Posts

Showing posts from January, 2014

Palm Springs

Image
In Palm Springs for a short weekend, I got to run with Ann's dad-- and my Hood to Coast teammate-- Fred. He took me on an out-and-back, past a house with a really wild yard-- full of colorful art made up of found materials. It was sunny and gorgeous; we went early enough that it wasn't too hot. And it was incredibly flat, although we ran almost right up to the towering San Jacinto Mountains. Very different from the five miles I ran two days previous in good ol' Forest Park! Strange yard art My favorite part of the display UFO parking Typical view during this run The route

3 day weekend - 2 runs

Image
Saturday Run: Susan and I had a 20 mile run planned, which somehow turned into almost 22 miles.  She changed the route at the trailhead, deciding that she wanted to go down Saltzman and up Firelane 5, which is shorter but added extra milage. I was fine with that especially since we are training for an 85k in less than 2 months.  The first 8+ miles were on Wildwood and flew by, then we turned down Waterline, which should be called Mudline. Once we reached Leif Erickson I notice a fire hydrant I had never seen before, I was really curious if it actually worked or not. We had 6.5 miles on Leif that I was really not looking forward to, for whatever reason I have a mental block on running more that 2-3 miles on Leif. Luckily just around the time I started thinking, "when the fuck are we going to get off this trail", a guy runs by us and asked us what we are training for. We told him we are training for the Tarawera 85k in New Zealand. We asked him what he was training

Looking back on 2013

Image
In 2013 we pushed ourselves harder and further (1700 miles+ for the year). I had to deal with a few injuries, a broken wrist and back spams. Susan, with a toddler, had never ending colds. But we were able to keep running and we ran our longest distance to date (41 miles) in an unsupported run (mostly) around Mt. Hood.  We managed to squeeze in quite a few races . Here are a few of our favorite things from the year: Challenge I (Ann) don't want to repeat again: Training for a 50k with a broken wrist . Best Race: Gorge Waterfall 50k Best Training: Animal Athletics mountain goat class Pushing it further (best run): Running around Mt Hood on the Timberline trail Best sticker: > 26.6 Best/Worst Disaster: Susan's fall down Elliot Basin Best Gear: Life Proof iPhone Case   Smartwool training beanie   MSR HyperFlow Microfilter Black Diamond ultra distance trekking poles Best Food: Tortilla wraps Best accessory: A performance-enhancing Kokopelli

Circumnavigating Mt Hood

Image
Ann's story (the planning) Ever since I did my first multi-day backpacking trip 10 years ago, I have wanted to circumnavigate Mt. Hood. We actually planned a backpacking trip to do in 2007, but after doing some research realized part of the trail had been washed out and was closed. So the Mt. Hood circumnavigation was put on the back burner until I started running long distances. I mentioned to Susan last summer that we should do it, but it wasn’t until early this year when we were trying to find a race during the summer that was 40 – 50 miles and fit both of our schedules that I mentioned we should just do Mt. Hood. It worked out great, since we could do it during the week when there is less traffic on the trail and we wouldn’t have to give up a weekend day with our families. I really love planning hiking, backpacking, and running routes / trips. I loved being able to pull out all my maps and books, and comb through them for training runs and the circumnavigation, but single