach. I think I'll plan for a 10 hour time, but I won't get upset at all so long as I finish the race. 10 hours would be a 12 minute pace and I have never gone that slow, even for my 28 mile run several weeks ago I did about 10:30 pace. Yeah ten hours seems like a good aim. but like I said if I get out there on the course and find it harder than I had expected, then I'd be fine with slowing down to walk up the hills and such.

On another note, I really like the runners log that I use on runnersworld.com. I like being able to keep track of all my running and even other workouts. It's nice to be able to see weekly totals, monthly totals and annual totals. It's also nice to be able to graph them out to see my progress. I would recommend to any of you out there to use that tool they have. It's really easy to use to.

Oak Mountain Race Photos

2008-06-16T17:10:00.007-05:00

As promised here are the photos from my race.

First up we have me here in line to register for the race. I was all excited.
Me pinning my number on my shirt, which by the way ripped my shirt. I've never had that happen before. Crazy.
You can see me there under the starting arch.
Apparently my wife tried to tell me to get on the other side of the side walk so that she could get good photos of me. I didn't really understand what she was saying, so her I am on the far side of the sidewalk.
And there I go.

These next three are at the half way point. The course was all up on the trails and Amanda coulnd't have hauled the kids up there to take photos and get back in time to see me at the start/finish area. They put a hair tie around everyones wrist to show that you had been around once and were going again. I'm getting my "bracelet" here

Amanda liked how my muscles seem to be bulging.

And there I go off on the second loop.

Here I am coming into the finish area.I know it looks like I'm dead there and I'm giving up or something, but it was really in celebration.
As I crossed the finish line, they handed this to me. Wow, that was quick. As soon as I crossed it must have triggered the printer and there it was.

Nice cool refreshment. That was much needed.
Nothing could have been nicer than a few minutes in this cool misting tent. It was actually more like a raining tent. I'm sitting in about two inches of water right there.
To finish it off really quickly I jumped into the lake with my kids. We didn't have much time, and Alex got hurt, so we only played for about five minutes.

And there you have it. If you looked at Amanda's blog, then I'm sorry you had to see these pictures again. Let me see if I can find some more photos that didn't make it onto her blog...

Okay, I found one. This is at the half way point in the race. If you'll notice it looks like there is something that is floating just above my head. Well, the runner right behind me took his shirt off and threw it to his family that was there. Amanda just happened to snap a photo right after he had thrown it. So, that is the shirt of the guy that was just behind me. kinda funny I think

Oak Mountain State Park, Xterra Fun Run

2008-06-13T13:34:00.002-05:00

I've been slow about posting on here about my race. I wanted to put some pictures on here, but I can't right now. My wife has been really busy with the computer all week, so I haven't had the chance to. I finally decided to write this up on this computer and I'll add some photos when I get the chance. Or you can just go look at Amanda's blog and see some photos from the race.

They day started at about 6:20 when I rolled out of bed and started getting dressed. Breakfast at the hotel started at 6:30, so we were there right when it started. We ate quickly and headed on out. Even with the kids, we were pretty quick. We grabbed everything in case we couldn't make it back before checkout time. Our hotel was just about a five minute drive from the State Park. When we got there we went straight over to the Xterra Village they had set up. It was pretty cool. I registered for the 21k race. We had just a little bit of time to stand around waiting for the race to start. I ended up at the start of the pack, but i kept inching my way back from the starting line. I knew I wasn't going to lead the whole thing, so I got about ten feet back from the start. They told us just before they shot off the cannon that it was really only about 20 kilometers and not a true half marathon. It is pretty hard to get an established trail to change lengths. Finally the little cannon was fired and we were off. There were only about 80 of us in the race. We went about 200 feet up the sidewalk, then took a sharp right for another 200-300 feet up to the road. Then we were on the side of the road for about three quarters of a mile before we turned up onto the trails.

The first aide station was right there but I passed it by because I had my watter bottle with me. I had not seen the trail or even a profile of the trail, so I really didn't know what to expect. The first mile or two of trail was perfect. It rolled back and forth and only a little up and down. When we hit our first big hill I noticed that everyone was walking up it. I though that was a bit strange, but when I got to it, I realized why they were walking and I joined in. I was probably going faster with a walk than I would have been running anyway. About half way up, I told someone that this hill was going to kill me the second time around (it was two loops of 10k).

Just before reaching the top I thought I might be able to power up and over the top. I managed, but then coming down the other side I realized that going down was going to be just as hard as getting up the hills. On my way down the hills I would make sure that I had my one free hand ready to catch the trees to help slow my decent. It wouldn't have been so bad, but the trails were pretty well covered with rocks and roots and stuff. There were only a few times that I was brave enough to look up from the trail to look around at the beauty. It really was a pretty area. I was very grateful for all the trees. I thought that we might break out of the trees towards the top, but we didn't there were only a few places along the whole course that I saw the sun. That being said, it was still about 85 degrees and very humid. There were three main hills along the course. There were three or four bridges to run across. There were also two streams without bridges to jump across.

