Home away from Home

Every winter when I never see my home because it gets dark so early and I'm off racing every weekend I start to dream about summertime when I will get to all those home projects and just be around to enjoy Northfield. Of course every summer comes and I have just as much stuff, if not more, going on than the winter, so most of those projects don't get done. This week was busy for sure. I wasn't home before 9:30 any night this week, so my time seeing my house in the daylight is still somewhat limited.

Monday my co-worker Dean and I hopped on a plane for a day trip to Chicago. We went to American Standard Circuits to take a look at some process equipment made by a company we are considering buying equipment from for our facility. We got a good look at the equipment, ran a sample, and talked with the chemical supplier and the equipment manufacturer about the machine and how it has been working for the 6 years it has been in operation. Then we flew back Monday night. I have only been on a few work trips, and never one where I've flown there and back in the same day, so that was a kind of fun experience.

Tuesday the equipment supplier was in Minnesota, so we got to sit down and compare notes about the machine we had seen the day before. That meeting went a bit long, so I rushed home and met my friend Erik, who was visiting from Boise. We went over to Carleton and played a round of frisbee golf, my first one of the year. Much to my surprise I actually edged Erik out. He is an amazing athlete, so for me to beat him at anything sports related is a rare occurrence. Jeff was in town running a workout, so we went to cheer for him and then went to Nate and Nichole's for pizza and games.

By Wednesday I realized I probably wouldn't have an evening at home this week, and my lawn was getting completely out of control, so I headed home over lunch and got some of the mowing done. Then after work Nate and I headed up for our first Vakava rollerskiing day. My abs were still a bit sore from the weekend, and Nate's triceps were still toast, maybe a sign we're starting to get old.

Thursday I again snuck home over lunch to finish the lawn mowing. Then after work I headed up to meet my friend Emily for some paddling. It was my first time in a canoe for the year, and it was an absolutely perfect day for it. We portaged from where she lives down to the Mississippi and paddled for about an hour and a half. Emily paddles a lot and is becoming very good, so she gave me a few technique pointers. In general I felt better about my skill level starting out this year than I have in springs past.

When the weekend arrived I finally got a chance to be home for a bit. I got out paddling a couple more times but didn't do much else. It was nice to get some house projects done finally and just have some time to relax.

Hitting the ground running

After a couple weeks to get my feet back under me from vacation things are starting to pick up again on the training and general busyness fronts. Tuesday of last week I started doing some baking to get ready for the weekend. Nichole has been talking about riding her bike more, so I sneakily tried to get her to bike over a few bananas for bread baking. Instead Nate showed up with not only bananas but also a baby and some rollerskis. I got to babysit Greta for a bit while he went out rollerskiing. I had overfilled one of my pies, and the spill over was creating a rather smoky kitchen, but with many open windows and some clever fan placement I was able to keep the smoke alarm from going off. Greta wasn't a fan of the smoke either, so her bouncy chair went up near the smoke detector, and she happily started hopping.

Bouncing time!

Wednesday was the first Vakava fitness test of the year. My results were a bit behind years past, but I could tell I was still carrying some fatigue from the marathons, so I didn't really worry about it. I've been getting some easy runs in again, but haven't been too motivated to spend much time boating or biking yet.

Greta printing some coupons

Thursday after work I headed for the cities and picked up Jeff, then we continued North towards Hayward for the TNC running camp. We had some fun grocery shopping with Greta at 11:00pm. Friday Nate and I got out for our first classic rollerski of the year on some fun country roads. My balance was a bit shaky, but this will be my 3rd year classic rollerskiing and it gets more fun every year.

Checkout Time

 After the rollerski I was surprisingly tired, so Mesa, Greta, and I decided to take a bit of a nap. Hopefully Nate's mom doesn't read this blog, because Mesa isn't supposed to be on the couch. Shhhh! Friday night we got an easy run in as other campers began to show up and then played a Bingo game as an icebreaker before everyone wandered off to bed.

Nap Time

Saturday was the hard workout for the weekend. Jeff and Marco were doing 19 miles with two sets of 4x5 minutes at tempo pace (about 5:40/mile pace). I was not up for that distance, but agreed to pace Jeff through the fast miles, so I took a break between the two sets while he put on more miles and ended up with about 16 miles for the day. My longest run since the marathons, and it didn't feel too bad actually, and I was able to keep up with Jeff on all the speedy stuff.

Saturday afternoon we had a strength competition, and I struggled mightily with that. Between the Vakava strength test and the rollerskiing the day before my abs were pretty shot. Nate won pretty handily, and Jeff edged me out by doing many more situps than me. There were some fabulous prizes to be won, I got a pair of ski socks.

