My wife and I wanted to do something special with our daughters this year for their spring break, and the school district, where my daughters attend school, had their school spring break very late this year. In the past we might have planned a ski trip, but my daughters had spent the entire winter in ski lessons, and were probably ready for a change in their activities. So we decided to take a gamble and try our luck with the weather in mid-April on the Oregon coast. In the past we had camped in a tent on the Oregon coast, and were made very well aware of how bad weather on the coast can make a wonderful place very unpleasant to stay in, so we chose to hedge our bets and make the trip in our new Wolf Creek camper. We have only had our camper for around 6 months, and almost every trip we have taken in it on has been a ski trip, and never longer than 3 nights. Over the winter there had been a few rough times (especially for my daughters) in learning to adjust to living with a family of four in a very small space that sits in the bed of a pickup truck. This was going to be a much bigger adjustment, since we were planning on spending a full week in the camper.
beach swing at Cape Lookout
To keep things interesting I planned for us to stay at 3 different Oregon State Parks along the coast. I organized things so that other than our first day of travel, we would never have more than a 3 hour drive, and we would get to spend most of our time enjoying the parks. We decided to end the trip with a night at the indoor water-slide resort, Great Wolf Lodge in Grand Mound, Washington (this would hopefully give us a chance to get our girls good and clean before we brought them back home).
Beach at Cape Lookout State Park
On our drive down we made a stop in Seaside Oregon at one of the best surf shops in Washington or Cleanline Surf. They have a huge selection of surf gear for sale or rental. We made sure everyone in our family was set up to be able to play in the waters of the cold Pacific Ocean. After gearing up we headed on to our first campsite, Cape Lookout State Park. The park is west of highway 101, between Tillamook and
Pacific City. It is a fairly large state park on a sand spit between that separates the Pacific Ocean from Netarts Bay. Along the Pacific side of the sand spit there is a long beautiful beach that can be accessed with a short walk of a few hundred feed from the park camp sites. The park has full hookups which made life even easier in the camper. The family had fun playing on the beach, but during our stay here the temperature barely hit 50, we had a mix of sun and light rain, and a stiff wind on the beach kept everyone bundled up. No one was too interested in surfing, but my daughters were completely entertained by exploring the beach and hunting for shells.
Looking back to Cape Lookout
After two nights at Cape Lookout we headed a couple hours south to our next location. The second spot we camped at was a tiny campsite, not even large enough to warrant “State Park” in the name: Beachside State Recreation Site. Beachside is about 30 minutes south of Newport, just south of the tiny town of Waldport. We had visited this park about three years prior and stayed in a tent. That visit had been in early summer during a usually hot period when the temperature throughout Oregon and Washington was getting up into the mid 90s; that is until you went to the Oregon Coast, where a mile east of the coast you entered a huge fog bank and the temperature dropped to the low 50s degrees. That trip was rather disappointing, but I remembered the park and wanted to give it another chance.
The best thing about Beachside State Recreation Site is that you can have your campsite literally right next to the beach. Our camper’s back door opened to an amazing view of the Pacific Ocean. With the drive south the weather seemed to improve with mostly sun and
the temperature getting up to the low 60s. After getting settled in at our campsite, we all put on wetsuits, grabbed our boggie boards, and enjoyed hours of playing in the very mild surf. We were the only people venturing into the water, so we must have been quite an interesting site, several other campers at Beachside even took chairs onto the beach to watch our pathetic attempts at surfing.
"RV parking" in Newport
The next day we headed back up to Newport to check out a restaurant that my wife had read about, Local Ocean Seafoods. It’s a fresh fish market and restaurant where you can buy freshly caught fish to take with you and prepare for yourself or have their chefs prepare the days catch for you. We enjoyed and incredible meal sitting outside beside Yaquina Bay in Newport. Then it was back to our campsite at Beachside for some more surfing.
Tillamook Ice Cream!
With our week over halfway though it was time to start heading Tillamook cheese factory and a sampling of their cheese and ice cream. Then about another hour on the road and we were at our final campsite Nehalem Bay State Park. Like Cape Lookout State Park, Nehalem State Park also sits on a narrow sand spit. It was probably the largest of the three campsites, and the quietest with very few visitors. I had a chance to briefly speak with one of the park rangers, who told me that this was breif quiet time before May when things begin to pick up, then from July through September just about everything is booked.
Unlike the other two campsites, the beach was separated from the campsites by a tall sand dune that required a brief hike over to get to the beach. Once on the beach you could walk all the way into the town of Manzanita 2 miles away which is exactly what we did to pick up some supplies and get some dinner.
Our Seaside surf stop
The next morning my wife emailed a friend who is a surfing instructor in Seaside, hoping to get information on
where we should take the family for a day of surfing. She suggested “the cove” in Seaside; basically the far Southern end of the beach at Seaside. It was nice to have the camper to prepare a hot lunch and to have a place to change in and out of our wet suites before surfing. We surfed mild but well-spaced waves until my 6 year old daughter was pretty much warn out. Then packed up everything and headed back to Nehalem Bay State Park for the night.
That night we left our wet suits outside under a canopy, hoping they would dry a bit before we headed back North towards our final stop. Unfortunately that night it rained, and rained hard! The next morning everything was soaked. There was nothing we could do other than lay blankets and towels down all over the camper and load all our wet gear in it.
We drove up North for our final night of the trip, this time in a hotel room at Great Wolf Lodge, where (for me at least) the wave pool seemed rather disappointing after several days of surfing. My daughters both had a lot of fun at the lodge, which seemed to me like a Las Vegas casino for children. After a week in quiet state parks, 1 day was the absolute limit I could handle for Great Wolf lodge, so the next day around noon we headed back home to Seattle.
I look forward to getting to make a similar trip to the Washington coast when the weather gets warmer and perhaps spending a bit more time in just one place.
