Tacos Por Favor...

I had the day off work today. What a great day of eating and hanging out with Nicole.

The morning was spent helping her tweak and make final adjustments to a website project for finals. After that we headed out into the windy yet sunny day that it was. The first stop was the dog park with Benton and Roxy. Next we checked out a deli with excellent sandwiches. We were very pleased with the results of the visit! We brought the sandwiches home and enjoyed a couple episodes of Flight of the Conchords. Good humor.



Before we knew it, it was time to eat again. That's a shame. We figured we would check out another new food place near the house. Enter "Tacos Por Favor". Wow. Great choice. The photo below is my meal, Nicole's is not pictured, but was also delicious.

Now for some digestion. Tomorrow S + E come to visit! We pick them up at LAX in the evening. It'll be great to see friends from the East coast and share the great weather.

Good day to you all.

Twist and Tell...

Nicole showed my this site a while back. It's pretty cool. Just another example of the social web.

Life at 5200'

I'm back. What's that? You didn't know I was gone? I went for an overnight hike on the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT). We just live too close not to take advantage of the awesome trails and mountains.

I just did the calculation of what I consumed in the 24 hour period that I was out. It came in at just over 6000 calories. This does not include the 800 calorie "snack" I smashed immediately upon returning home...or the dinner with Nicole 3 hours after that. Yikes, maybe I should track my consumption during the week sometime.

Anywho, on with the trip report. Upon Stitch's recommendation I was heading up to Mt. Pacifico. Shortly after leaving the car it started to hail. It was only going to get worse since my camp would be at around 7100'.

About 7 miles in, lightning came through the clouds and huge booming thunder surrounded me. It gets a crazy effect rumbling through the different sets of mountains. The hail picked up as well and I decided being exposed on a ridge during this storm was not a good place to be. I headed back down about 3 miles to where I had last seen a good water source - and some decent trees for the hammock to hang. Before long the hail turned into big wet flakes of snow.

The picture above was taken from under the hammock tarp as I was finishing setting up camp. It does not look like much, but it was wet cold sleet. A couple degrees colder would have been much better as everything would be solid.

I was happy to be set up and relax a bit. After filling up my water supply there wasn't much to do but eat, read, and get as warm and dry as possible. I accomplished all of these tasks.

The night went really well. I had packed more clothes than I wanted to but ended up using it all and stayed warm comfortable in the hammock. Note the green "underquilt" in the next photo. This awesome piece of gear was courtesy of P. Dawg during the AT hike. Hanging in the air while sleeping robs you of your heat from below. You can use a ground pad inside, but I find the underquilt to be much more comfortable. Note that the rainfall overnight melted most of the snow.

About this next picture. Um, biggest pine cone ever. It was bigger than my foot, and points sharp as knives!

Parting shot...my lonely pack with snow covered mountains in the distance.
Questions? Comments?

Sunny Day Real Estate...

Sunny Day whaaa? They aren't for everyone, but they were good.

Andrew Thompson did indeed finish the Barkley Marathons this year. That makes him about the 9th person of 700 to finish this crazy race. He did it in 57:37. That's 57 hours and 37 minutes, less than 2 and a half hours from the cutoff. Insane. And yet, so cool. He was the only person to make it to loop 4 (and 5). On the final loop he faced rain, sleet, and snow. I still say it's cool. Great job Andrew.

I have a few days off work in the next couple weeks and plan to head up into Angeles National Forest for an overnight backpacking trip. Should be good...might be wet. It's supposed to rain a bit the next few days.

Next week we have a couple of friends from the East coast coming to stay with us. Everything weather wise should be cleared up by then. We're sure to share some good meals and good times!

Nicole is plowing through her final projects of the semester. It's been a ton of work and I'm proud of her for everything she is doing. No one ever said grad school was easy, but wow!

I got up into the mountains for a run after work today and plan to go again tomorrow. It's hard going so short, but I want to build up a good base and just as importantly stay injury free.

In other news, Benton got a bath today. Observe the poor quality, low resolution photo.


That is all.

The Barkley what?

So what to talk about today? How about running? Weird huh? I put in about 10 miles this weekend. 266.0 down, 734.0 to go on the Trail to 1000 My legs felt good, but I could tell the depth wasn't there. I'm cool with that considering what I put them through, and especially since a year ago my running resume consisted of a couple of road 10k's. A couple, as in two.