Fabulous Prizes!

Sunday was just an easy run and a trip back home. I stopped by Cary's new house to drop off some plumbing materials for him then got home and headed right to bed.

I just realized all the pictures in this post have Greta in them. For new readers she is my neighbors and good friends Nate and Nichole's daughter, and my God Daughter. She just turned 7 months old for those who are interested, and will be mobile quite soon I have a feeling.

Big Sur Marathon

Saturday morning Casey and I packed up and met Sharon and her boyfriend Chris to make the trek down to Monterey. We had plenty of time before we checked into our house in Seaside for the evening, and Sharon and Chris hadn't eaten since arriving the night before, so we tried to find some food before we started the trek South. After wandering through little Italy where nothing was open we found a build your own pizza place that really hit the spot.

We got down to Monterey and wandered into the expo. After the massiveness of the Boston expo this one seemed rather quaint, but it was still pretty good sized. Plus there were great booths including several other destination races, and one handing out Godiva chocolate! After picking up our race stuff we wandered out onto the pier to get a good look at the ocean. I finally found a souvenir shop with some cool stuff in it, and it was fun to be in a small, touristy town with lots of other runners wandering around.

Next we headed up to Seaside and checked into our Airbnb house, did a bit of unpacking, and headed out to find supper. Pasta and seafood seemed like a good combo for taking in the coastal experience and still being ready for marathon racing the next morning. We headed back and were in bed by shortly after 9:00 because we had to be on the bus to the start at 4:15 the next morning.

Our 3:45 wakeup came up really soon. The whole bus ride to the start was in the dark, but at least we had a snazzy charter bus to ride in, no bumpy schoolbus for this race. Since the Clif Bar breakfast strategy worked well at Boston I stuck with it (plus I had some left over from the Boston expo). When we got to the start area there were bagels and bananas, so I got my second breakfast in and tried to stay warm and awake for the hour and a half until race start. Sharon and I found a place to sit down and semi relax, and a bit later when I put my head up to look around I was surprised to see that some mountains had snuck up on me out of the darkness.

Mountains, where did those sneaky things come from?

 Once daylight started appearing the imminent racing started to feel more real. They finally started calling waves up to the start area, so we dropped our sweats (yay bag drop!) and headed to the start line.

Awake and ready to Race!

Ready, Steady, Go!

Having not really run much in the week since my last marathon I really had no idea what to expect from my legs when the race got going. I settled into what seemed like an appropriate pace and was rather pleased when I went through the mile mark in 6:30. Not blazing fast, but it didn't feel hard, and it meant if it continued to not feel hard I should be under the 3 hour mark. Unlike the crazy crowd energy at Boston most of the Big Sur course was pretty sparsely populated, although there was tons of course side music. We started with the relay runners, so I was a bit confused when there were runners who did not look like sub 3 hour marathoners pounding along with me. I figured this mystery out at mile 5 when we hit the first exchange and all of those people tagged off to the next runner on their team.

One of the bands playing along the course

About mile 5 we broke out of the Redwood forest we had been running through and hit the coast. We were greeted with a grueling hill that stretched out into the distance, with a driving, buffeting headwind that served as a constant reminder that this would not be an easy undertaking, and with some absolutely amazing views of the ocean to our left and the mountains to our right.

The Ragged Edge of the Western World

Course Profile, get the easy stuff out of the way early.

From mile 5 to mile 9 was a steady uphill that just loomed in front of us, straight as an arrow. I went to work gathering up a pack so I could get some relief from the wind. Within a mile or so a group of 6 of us had gotten together. There were a couple military guys at the front of the pack, and I would bounce up there occasionally to help drive the group forward to pick up more runners before drifting back to get out of the wind. The pace wasn't going quite as fast as I wanted, so I did what I could to keep things moving, but I didn't want to just pull everyone along with me either. It was a fun group though. We quickly grew to about 15 people and had the top 4 or 5 women in our pack as well. My legs were already starting to hurt by mile 8, earlier than usual, but marathon running is all about pain management, so I just took note and kept running.

There was a brief respite from climbing after mile 9, but then we could see the next couple miles winding ahead of us into the distance. A relay runner passed our group just as we were starting the next climb and I tucked in with him and bridged ahead to the next couple runners, but they were fading and soon we all drifted back to the pack. I made one more attempt to gap the pack and was again unsuccessful, so I decided to sit in and wait for attrition to do it's work. 

