Running with the Wind

What a Difference a Little Elevation Makes

2008-10-18T12:15:00.005-06:00

Last weekend I was in Spokane, Washington for my grandpa's 80th birthday party and didn't want to skip out on my easy run on Saturday. After breakfast and helping my mom get ready for the big event, I put on the shoes and ran over to Bear Lake, which is where my high school's X-C course is. Because I was running the course I ran in competition for four years and because Bear Lake only sits at 1,800 feet above sea level, my easy run was about a minute per mile faster pace than my normal runs around 4,700 foot Idaho Falls.

Contrast that run with yesterday's run. I decided to run up the Sunnyside Road hill east of Idaho Falls. I figured I was ready after all the running I did this summer and wanted a difficult run in preparation for the Zeitgeist Half-Marathon on November 1st. Well, I bit off a bit more than I could chew. That hill is a brutal, soul-crushing sonuvabitch. It just keeps going up. When my phone chimed that I'd hit four miles and I realized I was only 2/3 of the way to the top and it was getting steeper, the voice in my head that had been saying, "I think I can..." started screaming, "Turn back before you die".

I did make it to the top, but I really paid for it going back down. It felt like I couldn't catch my breath and my legs just wouldn't work anymore. I had to stop and walk a lot and pretty much quit even trying to run about a mile from the car. I'm hoping it was just the high elevation (6,900 feet at the top), being somewhat dehydrated and only getting a few hours of sleep the night before. Otherwise, the Zeitgeist isn't going to be pretty. In any case, I'm not going to run that hill again for a while.

That's what I'm talking about.

2008-10-08T19:30:00.004-06:00

There's something about running in this place at this time of year at this time of night that just makes me happy.

It's not winter yet, but it's getting close.

2008-10-01T20:18:00.008-06:00

"It is odd how a man believes he can think better in a special place. I have such a place, have always had it, but I know it isn't thinking I do there, but feeling and experiencing and remembering. It's a safety place - everyone must have one, although I never heard a man tell of it."
-John Steinbeck, "The Winter of Our Discontent"

For whatever reason (and there are a whole slew of possibles), lately I've been getting home from work frustrated and just plain angry. It generally ruins the rest of my evening and I wake up more worn out than I went to sleep...

...unless I go for a run in the evening. It seems my "Place" lately isn't really one special spot, but it's been running in the foothills east of IF while the sun is setting; especially between miles five and eight. There's something about running that seems to help me work through (or just forget) stupid annoyances. Like Steinbeck's Ethan Allen Hawley, I'm not really thinking about things, but at about mile five, when the western sky over IF is starting to change to a luminescent pink-orange, I start to get a smile on my face and I can actually feel myself relaxing. By the time I get back home, I've fully worked the kinks out, both in my legs and back and between my ears.

Could be it's just the endorphins - but I don't think so because I've had places like Hawley's in other towns. They've helped me deal with the difficulties of life and made me feel a lot like I have recently after running in the hills. But with running it makes me feel even better to be doing something healthy for my body as well as for my mind.

Now if Ethan Hawley were around, he would have heard a man tell of his place.

Another Fishing Trip Gets in the Way of Running

2008-09-22T19:32:00.009-06:00

A buddy of mine called me last Friday night to get me to go fishing with him on Saturday morning. We agreed to meet at his house at 7 AM to drive out to a small stream near Palisades Reservoir. Only problem was that I'd skipped my long Friday run and was planning on making it up on Saturday. So I got up at four and ran a quick nine-miler, showered, got my gear together, made some much-needed coffee and picked him up.

The creek we were to be fishing was Big Elk Creek, which flows right down to the highway, but we were meeting up with a couple guys from work who were camping about four miles in from the end of the road. We hiked up a beautiful canyon along the creek, marveling at the gorgeous fall colors and watching the kokanee make their way up the crystal-clear stream to spawn. We were also jabbering on about all manner of things while hiking, so we didn't have any idea of how long it took to hike in. This fact would become important later.

When we got to the campsite, the two guys were still sleeping in their tents because it had been raining that morning and they didn't really want to face the wetness outside. Pansies! But we rousted them out and got started fishing. The creek was really too small for my six weight fly rod, but I made do and picked up some nice cutthroats on mayfly and caddis imitations. It's impressive that such a small stream can support so many large trout. No one caught one smaller than 12 inches and we caught a few bigger than 18.