It's been over 2 weeks since the last time I ran. I really don't have any excuse; I've blamed the weather, my schedule, anything I could. Reality is I've been lazy. And although I already regret not getting in some runs over the past couple weeks, I know that I'm really going to regret it on Saturday, May 26 when I run the Soaring Eagle 50K Trail Run. I am just not trained up for this long race, and it's really too bad because the relatively flat course is conducive to a PR. I use to tell myself that the way to be certain I kept running was to keep signing up for races, I guess that no longer works. I need more than just races, I need real concrete goals like last year when I set (and succeeded in completing) a goal to run 1000 miles.
When the weather is less than ideal, when the schedule is not conducive, when I'm just not feeling like it, that's when I need to just force yourself to get out there and run. Like everyone says, you'll never regret the run you went on.
Just got back yesterday from a few days in Chicago for work. This is my second visit to the second city, and I really enjoy visiting that town. Amazing places to eat, beautiful parks, incredible museums, and as major world cities go, it’s actually really affordable to visit. Last time I visited Chicago it was also because of a work trip, but I decided to stay over the weekend and do as much tourist stuff as I could. One thing I had intended to do, but just didn’t do was to go for a run in the city. However on this trip, knowing that I would be coming back to Chicago for a longer trip in October for the express purpose of running the 2012 Chicago Marathon and doing all things touristy, I took my free time on this trip to go on a good run. Turns out you can’t really run the marathon course, since it is literally down some of the city’s busiest streets (which are obviously closed down for the marathon). It took me a while to get the short 1 mile distance from my hotel to the shore Lake Michigan since I had to stop ever tenth of a mile for a street light, but once I got to the lake I really enjoyed running along Lakefront trail heading south. At some point I figured I would need to turn around since I had plans to meet up with some people for dinner, that’s when I found what the challenge is with running in Chicago. As I had been running south I was running with a decent wind to my back, when I turned to head back up north an ice cold wind was blowing right in my face. I still enjoyed the remainder of my run eventually making my way back up the lake and in along the river and back to my hotel.
Funny about what makes for a good day. There are lots of things that can give you a positive kick that just puts you in a completely positive mood all day, but today I was surprised what did it for me. Today I had a good doctors visit. Maybe I'm getting old, but going to the doctor and having him totally happy with how healthy I am has kept me on a high all day.
Like most of my family, I have had issues with high cholesterol. For the past couple decades I've tried various things to try and bring down my cholesterol, including Niacin supplements which require a rather large dose to be effective at bringing down high cholesterol, and have some really nasty side effects if you don't very carefully build up to those doses. In more recent history my doctor has prescribed statins for me. In recent years, statins seem to be really popular means for controlling cholesterol. Some doctors I know take statins because they believe its beneficial even though they don't have high cholesterol. However more recently I've seen more information about the negative side of statins, at least if you don't have heart disease or have suffered a heart attack. Statins can be very hard on your liver, and some people (such as myself) can suffer some very unpleasant side effects from statins.
After experiencing negative side effects with my second statin prescription, I decided to try an experiment an just quit my statin. I didn't tell my doctor about this and didn't plan on telling him until our next visit, nearly 6 months after I quit the statin (for what it's worth, I don't recommend anyone ignore their physicians recommendations ever. In hind sight it was probably a bad idea on my part). I was worried my doctor would prescribe a new statin, or more so I was worried that I wouldn't fight for my own opinion and tell my doctor what I wanted to do, and I wanted to see if I could get the cholesterol down myself.
Generally you hear that if your cholesterol is too high you need to try diet and exercise, and if that doesn't work try a statin. But I wondered, how many typical American's REALLY try dieting and exercise at the serious life changing level. Unrelated to my issues with high cholesterol I had taken up a rather drastic change in lifestyle, going from a coach potato to a runner. As I increased my running distance I found that with running came a change in diet (I found I couldn't eat a giant cheese burger and then go run ten miles). Originally, I had taken up running because as I was turning 39, and I was being hit with a bit of a mid-life crisis, and I wanted to climb Mt. Rainier before I turned 40. I took up running as one of the ways of getting myself in shape for the exploit. Ultimately I successfully summited Rainer, but I really took to the running. Later that same year I ran my first marathon, the next Spring I ran my second marathon, followed by my first 50k, and then a three day 93 mile run around Mt. Rainier's Wonderland trail, followed by another marathon and another 50k this past February. As I was running more and more, I was also working on changing my diet. Less meat, especially red meat, more fish, more fresh vegetables and whole grains, less processed foods. I wanted to see if all of these changes would make any difference in my cholesterol. My fear was that genetics outweigh everything else, and that my cholesterol would be super high after taking 6 months off of any statins or any specific medicine or supplement to bring down my cholesterol. The good news is that although my cholesterol was slightly higher than my last visit, it was definitely low enough for my doctor to believe my experiment had been successful; no new medications!
So what's the secret? Well, I'm no doctor, nutritionist, athlete or health expert, (basically I don't know what I'm talking about) but what I've come to believe is that in the past half century Americans have become a bunch of lazy, complaining whiners, who eat crap. I believe the typical American eats food where they don't even really know what's in it. We sit at desks all day long, then sit in our car for a long commute home, then sit in front of a television, before going to bed, and then repeating the whole thing again. Maybe there is 30 to 60 minutes of moderate exercise completed in a heated or airconditioned gym to interrupt an otherwise sedentary life style. It doesn't take much thought to realize this can't be good. However, I know it's really hard to change out of that lifestyle. For me, I couldn't make a small change, I had to go overboard about it, and then keep pushing further away from that.
Last Sunday I ran the Lord Hill 50K Trail Race; my second trail race and my second ultra marathon . With nothing planned for the start of the year I needed some encouragement to kick start my running in the New Year. In the first few months of the year there are very few organized races, but the Lord Hill race at the end of February seemed like a somewhat aggressive but attainable goal, and despite the fact they offered a 5 mile, 10 mile, 20 mile and 50 kilometer race, I figured I might as well sign up for the full thing and do 50K. I was surprised to find out my wife signed up shortly after me (but for the much more reasonable distance of 10 miles). The course was a 10 mile course with the 50K races doing the 10 mile course 3 times, then a small 1.1 mile loop at the end.