Apparently we crossed this amazing bridge. I was trying to hang on for the downhill

Hanging on to the back of the pack across Bixby bridge

After the top the pace surged as we dropped down the back side of Hurricane Pt. My legs were not enjoying the descents, being already pretty beat up, but I was determined to stay in contact with the pack. Eventually the dowhill ended and I hopped back to the front to keep driving the pack forward. The guys and gals at the front of the pack were fun, joking around and sharing the work. There were a lot of jokes coming up to mile 17 about tagging off at the relay exchange. My favorite comment was some guy who said we were the pack that came to run in the most beautiful marathon in the US and spent the whole race watching each others feet. There was a bit of truth to that sadly. Things were really hurting at this point, and there were still 9 long miles to go. The race was getting interesting though as our pack started to thin out, so I was fully engaged in the race at this point.

Pushing the pace

When we hit the next series of hills around mile 21 things really broke up. I lost contact with a few people, including the first place woman, going through an aid station and taking a gel. I decided to bridge up to them and tried to bring the gal in second place with me. She made it most of the way with me but wasn't going uphill as well as I was. I tagged on to the first place gal Malia and the two guys she was running with. Our little pack started to get a good gap on those behind us. I counted seconds back occasionally to figure out how far behind the second place gal was. The two other guys in our group dropped, and I took the job of pace setting upon myself. 

Some gorgeous scenery, although from my perspective this just looked like a road

With about 4 miles left to race it was easier to put in the extra effort to pull Malia away from her competition than to think about pushing in for myself. We caught two more guys and they clung on to our group. At this point my legs were not taking dowhills well at all and Malia got a gap on me. I almost closed it up on the last climb, but couldn't quite do it. I knew I wasn't too far safe of the 3 hour mark, so I tried to keep the pace strong and managed to get at least a small gap on the other two guys running with me.

Pushing for the finish line

I held my gap on the other two, and ended up running a 2:57:38, good enough for 16th place. Even though my time was quite a bit slower than Boston, and slower than I was hoping for, I was pretty pleased with how I raced. I was smart when I needed to be smart and aggressive when I needed to be aggressive. I wish I could have held on to not get beat by any girls, but Malia ran a great race and is way more talented and driven than I am, so I don't feel bad about getting beaten.

Happy to be done, now where is the food?

I grabbed some quick food and beverage to start the recovering process as quickly as possible, and hobbled back out to meet up with my sister and Chris and cheer Sharon in. She made it in safely under the 4 hour mark. It sounds like the race was a struggle for her, but she got it done and was all smiles at the finish.

The B2B hospitality tent was great. While the normal marathon runners were eating bag lunches (still pretty decent post race food, don't get me wrong) we got fresh fruit and salad, chocolate milk, brisket, pasta salad, pineapple juice, and other goodies. I ate as much as my still somewhat rebellious stomach would allow and we headed over for awards. I missed getting a B2B award by 4 minutes, but I did finish 5th in my age group (yeah, awards go 5 deep here, so I just snuck in).

Getting an age group award along with the overall race winner Adam Roache

We had to get checked out of our room, so I didn't get stay for the Mozarctic award, which goes to the fastest runner from a locale that gets more than 24" annual snowfall. I won that category by about 20 minutes, so I'll find out what my award is when it shows up in the mail.

We headed back up to San Jose where Casey dropped us off and hit the road for the long drive back to Colorado (thank you so much for being my driver/companion for the week Casey, it made the trip a ton of fun). Sharon and Chris were flying out that evening, but I couldn't get a flight until the next day, so I checked into a hotel near the airport and we got in a bit of hot tub and pool relaxation time and made our way to a nearby Chipotle for supper before they hopped a shuttle to the airport. I normally would prefer to eat local cuisine vs a chain restaurant when traveling, but Chipotle sounded way too good to pass up.

I spent some more time in the hot tub the next morning before checking out of the hotel and spending a good chunk of the day wandering around San Jose. I went through Japantown and had a rather tasty bento box lunch then wandered over to a nearby park with a cool rain garden display and a huge rose garden. I don't know much about roses, but whoever put this garden together really does. They are sorted by the place where they originated and the time period when they were cultured, going all the way back to the 1600's or something crazy like that. Then I caught a bus to the airport, got in a nice nap during the flight, and Jeff picked me up to return me to my car. I made the trek back down to Northfield and got right to sleep so I could head to work the next day.

That ends this adventure story. This weekend is TNC running camp, so I'll hopefully have some fun stories from there to relate to you all next week. Thanks for reading!