About the time we figured we needed to quit and get back to the car, a big rainstorm moved into the canyon, so we threw our gear into our packs, said "later" to the two poor souls who were going to camp again that night and started hiking in our waders and felt-soled wading shoes. We kept up a good pace, trying to get back to the car and out of the rain, but that's when the lack of a concept of time bit us in the butt. Both of us kept imagining that the parking lot was just around the next corner or over the next hill as darkness began to set in. When we could just barely see the trail and were hearing rustling in the brush around us, we realized we should have left about an hour earlier.

Obviously, we made it back to the car, but we're both pretty sore now from hiking in wading shoes which aren't made for such activity. Turns out that it was about four miles from their camp to the parking lot, so I did nine miles of running followed by eight miles of hiking and lots of tricky wading on Saturday. I picked up some pretty smashed toes and blisters on my heels. The upshot is that it gives me a great excuse to skip running for a couple days while the stupid wind is blowing hard again.

You know you have an addiction when...

2008-08-24T10:37:00.004-06:00

...your pile of dirty running clothes is twice as big as your street clothes laundry for the same time period.

Sawtooth Relay Pics

2008-07-23T19:34:00.003-06:00

Triple Threat

2008-05-10T15:06:00.005-06:00

The hills would have been hard enough without the extra altitude. The extra altitude would have been hard enough without the wind. The wind would have been hard enough without the hills. I don't know what made me think that loop would be a fun run. I guess whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger, right? That almost killed me, so...

By the way, my good computer died a couple weeks ago, so I'm now limping along with my old Linux box until next Tuesday when my new RAM should get here. I've never heard of all four sticks of RAM going out at the same time. I hope that's really the problem.

My Team Is Falling Apart Already!

2008-04-21T18:35:00.007-06:00

I'm once again getting addicted to this running thing. I spent most of today talking to one person or another about training or the Sawtooth Relay or injuries. I figure that's a good thing, but I also figure that my friends are going to get pretty tired of me if I don't knock it off.

I'm also at the stage that I get pretty angry at myself if I miss a scheduled run. See, I have to schedule them or I just go ahead and skip them if I'm tired or if I had a long day at work or the wind's blowing or the couch feels comfy or... Sooo, I skipped my scheduled run for Friday. It was supposed to be a seven-miler at 10.5 minute/mile pace - nice and slow. See, I had a headache that wouldn't go away from the long week of work and besides the wind was blowing. You know how easy it is to convince yourself to stay on the couch.

So I had to run on Saturday. I chose to run 3.5 miles up the Sunnyside hill, which is a big hill east of IF. It climbs about 1,400 feet over six miles to top out at about 6,200 feet. It was hard, although the run back down was actually harder, I think because I was running into the wind and going down made my feet and hips hurt. Not the knees though, which is good.

At about the turnaround point, I ran into one of my Sawtooth teammates who was driving down from his run at the top of the hill. He had run into one of the other team members on his drive up and had to drive him back down because his Achilles tendon was bothering him. Uh oh, one down. But one's easy to replace if need be.

Then, today at work, I talked to another of the team members and he told me he'd strained a quad playing soccer in the powerful wind we had Sunday. Ah crap, that's two. Then, a third runner told me he was exhausted from the 35-mile bike ride he did, also in the mighty wind on Sunday. I hope these guys aren't trying to train too hard too fast. I don't want to have a whole team on the injured reserve come June 14th.

So, it looks like I was the smart one who avoided exercising outdoors in that punishing wind on Sunday. I was scheduled for an easy two miles, but I knew that there would be nothing easy about running in that awful gale. Which meant that I'd skipped another run. Today, I made it a point to leave work a little early and hit the road with the intention of doing a little extra because I'd been "lazy". Well, that nasty wind was still blowing and the little extra became one of those runs where you go faster than you want just to get it over with. If I was looking to punish myself, I accomplished that goal. Should make tomorrow's run interesting - a four-mile tempo run at nine minute pace.

Today was NOT a beautiful day!

2008-04-15T19:01:00.004-06:00

Ahhh April... Spring has sprung... the grass is getting greener, the flowers are starting to come up, the birds are singing, the snow is blowing sideways at 30 mph... Wait, what?! Oh yeah, this is Eastern Idaho. Winter's not really over until Memorial Day. The high temp yesterday was 75 degrees Fahrenheit. Today, the high was 40. That's a difference of 35 degrees for those of you who aren't mathematics subject matter experts. It snowed off and on and the wind blew more than 20 mph all day today - April 15th!

