March 23, 2009Pirate's Cove 30K Trail RunWell, at least I crossed the finish line, but I really got my ass handed to me on this one! The start for the Pirate's Cove 30K trail run was just over the Golden Gate bridge in the Marin headlands, right by the coast. Skies were overcast, but the views from the hillside were truly breathtaking. Luckily, my puffing and panting may have helped prevent vertigo from some of the potentionially dizzying heights. It took me almost 4 hours. I finished 75 out of 119 people, and second to last in the 29 and under crowd. My running buddy, Kingston, finished 15th, and the winner of the 50K ultra marathon finished 15 minutes after me... haha. I guess I should do some more running-specific training before the next time. Lesson learned. The Pirate's Cove run was put together to help promote trail running in the bay area. I have to give props to the organizers who were extremely helpful and did a great job pulling things together. The trails were all very well marked, so I was never worried about missing a turn. What I didn't realize is that unless you're one of those 2 or 3 people at the front, it's pretty impossible to do the race without walking at some point. It's brutal when you're 10 miles in, and suddenly you come across a humungous stair case leading up the side of a hill. I also learned that even though the gummy bears and beef jerky taste AWESOME when you make it to a pit stop, I should not stuff my face unless I want to get a major muscle spasm in my left quad! At the moment, I'm expecting one of my toe nails to fall off any day - casualty of war, it happens. While I was only hobbling around yesterday, I'm feeling better today and was even able to do 25 minutes of an upper body workout. Anyway, it was an interesting experience. I think 20K is much more reasonable for me, but I'd be willing to give it another shot, if for nothing else except salvaging my pride. Yes, yes - my friends and family have said "at least you finished the race" and "most people wouldn't even run one of these", but I suppose I'm just not satisfied yet. March 20, 2009Pre-Run Jitters!Tomorrow's a big run for me. I'm heading over to Pirates Cove for a 30 kilometer trail run. I signed up on a whim about 2 1/2 weeks ago, figuring if I'm spending all this time working out, I might as well use it for something! But 30k works out to just under 19 miles, and that's sounding like a BIG challenge now that I need to be at the start line in less than 24 hours. It looks as if all the races (8k, 20k, and 30k) are sold out except for the 50k length. I don't know who's crazy enough to do a 50k trail run, but I'm definitely going to stay out of their way! As long as it's sunny, I'll be running in plain old running shoes. I was breaking in some trail runners and realized that the difference in impact was quite significant. Fastest times in '08 seem to be under the 3 hour mark. We'll have to see how I measure up! I really hope this queesy feeling in my stomach goes away before I get there. February 23, 2009Fit Test at Breckenridge 2009!My family and I go on a yearly ski trip, a tradition that started just over 10 years ago - a full 4 years before I even learned to snowboard! While our annual vacation has typically wisked us off to the slopes at Blackcomb Whistler, outside Vancouver, we've shaken things up a bit and spent the week in Breckenridge, Colorado. It's been my first taste of the Rockies! Here's the fitness spin on this tale. Story is I was expecting to board 4 days out of 6. That would give me a couple rest days because I usually don't board more than 2 days in a row without getting extremely exhausted. Who wants to be crippled by total body muscle-aches when they're on vacation, right? What I didn't factor into my plans, though, were the days when the rest of my group wanted to hit the snow, OR when the fresh powder decided to hit the mountains. Sometimes my family can be just as unpredictable as the weather! Essentially, I ended up shredding the slopes for 5 days straight - and you know what? It didn't kill me. In fact, my legs felt stronger than ever before, and I seemed able to keep up with the pace, even with the high altitude (nearly 14,000 feet sometimes!). I guess I owe another debt of gratitude to P90X. And it's nice to know my current routine is still doing some good, and keeping me fit when it counts.
Here's something my sister put together for me. I'm goofing around with my niece. Okay... I'm acting like a goof and she's just staring at me! January 16, 2009Nike + iPod Test RunI bought a Nike + iPod pedometer as a Christmas stocking stuffer for someone, but ended up keeping it for myself when I found out the likelihood of that person running outdoors for exercise was about 1/1,000,000. It's a pretty classic case of selfish gift giving! I took it running with me today for a first-time trial, and was impressed overall with the design and packaging - very neat little gadget. The Nike + iPod just comes with two pieces: a receiver attachment for any model iPod Nano, and a sensor to be placed in your shoe. The setup was extremely straight forward - basically plug and play. Once you stick the receiver into your Nano, a new menu pops up titled "Nike + iPod". Flipping through the menu chain, there are options for a basic, timed, distance, or calorie-goal workout. A modest list of settings allows you to change the voice (male or female), select units of measure (miles/km), input your weight, or calibrate the sensor. My favorite setting, though, HAS to be the "Power Song" setting, which allows you to choose one song that you can switch to at any time during your run. Mine, of course, is "Viva La Vida" - song of revolutionaries! At the end of your Power Song, your iPod picks up right where it left off in your playlist. According to my Nike + iPod, I ran 5.45 miles in 49 minutes. The setting I used was for a timed run, and the voice kicked in every 5 minutes to tell me how long I'd been running, and then every minute for the last 5 minutes. Personally, I wish I could set the system to give fewer updates, like maybe every 10 minutes, or even holding off until the halfway point. It kind of sucks when you think you've been running for a long time only to be reminded that you haven't actually gone that far. What a buzz kill! I'll probably turn the voice off next time around and just use the display, but I can see how it would be useful for running intervals. The last feature that I thought was kind of neat is the downloadable content from iTunes. You can download music tracks that have famous people like Lance Armstrong guiding you through a workout. Oh, and on a last note, the Nike sensor was designed to fit into Nike Plus shoes, but I just slipped it below my Asics laces and it worked fine. I was going to finish off with a clip of the Simpsons where Homer buys Marge a bowling ball for her birthday that says "Homer" on it. But since I couldn't find that - here's some other bowling entertainment. I understood "Homer" and "bowling center". How about you? January 11, 2009Snocial San Francisco Ski BusOn the 10th, yesterday, I jumped on the Snocial Ski Bus along with 7 friends and headed up to Alpine Meadows.
The next trip is back to Alpine Meadows on Feb. 8th, and I think I may join in again. Here's more video of friends... they must like the taste of snow cause some of them love to eat it every chance they get! |
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About MeI'm an entrepreneur who's steadily become interested in health, nutrition, and fitness over the last couple years. With this blog I'm hoping to keep motivated to get ripped and beyond!
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Snocial is a new ski/snowboarding bus service that carts folks from the Bay Area to Tahoe. For around $100, you get lift tickets plus a seat on a "luxury bus". This trip to Alpine Meadows was its first ever event.
Our guide and coordinator was Kingston - a friendly friend-of-a-friend who reminds me of Chef Ming Tsai for some reason. Even though you could tell this was a first-time trip, things went pretty smoothly and I have a feeling the few random kinks will be worked out quickly. More importanly, though, we arrived at our destination, Alpine Meadows, earlier than scheduled!
I'm a die-hard snowboarding enthusiast, and this was a beautiful, sunny day up on the mountain. Alpine Meadows is hailed as a "locals" destination, but I'm a big fan based on my now two visits. There's a lot of interesting terrain and gorgeous views of the lake.