Returning to Civilization

The next day Casey and I headed into Yosemite valley. I have heard so many wonderful things about this park, I was wondering if it could possibly live up to the hype. Sure, the valley was filled with all manner of iconic landmarks, El Capitan, Brideveil and Yosemite falls, and Half-Dome, but those are all just big rock or water features, how amazing could they really be? The answer of course is really darn amazing!

Too cool for mountains.

Who am I kidding, this place is great!

The excitement started even before we had reached the heart of the valley. We were descending down the park road and I was still sleep deprived enough from the racing, flying, and days of adventure preceding this one that I was struggling to stay awake when Casey locked up the brakes on her little Aveo. A little brown bear was tearing down the mountainside and lumbered across the road about 4 feet in front of our car. It wasn't long after that we got out of the trees and had our first really good views of Yosemite valley. Let me tell you folks, it is every bit as stunning as people say!

Wow! Just Wow!

This park was a lot more busy than the other parks we went through. The weather was pretty dreary though, so once we got out hiking we didn't have a lot of company. I'm really glad I made the decision to pack the jacket I won at the Birkie Marathon last fall. It wasn't 100% waterproof, but it was pretty darn close, and there were plenty of rainy days to test it out.

Mountains are also big, much bigger than even very big trees

Casey enjoying some mountains

There are many amazing hikes around this park, with a lot of elevation change. I will have to make the trip back out when I have more time and fresh legs. Casey and I did a short hike to Brideveil falls on our way into the valley, and a few mile hike to Mirror lake and back. That hike had a pretty significant rain delay in the middle of it. I wasn't too happy about the rain and was hiding out under a tree when a few girls hiked by in shorts and T-shirts. They sounded super unhappy about the rain, and considering how cold I was in my pants and rain jacket I can't say I blame them. Mirror lake has a great view of half dome, and it was fun to see the clouds rolling through the valley.

Panorama of El Capitan and Yosemite Falls

Things were a bit soggy at Mirror Lake

We got back to the car, ate a quick lunch, and hiked over to the base of Yosemite falls. This waterfall drops over 2400 feet in a couple different stages. One nice part about all the rain we had on this trip is that the waterfalls we saw were flowing well and were quite impressive. Also, since this part of California is in a pretty severe drought right now I'm sure there were many people that were happy for the rain.

More fun with sign mimicry

This tree said the rock tasted good, so I had to try it for myself 

After being wet most of the day Casey and I were not super enthusiastic about setting up a tent in the rain, so we headed out once the sun started going down and set a course for San Francisco. We made it as far as Oakland before deciding it was time to be sleeping. Finding a hotel can be tricky without a smartphone or internet, and several of the first places we found were sold out. We finally found a rather sketchy looking place that had vacancy, but since we were only planning to sleep and hit the road we figured it would work. The beds were actually fairly comfortable, and there were no visible rodents or anything, so we got right to sleep.

My first impression of San Francisco is that I'm glad I don't work there. We crossed the bay bridge into the city and the traffic was crazy. I counted 15 lanes going through the toll booths, all of them moving at a snails pace. It would make for a no fun commute. As a tourist however it gave us plenty of time to see the city and the bay from on top of a pretty sweet looking bridge.

Glad this isn't my commute

When we got into the city our first stop was the Golden Gate Bridge. We walked along the waterfront and got pretty close to the bridge. It was cool to see in person, since I've seen so many pictures of it, and it has a pretty long and famous history.

We also saw some sea lions, so we walked out onto the pier to get a better look. They were cool to see, and it was fun trying to track them swimming around. We also got pretty close to a pelican, although not too close, because Casey warned me they can be mean. We were keeping track of bird species on the trip and ended up seeing 30 something different types. Without Casey along I probably could have identified about 10 of the 30.

We also saw a bunch of turtles out sunning themselves, using every bit of log space available out in the little pond they were in. We finally got in touch with my friend Sarah and made plans to meet her for supper, One really awesome thing about SF is that there is free Wireless internet pretty much everywhere, on the buses, in the parks, and just in general around the city. Kind of makes sense considering how much technological and software development is going on in the area. Part of me felt a bit left out not having a smart phone, but on the other hand part of me couldn't help but chuckle at all the people with selfie sticks using their phones to take pictures of absolutely everything. I like a good picture as much as the next guy, but I'm more of a point and shoot kind of person, not a lot of thought or effort goes into the photos I take, For the most part the experience is the more important part, the photos are just good for the occasional blog post.

We had a couple hours before going to meet Sarah, so we hopped a ride on one of the streetcars. There are some pretty steep hills in SF, but these street cars handled them no problemo.

We hopped off in Chinatown and did a bit of sightseeing. I looked around for any good souvenirs, but shopping isn't a talent of mine or Casey's, so we left empty handed. The most appealing thing to me was all the fresh produce. We hopped on a regular bus to get back to our car and headed across town to meet Sarah.