Immediately I discovered my training schedule was going to be very limited with Tuesday’s devoted to City League ski racing and Saturday’s devoted to taking my daughters up skiing for lessons. I tried to get in as many runs as I could with my usual 6.5 mile maintenance and a longer weekend run when I could pull it off. By the time of the race I had only managed 2 runs on trails, and only one run over 10 miles in length. Add to my severe lack of training, the weather forecast was calling for 1 to 2 inches of snow between 10 AM and 4 PM on the day of the race; this would be exactly the time I would be running. I knew I was in trouble.
As the day of the race came around, I tried to reassure myself that I wasn’t trying to set any records with this race, and that I wouldn’t push myself too far and I would drop out if it was no longer prudent to run. On race day I awoke to pretty much blue skies in Seattle, and I figured my concerns about the weather were unwarranted and the forecast (as always in Seattle) was wrong. We drove on out to Lord Hill Park near Monroe, WA but as we neared Monroe the skies suddenly were filled with clouds. Upon arriving at the start of the race, one of the parking volunteers commented that he hoped we had really good mud shoes, and that the race was going to start with a river crossing.
A pre-race briefing was provided to the 20 mile and 50K racers at 8:15, then the 20 mile and 50K race was to begin at 8:30. However, just before the race was to begin it started snowing. As the race kicked off we ran about 100 yards, before crossing the previously mentioned “river”. The river turned out to be little more than a creek that could easily be jumped over; however I found out that as I did my second and third loop of the course the creek became increasingly more difficult to jump over.
The small creek was the least of my worries during the race. After about half a mile the course turned sharply up “Oh Lord Hill”, a steep series of climbs, straight up a hill on a narrow muddy single track trail. The hill was steep enough so that pretty much everyone just walked it. After “Oh Lord Hill” the rest of the course was a beautiful (albeit very muddy) single track course winding though woods, along creeks, and past a large pond. There was an aid station at the 4 mile point on the 10 mile loop, which worked out to be a great spacing as the majority of the effort was put into the first mile of the course as you climbed “Oh Lord Hill”. The first loop was interesting with snow falling and the course receiving a little dusting of snow, but by the second loop the snow had stopped, and by the third loop the sun was out. I now had no excuse not finish this race.
At the end of my third loop I was greeted by my two daughters and wife (who had time after she completed her race to drive an 45 minutes, pick up my daughters, have lunch with them, do some shopping, then drive back 45 minutes to the race course, and wait 45 minutes before I finished loop 3). After thanking them for meeting me I headed out for the final 1.1 miles (and the most difficult 1.1 miles I’ve ever run).
When the race was over I ended up finishing in 7 hours and 29 minutes and coming in 39th place out of 55 racers. Not a ranking that is going to win me any prizes, but one that I am proud of anyways. And now with a couple of days to recover and some time to contemplate the race, I find myself looking on the internet trying to find the next race and a little bit surprised by the fact that I can’t wait to run my next 50K.
This year the week between Christmas and New Years will be spent in
Southern California. When I started shopping for plane tickets for this
trip months ago it quickly became apparent that plane tickets and rental
car were going to cost a fortune. When I compared the cost of flying to driving
it suddenly made seemed to make sense to just drive. So our family has decided to boycott the obscenely high cost of plane tickets and instead do our holiday travel by car.
However this morning, while listening to the radio, I was reminded that tomorrow, the day we depart, is the Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year. Tomorrow the family and I will be in the car for 11+ hours and there will only be around 9 hours between sunrise and sunset, and this is just the first of 3 days of driving.
We may be spending quite a few hours during this drip in the dark, but I think it will still be a fun family adventure...
With the first days of December, a record setting high pressure system settled over the Pacific Northwest and promised up to a week or more of good weather (and smog in the lowlands). My brother Alex and I decided to take advantage of the good weather and get in our first ski trip of the season to Camp Muir.
On Saturday December 3, we started out at 6 AM, arriving at the mountain 9:30. When we got to the parking lot we realized there were quite a few other people with the same idea. From the parking lot to just below Panorama Point we set a pretty good pace. But as we looked up the climb to Panorama Point it was clear all the other skiers were struggling. At first the climb was easy. Alex stated that he was going to try and skin all the was up. A couple minutes later Alex, who was ahead of me, yelled back to me to put on my ski crampons. A minute later he was hiking with skis over his shoulder. As I approached the area where he had given up skinning I thought I might be able to make it with my ski crampons, and I probably could have, but it would have been a long way to slide down if the crampons didn't hold, so following my brothers example, I put the skis over my shoulder and headed up hill.
After the climb up to and above Panorama Point, the skinning went well up to about 8,000' where the travel required navigating patches of ice with strong gusts of wind coming from all different directions. A couple of the gusts were strong enough that I had to stop and make sure I was well balanced against the wind. Around 8,800' the wind was just too strong, and most of the downhill skiers had warned us that it was extremely icy higher up, and most all other uphill skiers had turned around. So at that point Alex and I decided to turn around. So with high winds, and on an inch of snow on top of blue ice we carefully transitioned and headed down.
I'm doing the usual Sunday things, putting clothes away, cleaning up, getting ready for another work week for me and my wife, and school week for my children. In the background KUOW FM 94.9 is playing; the show that is on is Studio 360. On the show they are talking about memories, and how memories are what define who we are; but there is now way we can remember everything, so there is a part of the brain called the hippocampus that transforms the short term memories into long term memories. The problem is we don't get to decide what become a long term memory and what doesn't. I don't think this is fair!
