Posts

Showing posts from 2013

24 Hour Countdown T & A

Image
WARNING: This post may not be suitable for all audiences. If you've ever read my blog, you won't be surprised by this, but I have to launch advisories every time I overshare. So... yeah... this post has a tiny bit of oversharing in it. Mostly in the form of pictures displaying partial nudity but all in the spirit of spontaneity and fun. That means this is not porn or smut. Sorry to disappoint but there are no triple X's here. Not even double X or single X. Ok maybe a tiny bit of single X if you stretch your imagination enough, but that being said if you think the randomness below is juvenile, stupid, questionable, crass, delinquent, the by-product of demon worship, inappropriate, or deviant behavior then you should have stopped reading four sentences ago. But if you got this far chances are you're still here. In that case...let me tell you about some fun I had a few weekends back. The hubs and I got to spend a little time sans the kids. We dropped the ki

Getting My Shit Back Together

Image
Box squats at The Ranch Athletics Photo courtesy Seth Kotelnicki It snowed in the valley yesterday. It gets cold up here in Northern California during the winter, but snow hitting the valley floor is a real treat - a tiny miracle. I remember it happening only a handful of times growing up here as a kid. Yesterday, the snow melted almost instantly after touching down, but it landed on the tongues of the kids playing in the court and I knew something was up when I heard the screams of excitement outside. That was super cool. I'll think of it as my dad's gift to his grandsons this holiday season. I miss him terribly, but am coping. Just having my outlet at The Ranch Athletics has been huge. My strength is slowly coming back from a heavy place. I've felt so weak for the past four weeks. I wasn't sleeping well, my eating was crap and every time I worked out it felt like a complete fail. Everything was crushing, tough, and exhausting. But, the last four da

My Last Goodbye

Image
Barry Mayfield (Papa Bear) The best Dad and Grandfather EVER. When I was ten I went away to summer camp for the first time. I took the first intrepid steps onto the school bus and waved goodbye to my parents as I watched them from the window. I remember coming home and couldn't wait to tell them all about my experiences. It was the best week of my entire kid life. Then when I was fifteen I got a job as a camp counselor for that same camp. My parents would drive me to where the buses would leave every weekend. I waved goodbye just like I did when I was ten. Eventually, I was driving myself to the departure lot, leaving every monday and spending entire weeks during the summers working as a counselor - hiking, swimming, backpacking and rock climbing in the Sierra Nevada every single week until I was in my early twenties. I hugged and kissed my mom and dad and said goodbye week after week, and just like when I was ten, I was excited to tell them all about my adventures on my ret

I Love You Dad - Life's Ultra

Image
Relentless forward movement. Take the challenge one step at a time. Make small goals. Breathe. Little did I know how literally I would be taking my own ultra advice again less than two months after my first hundred miler. But this time I'm not the one running the ultra. My dad is. And its not an "ultra" in the running sense of the word. In fact, a hundred miler would be easy compared to the challenge that my dad and our family is enduring right now at this very moment. About two weeks ago, my dad underwent a stem cell transplant in hopes of being able to extend his life after being diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma (a rare blood cancer) just a little over a year ago. He weighed his risks, his age, and his health and got the OK from his doctors to do this procedure. A gambler by nature and a very bright man he took a calculated risk. He knew what he was laying on the table when he decided to go through with this. Today he is in MSICU in critical condition. Fight

High-Five Yourself. You Just Got Out Of Bed.

Image
Even cougars need a little motivation sometimes. I was thinking the other day - maybe a little too much. I was thinking that pretty much every tiny thing we do each and every day requires some sort of motivation. Am I right? If we couldn't motivate ourselves to take care of our daily shit the entire world would be populated by a bunch of couch slacking losers. Really. EVERYTHING we do - every simple, boring, stressful, easy, stupid, big, small, tedious, difficult or fun task requires us to get off our asses to do.  Ok... with the exception of activities which we literally have to sit on our asses to do and may not have total control over like, well, pooping. Yeah. I said that. Pooping. That shit is controlled by its own processes. Literally. The only motivation you need is to find a toilet. But really, when it comes down to it even dragging your ass out of bed in the morning requires some level of motivation. Some of us are better at this than others but I have yet to meet

Getting Back To Training

Image
Runners post ultra mobility session at The Ranch Athletics. (Ok... so this might have been more of a girls chat session.) I haven't ran a lick since The Pine To Palm 100 , but I was back to my training a week after the race doing mostly rehab mobility work. I've been slowly getting range of motion back in my right knee. Along with that I've been growing back the skin on my heels, losing a few toenails, and, what seems like at a snail's pace, getting my general strength back. It was a tough first three weeks though. I struggled to do even three pull-ups two weeks post race. THREE PULLUPS. And my pushups were weak. Yeah. That was totally lame. To be honest, that really pissed me off. But, I'm over it. Things are getting better and my body is finally getting back to normal. I'm getting back to feeling strong again and despite this really horrible picture of my "man" feet (yes... they are a bit hobbit-like - who knew they were that hairy?) my feet a

Pine To Palm 100 - September 14, 2013

Image
Smiling on the trail. The beauty of the Siskiyous. My crew said I had been closing down aid stations all day since they saw me at Squaw Lakes. Left behind me was a wake of bodies wrapped in space blankets lying on the ground waiting to be taken off course. I was the closer for very aid station. It seemed weird to me at the time that I was always DFL because I remember passing people. In fact, I passed about seven guys coming over Stein Butte. A few of those guys were in pretty bad shape. They had run out of water on a hot and exposed section of the ridge before they got to the aid station. In fact, we all anticipated that aid station being A LOT closer. If I had water to share with them I would have, but as it turns out my hydration pack was empty as well and I still had another tough climb ahead of me and a couple miles to go before I got a refill. Yeah. That was pretty rough and it took a lot out of me. I had done my homework. I knew this was a tough course with some t