Kinda stinks to have a five-mile tempo run planned for a crappy weather day like today. I know myself - if I save it until tomorrow, I'll start to take my training plan for the Sawtooth Relay less seriously and probably skip more workouts. So I hit the road after work. Notice that the Weather says "Mostly Cloudy and Breezy". Twenty-three mile per hour sustained winds with thirty-three mile per hour gusts is just a breeze around here. That wind was brutal any time I was running West, which was a good portion of the run. The plan was a mile warm-up followed by three miles at ~9:00/mi pace and a mile cool-down. The first tempo mile pretty much sucked with the wind and freezing rain/snow in my face, the second was way better with the wind at my back and the third hurt, I think because I was worn out from the first. My cool-down was slower than I have run for a long time. Probably a good thing. I hope Friday is more like last Sunday than today. Seven miles in this crap might just kill me (at least all my motivation).

That water's cold. I wouldn't recommend swimming right now.

2008-04-13T12:01:00.016-06:00

Man, do I suck at updating a blog. It's just that I can't find that much good to write about.

March was a really bad month for me. I sprained or broke or something in my wrist on that skiing trip back in February and thought I would wait until it healed before lifting weights again. Well, it still hasn't healed so I'm going to have to see a doctor about it. Then, I got the flu and it of course moved right to my lungs, so that kept me from running for a few weeks and made it really hurt when I did start back.

Now, the good news. I have started training in earnest now for the Sawtooth Relay, which is in the middle of June. I've gotten a team together from guys at work who are or have been runners. I'm the captain, which is something I've never done before, always preferring to let someone else do all the organizing. There's a lot more to this than I ever would have realized. So far, I've gotten half of the $330 entry fee from the project we all work for (The AMWTP), which is surprising in and of itself. We've got about two months before the race, and I'm looking forward to bugging the crap out of my team to get them all to train since they're all older than I am and have wives and kids. I think it's going to be a lot of fun.

I went fly fishing last Friday, a pastime that always reminds me why I like living in this area. It was a gorgeous day (a little windy, but that's normal) and we floated the South Fork of the Snake River from Shelley to Firth, ID.

We didn't catch a lot of fish, but it was good to just get out and be on and in the river, and we did each catch at least one fish.

The best fish of the day was a 17-inch brown caught by the owner of the drift boat, which is as it should be, but he caught it on a spin-casting set-up, bouncing a big night crawler off the bottom of the river. That'll break the heart of any fly-fisherman. Yes, that is snow at the back right of the picture.

After we got done floating, I decided to go wade a spot we call "The Demon Fish Hole". Last fall we went fishing there several times and got to watch a whole bunch of giant trout jumping out of the water after some kind of flies. We could never get them to take anything we were casting. It was very frustrating. So, I hike out to the spot and get in the water, which is lower and slower right now than it is in the fall. That's a good thing. As I'm wading to a promising-looking riffle, my foot slips on a rock, then slips a bit more and I'm putting my left hand down and bending my knees to keep from going over backward. That's never a good thing when you're standing in three feet of river. I was soaked with cold water and had small streams of it running down the back of my legs. Fortunately, it was a fairly warm day and I kept fishing for about 20 minutes, until I started to feel really cold and I figured it would be a good idea to head back to the car and change into the warm, dry extra set of clothes I always bring with me when I go fishing. Now I know why I do that.

OK...

2008-02-20T18:55:00.005-07:00

Now I have been a slacker. However, it was a planned slackerhood. Well, most of it. Last week was a "transition" week in my weight training cycle where the goal is to take it easy and recuperate from the last couple of high intensity weeks. I took it a little easier than I intended to, but I somehow tweaked my neck at the beginning of the week and didn't feel like making it worse. I ran a tough four miles on Friday for about the only exercise I got the entire week. It was really only tough because we've had a lot of melting around here lately, but it still gets really cold at night and re-freezes all the roadways. I was slipping and sliding all over the place because I didn't want to wear my YakTrax on all the clear pavement. That and the fact that no one clears the sidewalks and in fact the city plows the snow/slush/sand right up on them. I ended up running down the driving part of a very busy street. This is not something I would ever recommend doing, especially since these days everyone seems to need to be talking on their cell phones while driving. I didn't make an exact count, but I must have seen at least 30 people yakking away during the less-than-a-mile I ran along Sunnyside. Scary!