My answer is this blog. Although I can't say what the future of this blog will be, I would like to think of it as my artificial hippocampus. My brain does not get backed up, but I'm pretty sure Google is kindly backing this blog up all over the place. Normally this show on Studio 360 was something I was certain I would largely forget about within in a matter of minutes, and this really annoyed me because I really found this show facinating...and I wanted to remember it, I wanted to be able to discuss this concept again later. So upon hearing this show I ran downstairs, and started this blog post...my artificial hippocampus. I choose to make this a long term memory...if I can remember to read this blog post again.
Being the slave to social media that I am, I have a YouTube account. I really don’t do too much with that account; I created it out of curiosity more so than anything else. However, I do upload the occasional video that I put together.
In 2009 my brother and I went up to Alpental on opening day. I brought my helmet camera and captured some POV footage of us skiing and made a stupid little video with that footage. I really didn’t imagine anyone other than my brother and I watching this, but I did upload it to YouTube and make it publicly visible.
Well, nearly 2 years after putting together this video, it looks like someone else has watched my video. I guess he didn’t care for it, but his comment is pretty awesome!
Im 12 and i did that run when i was 11 so do somthing a little harder
Thank you, The Gocarter for your constructive criticism. I will make a point of trying to capture some footage of me hucking cliffs in the Alpental BC during the 2011/12 season, or maybe ski Mount Rainier or Baker. Either way, I will strive ski runs harder than what an 11 year old can easily ski.
Yesterday I went to my favorite coffee shop on the University of Washington campus: Parnassus. As I was waiting for my coffee I noticed this poster on the wall.
The poster states:
“It’s pretty amazing that our society has reached a point where the effort necessary to extract oil from the ground ship it to a refinery turn it into plastic shape it appropriately truck it to a store buy it and bring it home is considered to be less effort than what it takes to just wash the spoon when you’re done with it.”
I guess this has been out there a while and been going around for a while, and it took a bit of searching, but I believe I found the person who created the poster (if not perhaps the text for it too). It’s a guy by the name of Max Temkin, his site is Maxistentialism. Cool poster, and I would buy one, except it is currently sold out.
The poster did give me pause, and I reached for a wooden stir stick
instead of a plastic one. Although I did use the wooden stir stick then
throw it away rather than washing it with the goal of using it again, but I did throw it in the compost bin instead of the garbage bin.
Two minutes, and twenty four seconds. That’s how much time I missed my marathon goal time of sub-four hours by. In all fairness I was trying to cut 44 minutes off my previous marathon PR, but it should have been completely doable. I am pretty psyched that I ran so much faster of a marathon than my last marathon, but the fact that I failed to beat four hours, means I’m going to have to run another marathon. Darn this running addiction.
Overall, the Portland Marathon this year was a much more enjoyable experience than it was last year. The weather was mostly dry with mild temperatures, perfect for running. My strategy for running the marathon was just to come out as fast as I could maintain and then constantly adjust my speed based on how I was feeling, and constantly asking myself if I could run a bit faster. Other than noting the pacers, I really didn't use them at all, I just tried to keep as fast of a pace as I could maintain. My time at the half way point was 1:56:46, which would make it my 3rd fastest half marathon time! I did walk a bit on the climb up to the St John’s bridge. After the St John’s bridge I was dragging a bit, especially though miles 20 and 21 but then I really picked up the pace during the long hill leading down to the Broadway Bridge driven in part by the thought that around mile 23 there would be the beer aid station! After the Broadway Bridge my quads were really hurting, they almost felt like they were cramping. Between the leg pain and exhaustion of having just run 24 miles faster than I had ever run that distance before, I just couldn’t bring myself to push any harder and so I finished pretty slow.
So now nearly a week after the marathon, I’m feeling good enough to take a short run. I do need to get back into training since I have the Salty’s Half Marathon in a few weeks, followed by the Seattle Half Marathon a month after that. Right now I’m thinking about waiting until the packet pickup on the day before the marathon, and if the forecast is for dry weather on the day of the marathon I might just upgrade to the full Seattle Marathon. Other than that I have no other races planned for 2011, with the exception of participating as much as possible as my 8 year old daughter works on completing the Seattle Kids Marathon. However, for 2012 I would really like to run the Chicago Marathon!
Today I took the bus in; no running, no biking, just fully tapering before Sunday's marathon. As I was walked to the bus in the typical Seattle Autumn drizzle, I was reminded of an incident many years ago, in a different life, when I was a traveling paper salesman. I was in Denver for a trade show, the show was over, and all the sales people were out to dinner together before heading back to their respective towns in the morning. One particular sales guy was trying to mock my hometown of Seattle by describing it as the town that was all about intermittent windshield wipers. His comment was largely ignored, but his point was taken. Seattle is a generally wet city. Not real heavy rain, but sort of an on and off drizzle. In his book Still Life with Woodpecker, Tom Robbins talks of using a canopy of blackberry bushes covering the city to protect us from the rain, but what can you expect, Tom Robbins is a transplant from back East. I don't think the wet bothers true natives, or at least those who were born and raised in Seattle. But it clearly bothers the transplants, which there are so many of. I enjoy the rain, in fact I actually enjoy being out in the rain. What gets me down is the incessant complaining by the transplant. For at least 9 months of the year you hear and read endlessly about how dreary the weather is. It's all the complaining about the weather does get me down; and ultimately it's hard not to get caught up in it and get down on the weather that I would otherwise enjoy. This year I've actively been trying to avoid any talk about weather, or reading anything negative about the weather. Generally my plan to stay positive about the weather seems to be working, although it is early, and summer just ended, but I seem to be happy spending time in the cool gray misty rain. And it's a good thing I enjoy this wet weather because on Sunday I'm likely to spend my second Portland marathon in the rain, feet sloshing, clothes soaked all the way though, running for hours in this, with a big smile on my face.
