Google saves the day!

We all have them, some are large, some are small, some private, some in the open, some are personal, some are shared, they contain various bits and pieces, that spot where all our daily junk ends up, in our house we have several, but typically all my “stuff” tends to congregate around my laptop which lives on our dining table. It’s accompanied and surrounded by multiple USB cables and gadgets; iPod, headphones, Nike+ chip, Forerunner, camera, HR strap and cases for everything; you know the general running, blogging, life stuff that we use on a day to day basis and then drive ourselves nuts looking for when it's not in our stuff spot

Anyway I am usually pretty good about syncing my Forerunner up when I’ve finished, if nothing else to keep it charged up. So it was with some concern that I noticed I had a blank screen, no mention of “Charge in Progress” or “Charge Complete”, several different USB cables and a second charging cradle later I still had nothing, nada, zip!

I remembered reading through the ultralist of a handy reset but I had recently emptied my ultralist folder in Outlook so there was nothing to be found there, a quick search on Google and I was sorted. So I present to you the reset procedure for a blank or locked screen, no pay attention it's pretty complicated, ready? OK here we go; press the Mode and Lap button at the same time, press the On button, revel in the cheerful chirp as it powers on and you good to go! That’s it, thank you and goodnight!

The ups and downs of Ernie!

Sunday I met up with the Trail Runners Club. The original scheduled run was at Malibu creek, but a small fire, set off by some duphass (pronounced du’fas) welding on the outside of mobile home (the fire actually consumed 20 acres; that’s 20 football fields before it was extinguished) meant that we relocated back to Westridge, the same starting point as last week. We were told that this would be a new route recently discovered by “Ernie” and would offer a few hills and some nice trail time at the bottom of Sullivan Canyon. Also this week we had a change in time to an hour early to accommodate the heat, I, of course got it all backwards and turned up thirty minutes earlier than that; 5:30am, after a 4am alarm call, still I saw a nice sunrise and had a nap in the car.

We set off at a leisurely pace and I was chatting to a few runners when we suddenly took a sharp right turn and headed down the backside of the ridge, we meandered along the trail which was a little overgrown but nothing too onerous. After a while the trail started to climb and we were soon on the ridgeline enjoying some spectacular views of the low cloud washing in from the Pacific and the long morning shadows thrown by the rising sun. I caught up with Billy (my photog) and Kenna were both running strong (they’re running the San Francisco full and half respectively next month) and then they shot off and I stopped to grab some panoramic video footage. The trail then dropped us back down to the Westrige trail heading back to the start. I was thinking this was going to be a very short run until I followed the flour arrows into a sharp right turn and what, if covered with snow would have been a Diamond if not a Double Diamond, it got so steep in parts that someone had tied a rope to help arrest your decent and drag you on the ascent.

A half mile later we bottomed out in the canyon. Sun glinted through the trees breaking angel-rays onto the trail and the temperature was a good 10 degrees cooler. After a short distance another hard right turn had us climbing up the other side to Sullivan Ridge from here there was a short stretch of hardtop and we were back on the fireroad. Being on the other side of the canyon we were fully exposed to the sun which was rising fast and heating up equally as quickly. Billy and Kenna pushed on and I made it up with a walk/run strategy. From here it was a three mile climb gaining about 800’, multiple mountain bikers whizzed past and all were very courteous. I reached the second turnaround point and had to double take as a I something I had never seen before; a mountain bike unicycle! Hardcore!!!

After a short decent I was back on the canyon floor knowing that I had to climb out again at some point again, after a slow decent of 1000’ over four miles that point came, and I plodded up the side of the canyon, check out the elevation plot and you’ll see how steep it was. I topped out just after the 11 mile mark and from here it was a short and easy downhill back to the parking lot where goodies lay a’waiting, along with a good stretch and some welcome cold fluids. Another great Sunday morning adventure running trails that I have never run despite living here for years, thanks Ernie!

With a five miler of Friday and another five or so this morning; I dropped my car of at the dealers for a service and ran back home (perfect multi tasking) that made a little over 23 miles for the holiday weekend, it’s been a while since I clocked that amount of mileage over a weekend. Lots of foam roller lovin’ and my handy-dandy IT strap meant that it was all under control and I fully intend to keep it there.

Here's the Forerunner data and the photos:

Looking backward moving forward!

I am a lazy blogger, I apologize; I can barely keep up with the reading/comments without even thinking about putting fingers to the keyboard for anything substantive. The past month has been a bit of a blur but things are starting to settle down, sort of.

My day starts around 5:15, initially with a start but after four weeks it’s become a habit (a'la Jess’ 21 Days) and now I am up before the alarm around 5am. Breakfast is spent going through personal email, forums, blogs etc and then it off for a shower and all that good stuff and I am on the road around 6:15am. The traffic is mercilessly light and I am usually at my desk around 7am. I plow through the morning till noon, nip off to the cafeteria, yes it’s a big office, well site really there are 22 buildings and a gazillion employees. I grab a salad, usually DIY Cobb and head back, spend the time it takes to eat it doing personal stuff and then I am back in the groove by 12:45. To get home in decent time I can leave at either 4pm or 6pm, if I leave at five I arrive around the same time as if I had left at six; Thursday was a pain; it took two and a half hours!!! Usually I walk in between 7 and 7:30pm, just in time for a bedtime story with our eldest and phew that’s it. Fitting a training plan around will be tricky but doable, early morning runs are best for me but that’s a 4am or earlier start and I am pretty crap at going to bed at a reasonable time…at least for now.

Looking back I’ve pootled around the last month or two runningwise and while the freetime is nice my base is eroding and after a couple of runs this week I am getting the itch to get going again. After last weeks ITB issues I spent the last weeks evenings with some pretty full on one-on-one action with my foam roller along with some extensive stretching and that’s helping.

Right now the weather is a little bothersome, I am officially bored with summer; yes I now its just started but another week of triple digits is forecast and it’s not uncommon for it to be 80+ when I leave my house for work. Fall is another three months away but the summer can drag, hopefully it won’t this year. I would like to drop a few pounds also, thanks to Viv’s challenge I am now south of 170, somewhere I have not been for a few years, I want to get within the 160-165 range.

So now with half the year over it’s time for mid-year resolutions and thoughts about training again. My second A race; Twin Peaks is December 13 so I have to work out the training plan to back into that date, that sets me on the path with a start date for late August, the plan will envelop some race dates along the way, provisionally these will include; the Long Beach Marathon (Oct), PCTR 50K, (Nov) the Eco Marathon (also Nov) on Catalina Island, and I’ll probably throw in some Xterra races along the way as well as some cycling miles.

Objectives for this half year; a faster PCTR race (sub 6:00); this was my first ever 50k last year so I know what to expect this time around, a sub 11 hour Twin Peaks, (sub 10 would be awesome, but lets not get carried away, there’s a reason it has a 15 hour cut-off!) I want to hit my target weight zone as I start the training cycle so I need to drop just over a half pound a week for 7 weeks, wean myself of the Coke Zero and Popsicle habit (not consumed together) I seem to have developed and get a decent nights sleep, well anything more than 6 hours would be a start, and with that I hope everyone Stateside had a good fourth and has a good weekend, I am off to grab some zzzs!