By the time that I broke out of the trails onto the road, i was completely soaked in sweat. My water was warm and I needed to get some more to cool down. there was about a half mile on the road to get back to the starting area. Amanda was ready with the camera and the kids helped cheer me on. I tried to go faster on the road because it was much easier to run on the smooth pavement. Just before I got to the trails, I downed my second energy gel. At the aide station I filled my water bottle with cold water, man that felt nice. I also grabbed a cup of Gatorade. Now that I knew what to expect on the course, I took this part of the course a little harder. I knew it would be about two miles before I hit any hills. By this point everyone was pretty much settle in to where they were going to finish. coming up the last hill, I saw two people that I wanted to pass. I caught up to and passed one of them. I caught up to the next guy at the top of that last hill, but he seemed to have more experience on trails that I did, because he cruised down the hill creating about a 100 foot lead. Coming out of the trail onto the pavement, I thought I wouldn't have any trouble catching him, but he picked his pace up just like I did. I finished the last half mile really strong, but only managed to shorten the lead he had on my to about 30 feet before crossing the finish line.

I finished in 1:58:43. I was 18 of 80 overall, 16 of 56 males, and 6 of 9 in my age group. I was very pleased with being able to finish in less than two hours. That is right about what I thought I was going to do. I ate some post race snacks then sat down in the mist tent to cool down. After just a bit, we took the kids over to the lake and let them swim for just a little bit. after only abut five minutes Alex tripped and cut his hand open, so we just left. Overall it was a fantastic day. I had a lot of fun. I am really glad that I chose to do this short trail run (yes 20 kilometers is short) before just heading out on the trail for the White River 50. It gave me the experience that I need to be more prepared for WR50.

Well, like I said I will post some pictures later.

I run a lot

2008-06-03T12:18:00.002-05:00

Running is a hobby of mine. It is something I do for fun. I am able to relax and blow off stress when I run. For the month of May I managed to total 201 miles. For the last week though, it has been hard to pull myself out and run. It was my shortest week in over two months. Even today when I thought going for a run would make me feel better it just made me more tired. I'm now sitting here feeling very exhausted. I think that I need to go to bed earlier and maybe eat better too. I am however excited about running a half marathon up in Alabama this weekend. I really think that I will have my energy level back by then. It will be a fun trail run at Oak Mountain State Park. Maybe my wife will even take some photos so that you can actually see me run. Not that a tired, sweaty guy is really something worth looking at, but it should be a pretty place too. I'm sure we'll have lots of fun in the Birmingham area on Friday and Saturday. I might be able to get Friday off.

Keep running.

Missing John Alley was Found

2008-05-26T16:36:00.004-05:00

Thank you for all the support that we have received. We have had a lot of help from a lot of people. John was found and there is an investigation going on, so I can't say much more than that.

Here is the article from the Pensacola News Journal.

Police have found a body believed to be that of John Alley, a pilot who had been missing since Saturday.

Alley’s 1996 green Toyota Corolla was found wrecked off of Scenic Highway near Summit Boulevard.

The body was found in the water along the edge of Escambia Bay, about a quarter of a mile northeast of the crash site, said Police Sgt. Mike Simmons.

“I can confirm we have located a body and I am about 99 percent sure it is Mr. Alley,” Pensacola Police Assistant Chief Chip Simmons.

Police detective Mike Reese said a 16-year-old boy was fishing and walking along the shoreline when he saw the body. The teen then notified some nearby searchers.

“We are still working on the crime scene investigation and we have not gotten a positive identification from the family yet. But he was last seen wearing a flight suit and the body found was wearing a flight suit.”

“It’s very difficult to say where he entered the water,” Simmons said. “We are doing our best to answer those questions, primarily how he ended up in the water to begin with.”

Alley, 26, a U.S. Air Force pilot from Milton, was a newlywed, a soon-to-be father and a former missionary.

“It’s a sad situation and we’ve been in contact with the family and the base command,” Simmons said.

An autopsy will be done this week to determine positive identification and cause of death, Simmons said.

Police initially were notified of the crash at about 5:30 a.m. Saturday after Alley’s locked car was found abandoned on Scenic Highway.

Alley is believed to have been southbound on Scenic when the car crossed the center line and hit a guardrail.

Police and search teams had been looking since Saturday for Alley, a 2nd Lieutenant stationed with the Air Force at Whiting Field.