Ice Breaker makes awesome merino wool gear. I own a light weight short sleeve Ice Breaker t-shirt that I wore on my bike ride in today. What I didn't know about Ice Breaker was that they've got some of the most bizarre Ads, even the "Ice Breaker and Nature" picture on their web site is, um, different. But that's nothing compared to this commercial that I just found linked to on Backcounty.com's blog...
A few months ago I decided to discontinue my work subsidized bus pass and rely on bicycle and running as my primary means of commuting to work. My place of work is only about 6-1/2 miles from where I live so the commute is short, and the majority of the commute isn’t in traffic, but rather along the Burke-Gilman trail. Besides, it takes longer to get to work by bus or car than it does to get there by bike.
The best part of commuting to work by bicycle is the other cyclists. Seattle is definitely a city of bicycle commuters, and one of the primary routes for commuters is the Burke-Gilman trail. So the daily commute along the Burke-Gilman trail is always an adventure. There are the cyclists who slowly plod along, as well as those who see their commute as their personal daily crit. As for me, I fall somewhere in between. I do tend to see my commute as a bit of a personal time trial (anything under 25 minutes is good), but I have my own rules for my ride:
I do actually stop at stop lights.
I keep my place at stop lights and don’t jockey for a better position in front of the other cyclists who were waiting before me. This might get me stuck behind some slower cyclists, but I can pass them later.
I don’t draft other cyclists during the commute (I might pace them, but there’s a good distance between us).
I don’t pass other cyclists then immediately slow my pace (that drives me crazy).
I don’t pass other cyclists unless it’s safe to do so (e.g. I’m not passing a cyclist with oncoming cyclists two abreast).
My commute can be interesting when I stick to these rules and try and beat my previous PR for getting home or getting to work. However, being a strict rule follower can lead to road rage and I do tend to get annoyed when others aren’t following the same set of rules. But I try and use that just to make the ride even more interesting; I might suddenly have someone I must catch and pass who is now way ahead of me because they flew through a traffic light while I was stopped.
Today I decided I would just take it easy and enjoy the ride in (I tend to tell myself that a lot, but rarely follow it). My ride started off with all of the lights in my favor as I ride down a mile of NW 24th Ave in Ballard, a hill long hill steep enough to easily keep pace with the cars. As soon as I got on to the Burke-Gilman trail, I knew the ride was going to be a bit more interesting. Everyone seemed to be moving at a pretty good pace, no slow riders. The pace was plenty fast enough so I just stuck ten or so feet behind the first person I came up behind. As I followed I was passed and then the person in front of me got passed by a faster cyclist. The person in front of me clearly frustrated that someone dared to pass them during their commute quickly picked up the pace, and passed the person that just passed them. I kept up with the pace behind the two cyclists following behind just close enough to see how it would end. In the end their were no violent acts of bicycle road rage, one of the riders turned off of the trail and headed in a different direction. However it was enough to keep todays commute interesting and get me to work a bit faster than what I had initially planned on; the daily Burke-Gilman bicycle commute is rarely dull.
I work at a large educational institution of higher learning. I work in IT for said institution. I write software for users of said institution. With all that said, day one of classes at said institution is never a fun day for me. I’m glad day one is over.
I remember my first real endurance event, the STP (Seattle to Portland Bicycle Classic). It is a 200+ mile bike ride that people do over one or two days in the summer. The first time I did the STP I went to several training events, and I remember being told: “drink before you get thirsty, because by the time you’re thirsty it’s too late”. I took this to heart, since the person who was doing the training must clearly be an “expert”.
A few years ago while trying to complete a guided one day summit attempt of the 10,781 foot Mount Baker on skis I completely ran out of steam short of the summit. No matter how much water I drank I couldn’t quench my thirst. We only made it to the crater, several hundred vertical feet of the summit. Later my guide told me that my problem was likely that my body needed electrolytes, and that this could be done easily by using something like Nuun tablets. After that I started adding Nuun to my water for all my endurance events.
Someone I know told me about becoming dehydrated during a marathon and urinating blood. Stop at every single water stop they told me, you do NOT want to become dehydrated. This furthered my belief that I should be drinking constantly during physical activity.
Recently while trying to complete the 93 miles Wonderland Trail that circumnavigates Mount Rainier in three days I wore a 3 Liter Camel Bak bladder in my backpack. I never let it get below 1 liter, and my water always had several Nuun tablets in it.
Hydration and electrolytes have always been central to my physical activities. I’ve preached the importance of hydration and electrolytes to anyone who would listen. It was common knowledge, right? Then I read this article from Adventure Journal and it was like a slap across my face. According to the study, everything I thought I knew is wrong. There are a lot of “experts” out there when it comes to endurance activities, but expertise comes from personal experience, not science.
The article references a recent study by Dr James Winger of Loyola UniversityMedical Center. The study looked at hydration and the performance of marathon runners. What the study found is that we are drinking way too much water. You should only be drinking when you get thirsty. Drinking too much water can be very dangerous; "there have been 12 documented and 8 suspected runners' deaths from hyponatremia". The Adventure Journal article also mentions that Dr Winger says it's unwise to take salt tablets to replace electrolytes. Electrolytes are taken away from the body by drinking too much water, and the only way they are going to be replaced artificially is through an intake of “highly concentrated IV fluids (not normal IV fluids)”.
The first question that popped into my head when reading the article is, "why do I feel so much better after I drink a sports drink?", the article answered that one too. You get that good feeling from the sports drink because you’re "being washed by endorphins when you stop an exercise".
When I find something that completely upsets my belief system citing some “study” but not linking to the actual study I need to do some more research. So I checked the web, and this story is of course all over the place: The Chicago Sun-Times, Science Daily, etc, etc.
I will definitely be looking for more on this study, and asking around anywhere I can get more information on this. Please read the Adventure Journal article as well as the original study yourself, then let me know what you think, will this change your behavior when it comes to hydrating? I've got a marathon in less than 2 weeks and I'm not sure how this news will effect my behavior.