I spent all day yesterday snowboarding at Pomerelle Mountain Resort with a couple friends from work. Pomerelle is a nice little family-style ski hill that gets lots of snow and has some pretty good terrain. Nothing too challenging, but since I hadn't been boarding in a couple years, it was perfect for a tune-up. I wish I'd brought my camera because it was an absolutely gorgeous day and I'd have some great pictures to post. At about lunch time we were actually almost too hot and had to start peeling off layers. In the past, I've had a hard time skiing all day because of fatigue and I've been really sore and tired for the next couple days, but not this year, because I've made and effort to regularly exercise throughout the winter. I blew away the guys I was skiing with (admittedly, they are both 20 years older than I am) and wasn't the least bit tired at the end of the day. My calves are a little sore today, but not enough to keep me from running another slippery three-miler after work tonight. It's great to see even little improvements.

I'm not a slacker, I swear...

2008-01-19T18:46:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted a thing for more than a month. That doesn't mean that I haven't been exercising, although the weather has been colder than I like to run in around here. I'm really glad I spent all that money on warm clothing last fall because if I hadn't, I'd be really fat and lazy right about now.

My little bro got me some Yak Trax for Christmas this year (I asked for them). Here in the frozen desert of Idaho Falls, Idaho, we tend to get only a little snow in the winter, but with the low temperatures, it sticks around for three months. I don't know how I ever ran in the snow without these traction devices. Oh yeah, I didn't. They're great on solid packed snow or ice, but I can hardly feel them through the soles of my shoes. They seem sturdily built and the traction coils cover pretty much any part of your feet that you would want to run on so they would work well no matter what type of gait you have. The only problem I've had is that they don't give any improvement on loose, thick or slushy snow, although I can't imagine anything that really would. It still feels like I'm running in sand. I would wholeheartedly recommend Yak Trax to anyone who lives in a snowy climate that wants to continue to run outside in the winter. It's not supposed to hit 30 degrees Fahrenheit until at least February around here, so I'll definitely be getting plenty of use out of them.

Runnin' like Michael Jackson

2007-12-10T18:58:00.000-07:00

Over the past few days, I've experienced the whole gamut of emotions. Getting ready for the Jingle Bell Run on Saturday, I foolishly tucked one of my gloves under my arm so that I could set up my phone to record the run. These gloves were a Christmas gift from my brother and I absolutely love them. I always used to have ice cube hands when I ran in the morning, fall or winter. Since these gloves and I have become running partners, frosty fingers have not been a problem.

Before starting a run, I usually place one glove safely in the pocket of my jacket while I press the tiny phone buttons, but before this one, I was talking to another runner and wasn't paying much attention to what I was doing. After the run got started, I reached into the pocket looking for the glove, and it wasn't there! I had dropped it as soon as I started to stride into the run. I assumed that one of the other runners or more likely one of the walkers would pick it up and turn it in at the finish (no one wants a single glove), so I didn't go back for it and continued the race with one glove and one frigid hand.

After everyone had finished the race and we'd done a little raffle, the guy running everything asked if anyone had found a glove. No one said that they had, but one guy said that he had seen one right at the beginning of the race. I must have looked for my wayward glove in the biting wind and snow for thirty minutes to no avail. It had completely deserted me.

While I was in the gym, the race organizer called me and left a voice mail that he had found a glove after I had left. Some good Samaritan had left it on the crank to his trailer and he noticed it there when he hooked it to his truck. When I got the message, I was ecstatic. My glove would be recovered. I gratefully picked up a stray glove from his house later that day.

After work today, I came home and got all suited up for a short run, excited to run with my lost-and-found glove. It was very cold and there was about two inches of fluffy, white snow on the ground. I took special care to put my reclaimed glove in my pocket so that I could start the phone recording without fear of losing it again. I started running and reached into the pocket to get the glove and put it over my already freezing hand. It wouldn't go on my right hand; it was a left-handed glove! The glove I had picked up, thinking it was my own, is a nearly identical women's Manzella Windstopper glove. A woman had also lost a glove at the beginning of the race and it just happened to be the same brand and model as mine. Since there were only about 20-25 runners/walkers, this coincidence is almost too much to believe. I'm going to have to call the race organizer back and see if he can assist in reuniting two wayward gloves with their cold-fingered owners.