John Alley Missing

2008-05-25T17:33:00.002-05:00

I have a friend here in Florida that has disappeared. Nobody knows where he is. Friday (May 23, 2008) he was in class from seven till three in the afternoon. After that no one has seen him. 2nd LT John Alley is an Air Force officer in pilot training. After searching all night Friday, police found his car totaled at about five Saturday (May 24th) morning. There was no sign of John though. There was no blood at the scene. John obviously walked away from the accident. He left his keys, wallet and cell phone in the car. Search dogs were called to the scene but the trail led nowhere which leads people to suspect that he was picked up by someone. It is possible that because of the wreck, he is disoriented and can not remember who he is. Please, for my friends sake forward this message to people. He might still be in the Pensacola area, but he also might be traveling somewhere. If he was really disoriented, he might not remember that he lives in Florida and thinks he lives in Colorado which is where he is from. This is a good standing member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day saints which means that it was very, very, very unlikely that alcohol was involved.

If you have any information regarding this go to the web site that has been set up for him. www.helpfindjohn.inf0 Today hundreds of people were out putting up fliers in local businesses and on street corners.

Long Runs

2008-05-24T13:13:00.002-05:00

I like my weekend long runs. Today I decided to get up early and do the same run I did two weeks ago. I left the house before 4:30 this morning to try to beat the heat. I did beat it. It was very comfortable for my whole run. It was 68 degrees when I left and by the time I got back it was 80. Just within that last hour though the temps went from 75 up to 80. I was feeling so good that when I was a mile from home, I decided to run an extra 1.7 mile loop. So, instead of 26.5 I ran 28.2. It was a great run today. I'm only a little tired right now from getting up so early. Maybe I'll take a nap, who knows.

This last week I hit a couple of milestones. as of today I have ran 542 miles this year. I have run 173 so far this month. Since I started logging my runs on the runners world website, I have ran 791 miles. That is from the end of September of last year. This last week I ran 57 miles. I feel great.

So, instead of just reading about all of the running that I do, you should go out and try it. Even if it is just a mile. It doesn't have to be much, just get out there and be active. In fact, you don't even have to run, you can swim, bike, walk or any number of other activities. Anyway, I think I'll go run now.

Running

2008-05-14T06:37:00.002-05:00

In case any of you don't know, I love to run. Why? you may ask. There are a lot of reasons. I just enjoy it. It is something I can go to that will relieve stress and give me a break from everything else. I can forget about life, or I can think about life while I am running. A lot of the time I listen to my favorite music. Sometimes I will think of nothing but the next mile or half mile and how fast I should run it. Running is also very healthy. My heart and lungs are in good shape.

Yesterday I decided to do a tempo run. For those who don't know that is a run anywhere from three or four miles up to 10 miles or longer that is a quicker pace than a normal easy jog, but not quite as fast as you would run a race. It had been three or four weeks since I had done one of these tempo runs and my body needed the speed. After the first mile I decided to do the next three or four miles at a sub-8 pace. The next four miles ranged from 7:44 to 7:13. My legs felt fatigued after mile three. I realized that my legs were still trying to recover from last weeks 54 miles and last Saturday's 26.5 miles. I also did eight miles on Monday. I guess my legs just wanted a rest. I think today will be a short easy run. I will probably only do five miles at a nine minute per mile pace.

It is funny to look back at my running log over the last six or seven months. Last summer I barely ran at all. It wasn't until October when I started running again seriously. At that time it was a chore to run three miles. I notice in my log that I even called a five mile run a "long" run. That is pretty funny considering the fact that I have now been calling my ten mile runs "easy" as apposed to "long." If you click here you can see a graph of my runs over the last eight months. It is pretty cool to see the progress I've made. I think maybe it is time for me to stop building miles for now. I'll try to maintain 50-55 miles per week with the long run of 26miles, for at least a few weeks. I'll work on doing more speed stuff. I'll probably just do a tempo run. Maybe I should do some hills in there too. Maybe in three or four weeks I'll start building mile by mile to 31 miles. My plan is to run 31 miles on July 5th. The 50 miler being three weeks later on July 26th.

All this talk about running makes me want to go running.

26.2 Miles

2008-05-10T22:21:00.003-05:00

Today I decided to go and run a full marathon. I had been feeling good this week, so I went for it. I took it easy and walked quite a bit on the second half. It was really hot out today. I was well prepared for it. I had three energy gels, two granola bars, and enough money to buy three bottles of Gatorade along the way. I also drank four of my water bottles full of water. I actually drove the route after I ran it just to make sure of the distance and it turns out that instead of 13.1 miles to the turn around point it was almost 13.3 so I actually ran more than a marathon.
As I was running today I just kept thinking that the heat was good training for the Badwater Ultramarathon. That is a 135 mile race that I would like to do. It runs through Death Valley and ends up at the foothills of Mount Whitney 135 miles away. It is run in July when the average high is 117 degrees and highs often reach the upper 120's. At night the average low's are in the high 80's. Everyone thinks I'm crazy for wanting to do it, but I think it sounds fun.
I'm a bit tired now, so that's it for now.
Happy Running.