At the start of 2011, I set a New Year’s resolution or goal for expanding my new found favorite activity of running. The goal was to run 1000 miles in 2011. At the time it seemed like a pretty lofty goal: average just less than 19.25 miles a week, every week for a year. Then I read about how other runners were shooting for 2011 miles in 2011 (over 38.5 miles a week) and my 1000 mile goal didn't seem like such a big deal. However I am new to running and I want to keep my goals realistic and not overtake my obligations to family and work.
Fast forward to the close of September 2011: I’m currently at 832.25 miles which puts me way ahead schedule, if I look at my total runs for the past 365 days I’m at 992 miles. My resolution that I made back in January should be attainable if I can just keep myself motivated though Autumn in the cold, wet, gray Pacific Northwest. Clearly the amount of running I am doing has dramatically increased since I took up the activity back at the start of 2010. The distances that I can run has also increased from 5K, to 10K, to 1/2 marathon, to full marathon, to 50K ultra-marathon, to 93 miles around Mount Rainier over 3 days.
What hasn’t improved as much is my pace; I did have a few faster paced races in 2011, but nothing close to my little brother Alex is capable of. Then when I get to the marathon distances my pace becomes really slow; the Boston Marathon is not anything that I see myself as ever qualifying for unless I can keep my current pace into my mid 60s. However, I think I’m okay with this. At 40 I know I’ll never be a fast runner, but I do like exploring how far and long I can run, and that exploration should make 2012 an interesting year for my runs.
As I look forward to the rest of 2012 here is what I have left on the agenda:
I have Portland Marathon in less than 2 weeks my goal for that is to complete it in under 4 hours. No big deal except that my only two marathon experiences were both over 4:45, and last year when I did the Portland Marathon I limped the last several miles.
Three weeks after that I have the Salty's Half Marathon. This should be a fun, flat, fast half that will be a super small group (it's limited to just 100 participants).
Then four weeks after that I have the Seattle Half Marathon. Last year I did this pretty much "off the couch". I was pretty apprehensive about this, since it's at the end of November (not a time known for nice dry warm weather in Seattle), and my physician had forbidden me from doing the full (his brother had ended up in the hospital with hypothermia while doing the Seattle Marathon). When I did it, it was a really fun half marathon. Depending on how I'm feeling as the date gets closer and depending on what the rules allow, I might upgrade to the full (just don't tell my doctor).
Then that's it for 2011. For 2012, I think I want to up the game a bit and do more ultras!
Last night my oldest daughter (7) requested breakfast at "the place where the let you put things on pancakes". I assumed this to mean Portage Bay Cafe. It's a great place for breakfast, but always requires a wait to get in, and as breakfast food goes it's not cheap. However this is a father and daughters only weekend (mommy is off on a girls weekend) so I want to make sure that the girls had a great weekend.
The girls of course ordered Mickey pancakes and loaded up with fruit and syrup at the toppings bar. After most of the fruit was cleared away from my oldest daughters pancake, all that remained was Mickey's smiling face.
Unfortunately, shortly after the picture was taken, Mickey's face was brutally ripped off. I am sorry to say, Mickey did not survive the event. My girls however, seem to be generally okay with it.
I woke up Monday around 6AM, and laid in bed until 6:30 AM before getting up and heading with the others down to breakfast. I was hoping we could order, eat and go in 30 minutes. But as 7:30 AM became 8 AM, and 8AM became 8:30 AM. We were loosing precious time, and we had 34 miles to go.
I looked at the map for any possible solutions. I had thought that day 3 would be the most isolated section of the trail, but then I noticed the West Side road. The road provided us with a way to skip the first two climbs of the day which covered roughly seven miles and instead trade it for 4 miles of hiking with much less vertical. We would just need Dave drive us up the West Side road to the point where it was closed to traffic and started hiking there. I pitched the idea to Tom S, but he told me at that point was feeling pretty ill, he still hadn't recovered from the previous day. The drive would be about 30 minutes, so it was decided that Tom S would join Tom M, Dave and me and he could decide at the last minute if he really wanted to take on another day with 31 more miles. With a lot of strong encouragement from the rest of us to skip day 3 if he didn’t fully feel up to it, Tom S utltimately decided to back out at the last minute. It was now just Tom M and me.
Dave dropped us off, wished us well, and we headed off hiked along the West Side road from the gate for a couple miles. Tom M and I were enjoying the easy hiking and taking as we hiked at a quick pace, eventually reaching Tahoma Vista. It was there that we realized we missed the trail head for Tahoma Creek trail by at least a mile. We had to backtracked and finally found the trail head hidden behind a barrel that I had previously told Tom M to ignore. The barrel was meant for climbers coming off of the high glaciers to leave their blue bags full of “human waste”.
Before we had started off on this path, Ben had promised the Tahoma Creek trail would be easy. However it didn’t take much hiking before we found the trail to be not in the best condition. As we continued on we moved slowly loosing and then re-finding the trail several times. Finally, 6 miles after leaving the car we caught up with the Wonderland Trail. It was suppose to be 4 miles, but missing our turn off by a mile, then having to hike a mile back had lead us to a bad start for the day. In the end we had given up 7 miles for 6, not really saving much distance.
suspension bridge over Tahoma Creek
Despite being way behind schedule we tracked a short distance just so we could walk the famous high suspension bridge over Tahoma Creek. Then it was back to the trail, only not nearly as quick as the past few days.
As we started our first climb up and over Emerald Ridge and then back down toward the South Puyallup River we were suprised to find far more hikers on this section of the trail than what we had seen on any other part of the trail. At one point we crossed paths with a Ranger who asked to see our backcountry pass. After explaining our plans to make it all the way to Mowich, and yes we realized we wouldn’t be arriving until well after dark, the Ranger told us what sections ahead would be good for running and which sections wouldn’t. He also told us to keep an eye open for the Salmon Berries as we headed down toward the North Puyallup River and make sure to grab a handful or two.