A Day Off

2007-12-09T15:33:00.000-07:00

I've been lifting pretty regularly and heavily for the last several weeks. I'm seeing a lot of the muscle mass that I lost in the last three years come back pretty quickly, although it's hard to both run and lift and keep up with all the other stuff I like or have to do. A coworker told me about the Jingle Bell Run on Thursday this week. I decided to go ahead and run it on Saturday. I felt slow and heavy for the last two miles and finished a lot slower than I think I should have. I don't know if that's because of all the lifting or because it was snowy, windy and cold out or what. It was still fun to get out and run with other people. We all had to wear bells on our shoes and they had hot chocolate at the aid stations.

I went to the gym right after running and further wore myself out. Thus, I figured that doing nothing was in order for today, and it was wonderful. Next week is the third week of the hypertrophy phase, which is supposed to be a very intense week. I don't know if I can do more than I did last week, but I'll give it a go. The following week is an easy week, so I'll have plenty of time to recover.

I hate it when a plan doesn't come together

2007-12-01T18:36:00.000-07:00

I made it to the gym again on Thursday morning for another hypertrophy workout. I saw another co-worker there. This time it was a guy who had pneumonia about two weeks ago and is also near the age of 50. It's a real sign of the benefits of keeping in shape that he was able to be back in the gym so soon. I hope I'll be in that kind of condition in twenty years.

Friday was my day off. When I say day off, I mean it. I spent pretty much the whole day in bed and playing video games. Sometimes being lazy just feels too good.

I had kind of a gut ache all morning today, so I couldn't get to the gym early like I had intended. Somehow I got into my head that my club was open till 7 pm on Saturdays, so I did some things around the house and then went to the grocery store. I got to the gym at 4:30, all excited for a couple hours of working out. Just as I was putting my stuff in a locker, they made an announcement that the club would be closing in thirty minutes. Sometimes I can be a real bonehead. I really miss the 24-hour Fitness I used to work out at in Spokane.

So, instead of the weights, I hit the road. Not the best weather for it, unfortunately, but I'd better get used to that. The wind-proof clothes I spent all that money kick some major butt! I don't know what I ever did without them. Oh yeah, I took most of the cold weather months off.

Re-Rack Your Weights!

2007-11-28T20:17:00.000-07:00

So I went to the gym this morning (4:30) for a good hypertrophy workout. I was supposed to head in yesterday morning, but couldn't sleep all night after that stupid long run. It probably wouldn't have been good anyway since it was leg day and my legs were pretty worn out. At least that's what I tell myself so I don't feel too guilty.

Anyway, after my normal fifteen minute warm-up on the bike, I headed over to the weights. The gym I have a membership to has several barbell bench press setups in the central area of the weight room and a bunch of different types of Olympic plate-loaded machines around to the side of them. I noticed as I entered the area that every one of the bench press bars had at least 45 pound plates on each side of them and that most of the machines were fully loaded as well. This struck me as a bit strange because at that point in the morning, I was the only one in the weight lifting area. Evidently some lifters had ignored the signs posted around the area and had left their weights loaded at the end of their workouts the previous night. No doubt, they thought that it would be convenient for the next person to have weights pre-loaded for them. This theory would have held up if I was the first person to use one of these stations. However, I was working legs and arms this morning and had no reason to even approach those benches or machines. About the time my workout was done (and I was tired), a friend of mine from work, a 40-something woman who probably weighs about 120 pounds came into the weight room. From across the room I could see her struggling to remove the weights and put them away so that she could actually use the machines. She had to drop the 45 pound olympic plates to the floor and roll them to the weight tree, where she could only lean them up against it. I went over and helped her clear off the rest of them so that she could work out.

I don't think I'll ever understand the people who don't realize that their lack of common courtesy seriously hampers other people's ability to work out. Just about everyone I have known that lifts weights, really enjoys it and tries to convince their friends that they need to take up this form of exercise. I certainly do. So why are there so many (I assume) men who can't figure out that having to remove other people's weights (among other reasons) ruins strength training for so many people (esp. women) to the point that several I've talked to just avoid the weight room? That's really a shame, because strength training can have benefits for everyone. Like I said, the signs are clearly posted and even threaten membership revocation if a staff member catches you ditching your weights three times. What's so hard about lifting the weights one more time to put them back where they belong? Just one of my pet peeves.