The plan was to get an early supper and rush down to San Jose to pick up Sharon and Chris from the airport, but Sharon was having some flight difficulties and wasn't sure if she would make her connection to arrive on time, so Chris just booked a Hotel near the airport so they could just shuttle over whenever they arrived. This turned out to be a good plan, because Casey and I got to spend a bit more time with Sarah that way, and stick around long enough to meet her husband Matt. Then we got stuck in a police checkpoint on the way out of SF, so we would have been pretty late if we had tried to make it down to pick them up at the airport. We got in a good nights sleep and hit the road the next morning South down the coast to Monterey.

Big Time Adventure

Before I start on the next section of my travel I wanted to put in a few more pictures from Death Valley that my sister took. She has a much nicer camera than I do, so her pictures do a better job of capturing the size of the valley (plus since she was taking the pictures I'm actually in some of them). 

The Valley is very large, but not as dead as the name implies

Amazing Sunset in Badwater

I found a hole to sit in so I could be the lowest person in the US.

From Lake Isabella Casey and I went up and over another mountain range and all of a sudden California got much more green. There were orchards all over, cattle grazing on the mountainside, and trees everywhere. I am a big fan of forests, they are a familiar feature from a life in the midwest. When we got into Sequoia National Park however there was ample evidence that this was a land far removed from my Minnesota home.

California Forestland

The Sign says it all.

Tunnel Rock, an early landmark entering Sequioa National Park

Driving through the pine forest and climbing higher and higher into the mountains there were occasional trees that were almost unbelievably large. These were the sequoias that the park is named for, and even having seen them first hand, touched them, and climbed on and inside of them I still have trouble comprehending how huge these things are. It is a very odd feeling to see one of these trees in a forest of normal trees, like it just doesn't really belong there, and part of me just refused to believe they were real. Back in the early 1900's a couple of these trees were cut down and shipped around the country to show off to people, but most people who saw it thought that it was some kind of hoax.

The trees are bit bigger than I am

Some small to average sized sequoias

Standing on the roots of a fallen tree

The view from on top of the root structure

These fellas are big

There was a lot of stopping just to marvel at the enormous trees, and as we got a bit higher also to marvel at the beauty of the park in general. I am constantly amazed by mountains, both how huge they are and how they open up the view of the world when you are up on them. As cool as unspoiled wilderness is there is also something great about seeing a road snaking up a mountain side, being able to look back at the point you were at an hour ago down the mountain is almost like looking back in time.

The mountains are also very large.

We climbed Moro rock and there were some great views of the surrounding mountains, several of which still had significant amounts of snow on them. Watching the mountains appear and disappear in the clouds was really fascinating, especially since many of the clouds were moving through below us. I've seen the tops of clouds often from an airplane window, but seldom when standing out in the wide open.

Climbing Moro Rock with Casey

Snow-capped peaks emerging from the clouds, awesome!

There were also some storm clouds zooming overhead. They were moving fast and there was no lightning, but there was a bit of thunder, and Casey was getting a lot of static shocks, so we didn't hang around on the peak too long.

Dark Clouds, Thunder, Static - Check, Check, and Check

There was rain falling off and on as we got into the heart of the sequoia forest. There is a great hike a couple miles long near the General Sherman, the largest tree in the world (and that's per volume!) I won't spend much time trying to describe these trees or put up a ton of pictures of them, they are really something you have to see in person to get an idea of how ridiculous they really are.

Inside of a pretty big tree

Hanging out with the Senate

Face to Face with The President

Checking out the large crack on the President's backside - he he ;)

Many of these trees are thousands of years old and have survived all sorts of natural disasters. They stop growing taller at a height of a little under 300ft, but still put on mass. The General Sherman puts on more than an entire normal sized trees worth of mass every year.

General Sherman is a big fella

Hanging out at the feet of a giant

One tree, or two?

Casey working on getting tree tall

Confirmation, Casey is a bit of a tree hugger :)

I could have wandered around in the sequoias for days, but there was a lot more to see, and not much time to see it in. This trip was more to plant a seed for future trips, I can't wait to get back to these parks in the future. On our way out of the park we went through an area where there had been some logging before the park was created. It made me very glad for the protection these trees have now and the thoughtfulness of the people who worked so hard to make sure they are protected for people to see hopefully for hundreds of years to come.

Another fun game, mimicking sign markers. I know what this guy is up to.

Tree Tunnel!

I think this was just called "Giant Stump". It lives up to it's name.