We dropped down to the South Puyallup River and headed back up again. The climb up from the South Puyallup River was pretty difficult, mostly because we had been going hard for so long. We passed a couple of older men who were really huffing and puffing. As I reached the high point before heading down to St. Andrew’s Park I decided to take a bit of a breather. The black flies were quickly finding me and Tom M an interesting target, but we hung out as one of the older men caught up with us there. He said he was 65, and that he started at Longmire. He was on his second day on the trail and was quickly realizing he signed up for a lot more than he was ready for. He said he was going to try and make his way eventually to Mowich, then hitch a ride to Enumclaw, then spend his life savings if necessary for a taxi to take him home. He looked totally defeated. He asked if we had an energy bar to spare saying his were too far in his pack to dig out right now. Tom M offered him one, and we wished him luck and headed on our way.
St Andrews Lake
As we reached St. Andrew’s Lake we found another older man happily swimming in the lake. This guy looked a lot happier. I really wished I could also go for a swim in the very inviting looking lake, but we had far too many miles to cover and far too few hours of daylight left. So we continued on towards the North Puyallup River. As we continued on I asked Tom M if he knew what salmon berries look like. He said he probably couldn’t identify them well enough to feel safe eating them.
view as we headed down to the N. Puyallup
The terrain heading down to the North Puyallup River was some of the most dramatic on the entire trail. Huge cliff faces, probably a thousand plus feet dropping from the Puyallup Glacier high above on the mountain, with waterfalls dropping many hundreds of feet off of the cliff faces. As we dropped lower and into thicker overgrowth I saw what must have been the salmon berries (looked like a black berry or raspberry only yellow to pink in color), either way it looked good and I was sick of energy food. I ate as many ripe ones as I could find, and they were good!
When we reached the North Puyallup River it was after 6PM. As we took a bit of a break I realized we still had a very long ways to go. I was getting anxious...this was going to be a lot of hours of hiking in the dark. We headed off again up towards Golden Lakes discussing how we would keep our sanity on the miles and hours of travel ahead in the dark. Tom M and I tried to tell stories and stretch them out, anything to keep minds off of the hours left to go. I tried to push for the goal of seeing the sunset from the last high point in the trail, but as we headed up I could occasionally see though the trees the sun getting really low in the sky.
sunset from Sunset Park
Finally as the last bit of the sun was setting, we reached the big open area known as Sunset Park. The setting sun was lighting up the Mowich Glacier on the mountain in a bright orange. Before long we were in complete dark, and this seriously slowed down our pace.
In the open area of Sunset Park the temperature quickly dropped. For the first time on this hike I was actually getting cold. However, as soon as we went back into the protection of the woods the temperature seemed to climb 15 degrees. After about an hour of traveling like this I saw what appeared to be a light in the woods; someone's campsite I thought. As we got closer it became clear that the light was coming from 3 square shaped windows; it was the rangers cabin.
The ranger came out to greet us, and probably question why we were hiking in the dark. We explained our trip to him and that we fully realized what we were in for over the next several hours. He mentioned that the other ranger we had met earlier in the day had radioed him to let him know we would be coming though. The ranger told us we had around 10 miles to go, and that soon the nearly full moon would be rising and possibly lighting up the trail a bit. He wished us luck, and we were off.
The trail went on, up and down, right and left, mostly down toward the Mowich River. Minutes seemed like hours. Everything was darkness. When the moon did rise the thick trees obscured most of the moon light. There were only occasional glimpses of the moon though the tree, but never enough light to help us see our surroundings. I was really hating this.
At 10:45 PM we finally reached the Mowich River. We needed one last refill of water before the last very long push up to Mowich Lake. For the first time since it became dark enough for us to use our headlamps, Tom M and I turned off our lights to sit beside the river lit only by the moonlight for a few minutes. It was almost (almost) enough light to hike by. We got our things together and started our final push of about 4 miles up hill. The crossing of the Mowich River was a bit confusing, because you need to cross 2 forks of the river. In daylight this definitely wouldn't be a problem, but in the middle of the night your entire world is only what is 10 feet in front of you and everything looks the same. I paused for more than a few moments thinking we had gone in a circle as we crossed the second fork of the Mowich River, but this had to be the right way. We continued on.
Those last miles up hill were pretty bad. I don't think Tom M and I spoke more than a dozen words. We had both been in that world of limited visibility for hours. With our cheap LED headlamps, there was almost no color and very little depth perception. We stopped around 12:30 AM for a break. We had probably been moving at less than a mile an hour. My ankles were really hurting at this point; unable to get any depth perception on the the trail I was constantly misplacing my steps and twisting my ankle, not enough to cause injury, but enough to cause pain when repeated for hours on end.
We decided to really push it until we got to the truck, so we picked up the pace. We were moving much faster than we had in the past 6 or more hours (which probably meant we were moving 2-1/2 miles an hour). Finally at 1:30 AM we reached the parking lot for the Mowich Lake campground. We went straight to the truck. Tom M took a sleeping pad and his sleeping bag and immediately crashed in the bed of the truck. Not wanting to deal with mosquitoes or setting up a tent, I climbed into the passenger seat, moved it back as far as it would go, leaned the seat back as far as it would go, and fell asleep.
early morning moonset on the way home
Five hours later we both got up, and drove back to Seattle. Only stopping once for a much needed Starbucks coffee. As we drove the dirt road heading away from Mowich Lake we saw our one and only bear of the trip. The bear was crossing the road, and he was there and gone too quickly for me to capture a picture. So that I could have one last picture from the trip we stopped on the side of the road so I could take a picture of the low lands around Mount Rainier covered in fog or a low cloud layer. The moon that had provided us so little light was now setting.