Turkey Day --> Whoops

2007-11-26T18:14:00.000-07:00

I haven't really been as lazy as it looks. I've just been lazy about posting about what I've been doing. I went through my anatomical adaptation circuit again at the gym on Wednesday morning last week. My hamstrings were still sore from the wind running on Monday, so I substituted a couple different exercises for the leg exercises I usually do. Instead of doing two groups of four lifts, I did one group of six and then a group of three since there weren't as many people as usual in the gym (it was 4:30 am). I don't think I'm making any progress with AA thing and I'm getting tired of it anyway.

Thursday was Thanksgiving, which meant the third annual Simmonster-Ketfish Thanksgiving Football Challenge (we don't really call it that). We headed to Blackfoot to play some six-a-side touch football in the 10 degree weather. It was a whole lot of fun, although it was a whole lot of basically wind sprints which meant I had sore quads, calves and hip-flexors for a couple days afterwards.

Saturday, I decided to start the hypertrophy phase at the gym. This is a six-week phase during which the goal is to constantly stress my creatine phosphate/adenosine triphosphate energy system, which will cause my muscles to grow. To do this, the load is increased to the point where I end up failing to be able to lift the last (couple) rep(s) of any set. The first week or two, this doesn't usually happen to me as I generally underestimate my 1 rep max, but I'll get there. Saturday, I hit legs, arms and abs and Sunday, was chest, shoulders, back and abs.

Today, my goal was to do a long, slow, easy run after work. The weather was pretty good, with calm winds and it wasn't too cold when I left. By the time I got to Sunnyside, however, the traffic was very heavy (must have been about 4 pm) and I could no longer hear the mile marker beeps from my phone. It had also cooled off a bunch as I found out when I had to wait for the walk signal on a traffic light for a couple minutes. I ended up doing seven miles, which was about a mile more than I wanted to. The pavement I was running on was pretty brutal on my joints. I was feeling great after 3.5 miles. Wish it had been less than 3.5 miles back to my house from that point. On the bright side, I broke 250 miles on the year with this run and am now sitting at 252.6 miles.

This is too hard.

2007-11-19T18:37:00.000-07:00

So the little cold turned out to be a nasty head cold. Fortunately it didn't migrate to my chest as those things usually like to do, but it still put me down for most of the weekend. I went to the gym on Sunday afternoon and did my circuit, but could only make three sets for each group of exercises and I was ridiculously tired by the end. And I'm sore again, which is weird because I thought I was past that.

I'm not a huge fan of running in the wind. However, because I live on the Snake River Plain, I get to run in strong winds if I want to run in the spring or fall (which I do). My legs were tired from lifting the day before, which just made it all the more difficult on the way out. The return trip kinda felt like I was flying. I guess that makes up for it.

Arrrrr-[cough][hack]-gggghhh!

2007-11-14T19:00:00.000-07:00

So I did end up getting a stupid cold and have been kind of stuffed up and hoarse for the last few days. I've been trying to kick it really fast by drinking lots of fluids, eating all my vitamins and getting way too much sleep at night. Hopefully, I'll be able to run or lift after work tomorrow night without fearing a relapse. Anyone ever notice how you don't really miss something until it's gone; or am I the first?

What a tiring week...

2007-11-11T11:59:00.000-07:00

Since I was pretty lazy on Wednesday and Thursday this week (although I did play a bunch of disc golf), I started out Friday with pretty aggressive goals for the weekend (which is always three days for me). I ran three miles in the morning which were a real chore. I guess they can't all be great runs. I don't know if it was the cold or still being tired from lifting or from climbing trees to retrieve discs but my legs just didn't want to go. My pace wasn't much slower than it's been of late, so maybe it was just a problem of perception.

Then I got cleaned up, ate a second breakfast and headed out to run errands and hit the gym. For strength training, I try to follow a periodized system such as the one set out in the book Serious Strength Training. I really like the information in that book, although it can be kind of difficult to get past the pictures of ridiculously huge meat heads that adorn many of the pages. It's really targeted at people who want to compete in body building, but it has lots of basic info that can be understood and used by even beginners.