Nicole has been incredibly busy with school projects and is getting ready to wrap up the first year of her graduate program. Still, she feels pretty good from last weeks run. Perhaps not quite 100%, but still she was able to get in a couple of gym workouts this week.

Okay, a little more about running...but not me running. I may have posted a few months back about the Barkley Marathons. I am bringing it up again now because it is happening as I type. Well it's happening for Andrew Thompson anyway. I think everyone else missed the cut off.

Washington Post article from 2007

History in brief of Barkley..

"The Barkley is considered one of the toughest 100 mile races in the world. It has 52,900 feet of climb (and 52,900 feet of descent), more than any other 100 mile race"

"Since the race began in 1986, only 7 runners out of about 650 have finished within the 60 hour cutoff."

"In 2008 Flyin' Brian Robinson set a course record of 55:42. He was the first person to hike the 3 major N-S U.S. trails in a single calendar year: Appalachian, Continental Divide, and Pacific Crest, 7400 miles in 300 days."

Yeah, that's right, the course record is less than five minutes from disqualification. Wow.

Two Years Running...

Oops, this originally posted with only a title.

Yesterday Nicole and I celebrated two awesome years of marriage. We decided to go to an old favorite place in the LA area for dinner, Killer Shrimp. We had not been there since moving out here last year. When I called to see how late they were going to be open, there was no answer. When I double checked the phone number I discovered from several online posts that both locations had actually closed some time ago. Booo.

The good news is that it took less than 5 seconds for us to decide to get delicious sushi instead. It was in fact delicious and we had a great evening.


We show love and appreciation for one another every day. It's a great way to live. I highly recommend it.

It feels like I have not run in weeks, when in fact it has only been since Sunday. I take that as a good recovery sign. I should be good to go for a light run Saturday and Sunday. There is life in these legs.

Lastly, thanks to Evan for his comment on my last post. Check out his blog for details about last weeks 50k run, since he is the guy who set the course record.

Done and Done...

The jumbled and brief report of yesterdays run...

Nicole ran the 18k which was twice as far as her last run. This involved nearly 2ooo feet of vertical climb. Since our routes started the same direction at the same time I was able to run the first couple of miles with her. During that time I heard at least one other runner asking about her inov8's. Nice! Despite a nagging knee problem that started early on she bested her goal time by over 10 minutes.

It was my first 50k. The route had nearly a mile of vertical climb over the 30 odd miles. I felt strong and it was pretty smooth for the first 3 hours or so, the rest I worked for. There was one particularly long climb about 21 miles in...that was straight up the mountain...on loose dirt. That stretch took extra effort to get up and I was glad once it was behind me. The last few miles of the run were good and fast as it was mostly downhill and flat. Surprisingly, somehow, the hours it took to complete went by fairly quickly (my official time was around 6:38).


I met some cool people along the way, which was how I discovered I was one of 3 rookies running their first ultra. The most popular questions all around were about my Nathan HPL20.

I felt good about my performance and look forward to getting stronger. Did I get smoked by people 10 years even 20 years older than me? You bet. Wow. Even more incredible is the guy from AK who floated to a course record in under 4 1/2 hours. Unreal.

Nicole, her mom, and our dogs all headed to the beach when I finished. I took a quick swim in the chilly Pacific ocean as per tradition.



Today we both feel the soreness in the legs, but not any worse than expected. I'm looking forward to starting up the next round of training this Saturday in the mountains!

I'll probably shoot for at least one more 50k before I think about anything longer since the next logical jump is a 50 miler. I'm not prepared for that leap just yet. I said "yet". Nicole will probably go for another 18k.

No doubt putting more training miles in, as well as the little bit of experience we gained will make for another great time whatever it turns out to be.

We had a great BBQ with friends and family at the house last night. It was sweet being able to sleep in this morning and having the day off work. I think it was the first time I slept past 7 am in months. Ah, lazy sunny day. A special treat this evening was hanging out with a couple of old work friends from DC that were in town.

And now I feel talked out about running...and want to find a new race to train for.

Thanks to all for the support along the way and the kind words.