When I got home and looked at what my GPS had to report, it ended up shorting me about 10 miles over the entire trip. We had added at least a mile by going over Spray Park instead of Ipsut Pass on day one, then skipped maybe a mile on day two by avoiding Box Canyon and picking up the trail 1/4 mile down the road. Finally we skipped a mile on day three. All things considered I sure felt like I had just gone 93 miles. The trip was incredible, and I would definitely do some variation of it again.
Our early alarm clock failed to wake us, so we weren’t awoken until 5AM, after which we didn’t get started until 6AM. Again tear down the camp, a breakfast of a hard boiled egg and a banana, and we were off. Today was the climb up to the highest elevation point on the entire trail, Panhandle Gap. However the climb was not too bad as much of the trail seemed to only climb 500 feet a mile. As we headed up toward Panhandle Gap we entered the beautiful open fields of wildflowers found in Summerland.
As we continued to climb fields of wildflowers gave way to fields of snow, making the travel fairly interesting. Tom S and Ben were moving along a ways ahead of Tom M and myself. Tom M and I couldn’t seem to get enough pictures up along this high point. As Tom M and I appraoched and crossed over Panhandle Gap I felt great. Panhandle Gap ws the highest point on the trip and it felt like everything would be down hill from here.
Eventually we reached Ben who had found some shade and was relaxing with his shoes off. As we spoke to him he said he had just started getting some pretty serious pain in his hip, but he felt that after taking a break he would be okay to continue and he would then catch up. A little further down the trail we found Tom S who was coming down the trail towards us. He had lost the trail in the snow. After a bit of looking at the map, we decided the trail headed nearly straight up. We ascended a fair ways before we were able to look back down and see where the trail had actually continued along well below us right after a large patch of snow. At that point Ben had caught up and we directed him which way to go, and Tom S, Tom M and I crossed the snow higher up then dropped down to meet Ben.
crossing fields of snow
Ben was moving pretty slowly at this point down the steeply descending trail. The trail heading down to Indian Bar is a seemingly endless series of steps and not a fun section if you are experiencing any leg pain. I swapped my two poles for Ben's single hiking pole hoping two poles would make it easier for him to continue on, then I headed on down. At the Ohanapecosh River Ben caught up and we all refilled water bottles and rested near the Indian Bar hut. As we soaked our sore feet in the ice cold Ohanapecosh River we discussed how to handle getting us all to Longmire with Ben’s leg problems. Ben decided he would head on at his own pace with his one pole and finish up the day at Box Canyon. At Box Canyon Ben would hitchhike to Longmire. We wished him luck and continued on towards Box Canyon.
down to Indian Bar
Reaching Box Canyon was a real boost to my spirits. The three of us took a short break and tried to figuring out where the trail continued on. After studying the map, we opted not to do the little 0.3 mile loop into Box Canyon, instead headed though a car tunnel at Box Canyon and catch the trail on the other side, continuing on from there.
At this point I really wanted us to make it to the National Park Inn at Longmire. We were staying there for the night, but I believed that the restaurant closed at 8PM, and I wanted a sit down dinner. I began to really encourage the others to move fast “pick up the pace guys, this one is about getting steak dinners or having 3 day old un-refrigerated hotdogs”.
We crossed Stevens Creek, but then right before the trail headed up from Stevens Creek to Reflection Lakes rather suddenly bonked hard. I realized I hadn’t eaten much in at least a couple hours or probably longer. I had to stop and eat. I downed a Cliff Shot Gel, a package of Gummy Bears and a Honey Stinger Waffle; I was getting pretty sick of energy food at this point so I had to force myself to eat everything other than the gummy bears (I love gummy bears).
From here the trail started up though thick overgrowth covering the trail. The travel was slow at this point as I tried to ease my way around nettles. Eventually the overgrowth disappeared as the trail went into the woods and headed on up to Reflection Lakes. After a 1/2 hour or so the food started doing its job I was starting to feel better. I picked up the pace and caught up with Tom S where the trail met the road near Louis Lake. I went ahead to get water, but found myself attacked by black flies at the first water stop so I continued on to another. I quickly filled up my Camel Back and an extra Nalgene for the guys, then waited, and waited. Where were they? I was really wanting to get going, I really wanted that sit down dinner at the lodge. Tom S and Tom M finally caught up, they split the extra liter of water and we were on our way.
Around this point the trail actually went along side the rode for about a half-mile. I was so desperate to get my dinner that I tried to hitchhike, but there were no takers. So I tried push the pace as much as I could once we hit the trail again. The trail dropped down to the Nisqually River, we crossed the river and had 1.7 miles to go. At this point Tom S had to stop and to deal with some painful foot blisters. Tom M and I offered to order him food if necessary. We pushed it as much as we could (but that wasn’t much).
Finally at 7:15 we rolled out of the woods to the sight of the National Park Inn. I was really hooting and hollering, and high-fiveing Tom M. Ben was at the entrance all cleaned up and shiny in fresh cotton clothes. Unfortunately Ben had bad news for us: The kitchen closed at 7PM. But with a little work, Ben was able to convince them to keep the kitchen open a little longer so we could get an order in.
my feet didn't look too bad after day two
The restaurant was still very full as we rolled in stinking and covered in sweat and dirt and sitting down with Ben and Dave. I found the fact that people throughout the restaurant were looking and pointing at us rather amusing. I ordered pot roast and devoured it. Then downed 2 beers. It was all so good. However Tom S and Tom M were having trouble eating. Tom M couldn’t handle the hot restaurant which was making him feel claustrophobic, and had to go sit outside. Tom S was bonking hard and not feeling much like eating. A little later on the both were feeling better and were able to eat. I pretty much crashed in a very comfortable bed after a shower and organizing my gear for the next day. I made the decision that for our last day we would sit down at the restaurant one more time for breakfast even though the restaurant didn’t open until 7AM (much later than we had started the previous days). We would eat and try and get going right after breakfast with the full knowledge that we wouldn’t finish the day until well after dark.
I work with web sites and software, I play with photography, and I try to get out of the city when I can. However all of this plays second seat to my family.