Right now, I'm in a phase called "Anatomical Adaptation" (AA), during which the goal is to gradually wake up all of my muscles, ligaments and tendons from their recent period of inactivity and get them ready for heavier weights that will be used in later periods of training. I hate this phase. It's when I experience the most soreness and am tired for the longest time after a workout. It's also the phase when I'm lifting the smallest amount of weight on many different exercises, so I look like a complete weakling to anyone else in the weight room. I challenge any of the muscle-bound guys in the weight room to do four sets of 15 reps of four different lifts, with no rest in between them and tell me it's not a more intense workout than what most of them do. It doesn't matter that the weights are light, I'm tired after two groups of four exercises.

Anyway, on Friday I decided to test for my max on several lifts, which is tiring in a different way. The book I mentioned above contains a chart that allows me to extrapolate my max from the number of reps of a sub-max load, which really saves my joints. I worked out pretty hard and am now paying for it with some soreness, but I found that my maxes aren't as low as I thought they would be after a couple three years of not lifting regularly. I have two more weeks of AA phase, and then I can move on to the Hypertrophy phase, where I look like less of a weenie.

Saturday, I went fly-fishing for steelhead on the Salmon River with Walkley. We left IF at about 4 am and got to the first hole sometime around 7. It was cold. I spent half the day with either numb hands or toes and we didn't find any proof that there are even fish in that river. It started absolutely pouring rain an hour or so before we packed up and left and our clothes were soaked when we got back to the car. Steelheading is everything I'd heard that it was. And I'm crazy enough about fishing to want to try it again.

So after all of that, I woke up this morning feeling like I have a cold coming on. I think I'll just hang around and clean the house today. I might go run later if I really feel up to it. We'll see.

The End of Daylight Saving Time

2007-11-05T18:45:00.000-07:00

This is always a tough time of year for me. The end of DST means that I will now be going to work in the dark and be getting home at or after sundown for several months. It's always hard the first couple weeks to feel like going out and starting a run in the dark and dealing with traffic in the dark can be an adventure.

Contrary to the above, tonight's run was one of those runs that reminds me why I like running. Starting out, I felt like I could do anything and all my body parts were playing well together. Most of the run was in pretty heavy traffic, so the adrenaline from running in front of so many people may have had something to do with it, but I just love it when I'm not just running to get home so I can quit running.

This route also goes past a McDonald's restaurant between miles three and four. Seeing all those people lining up to shove high-calorie, low nutritional value food into their bodies always blows my mind. I mean, seriously, there must have been fifteen cars in line. Everyone knows that stuff is not good for you and the restaurant is right next to an Albertson's grocery store where one can even buy pre-prepared food that might not clog one's arteries at such a rapid rate. The added nutrition they put into real food is worth the extra dollar or two that it costs. If a single guy like me can find the time to make home-cooked meals that taste good, I have a hard time believing that anyone needs to eat Mickey D's for dinner. I'll never understand it.

3.22 Mile Morning Run

2007-11-02T11:22:00.000-06:00

Beautiful morning for a run! Wish my body had been feeling as great as the weather. I just felt tired the whole time and my lungs were really struggling to keep up.

Would have been pretty cold this morning if it wasn't for my new jacket. I always thought that buying the expensive, technical running clothes was a waste of money and that my cotton t-shirts, shorts and sweats were every bit as good. I'd just wear several layers if it got cold. I'm finally figuring out that some of the expensive garb is worth the money. The jacket is extremely lightweight, but it has enough pockets for my phone, mp3 player and gloves or hat when I've warmed up and don't want to be wearing them anymore. It's reflective for running in the dark after work and is comfortable and unrestrictive without any annoying, ill-placed tags or seams. It also keeps the wind from cutting through me and is supposed to be waterproof too (although I haven't tested that property yet). So far, I love it and it'll definitely keep me running through the winter.

Back to running

2007-10-23T15:04:00.000-06:00

I'm not sure exactly why I thought it was a good idea to have my last two wisdom teeth removed at the beginning of October. After the recovery from that and the resulting dry socket, I ended up not having run for about a month. It always amazes me how fast you lose your training when you take time off. Why does it feel so good to be lazy?

My first couple runs after the surgery and recovery, I thought I was going to die. My lungs were killing me, my legs felt heavy and even my arms felt out of sync with everything else. And the spot where I'm now missing two teeth felt really funny in my mouth. I'm able to only go about two miles at this point before I crash and my pace is about nine minutes per mile. My only motivation while running right now is to get the run over with. And my only motivation to lace 'em up is to get past the point where running is more of a chore than a pleasure. I swear I'll never take a month off again (yeah, right!).