$5/bunch
Bonjour Hoodwand
Adams peeking out from behind a cairn on the summit of Observation Peak.
And of course some mountain running 🙂
Up and over Hamilton Mountain:
http://www.strava.com/activities/162620543
For ~2500 ft of climbing, the reward is a spectacular view of the Columbia River Gorge from Washington (and an ice cold beer back at camp).
This is my last burn down week before tapering for Mt. Hood. I think I reduced mileage too much for Beacon Rock 50K, with weekly mileage preceding the race of 38, 20, 25, Race. I’m trying a different strategy this time and plan to maintain mileage this week – landing somewhere around 30 for the week with a medium weekend run somewhere around 10 miles.
I ran (and rode) through the recovery coming of Sunday’s 20 miler. Last night I stretched and spent quality time with the foam roller – my legs felt good this morning and I ran into work with my pack on (sub-8 minute pace). My plan is to keep foam rolling and stretching this week – and keep the sleep hours consistent (~8).
I’m still really nervous about the race. When I was feeling bad on Sunday’s run, I thought about bailing, telling myself I wasn’t ready. But after I recovered and got some food I felt a lot better – and felt good after. The scary thing is that when I think of 50 miles, I think of Frank from Donnie Darko. When I raced my first 50 miler my body was so broken afterwards that I couldn’t sleep and Donnie Darko was the movie I watched at 3 in the morning – sitting on the couch in pain.
I was walking out of a meeting with a colleague yesterday and that’s when I made the decision. Completely uneventful really. I’m ready to bring it.
On my run into work this morning I was pondering this concept of forging, like metal forging, blacksmithing. A hot fire and a 10 pound sledgehammer and a piece of steel on an anvil. I think a lot of people have a misconception that people are fragile and delicate – but it’s not true, people are malleable and resilient. But the material being forged is difficult to define – its characteristics, how malleable it is, how much effort or force or energy it takes to form it. The answer is … more effort than you think. More like steel and a sledgehammer than say sculpting with clay or working with wood.
I was reading this article yesterday (so much amazing knowledge here), but this part stood out to me:
Tanaka Shozo, a famous Japanese conservationist, said:
“The question of rivers is not a question of rivers, but of the human heart.” Ultrarunning is to a very large degree a question of the heart. Make yours big and you’ll always be a winner.
Running is a thinking sport – it’s about strategy. Ultras even more so – they can’t be run on pure adrenalin or anger or being “pumped up”. You need the big love. I really like that quote.
Nearing the end of my run today I was literally willing my tired body up the last couple of climbs (will … up the hill …will … up the hill was my mantra, repeated over and over) and I discovered a move that provide a little bit of inertia – but enough to propel me over the crest of little climbs and down the other side. Bobbing my head back and forth just slightly, 10 pounds of inertia is enough for your body to follow.
When I’m on fresh legs I can swing my arms in an almost cartoonish motion that allows me to use my upper body to run uphill faster. I learned it from the guys racing La Luz in Albuquerque (9 mile uphill race).
Today’s run was like this:
http://www.strava.com/activities/159751305
When the wheels come off you have to be really careful with the self talk because it can turn into a death spiral if you let it. “Man I’m an idiot – what are you doing!?” (bad self talk) to “You did a stupid thing, but you’re not stupid.” (better). Best of all is the self talk that tells the doubting you to “STFU! I’m concentrating!” And wow does it take a lot of concentration when the wheels come off.
I think this is my new favorite loop in Forest Park – it has a good mix of singletrack and forest road with good climbing. Singletrack climbing at the start for a few miles to rolling singletrack for about 10 miles, then you drop down onto a forest road and descend to connect with another forest road at about mile 13, then back to singletrack to the finish road at 19 miles. I ran the last mile on the road to get to my Car2Go so I could drive home.
FML moment of the day. There’s my Car2Go home. On the right we have a No Trespassing sign, on the left a fence… that I considered jumping to walk UP the hill so I could go home. I ended up walking back around the fence and then storming the hill. Note: I feel kinda bad for the people who get the Car2Go after I’m back from a long run. Thinking I might just start taking a trash bag with me to sit on.
Nutrition
I drained the bottle and the hydration bladder around mile 17.
This was my first long run after Beacon Rock 50K and I would have been satisfied to stay home and play with the kids and work on the treehouse I’m building. I started to get excited as I was driving to the trailhead – no expectation, just a little run through the woods.
My motivation has been on a bit low after my disappointing 50K time at Beacon Rock. And I’ve been super busy at work with 2 trips to SF in the last week, so my sleep schedule has been off. I think that racing is extremely depleting both mentally and physically – it cores me out at a very elemental level. But as today’s run shows, even if I don’t feel checked in mentally, the physical bump from racing is still there. I was about 2nd fastest time on the sections of this loop that I’ve run before. That’s a good thing. And the final mile or so I was able to dig deep – mile 20 was my fastest.
http://www.strava.com/activities/156984866
So the most awesome thing that I saw on the run was a guy and his son (assuming – he looked about 12) at the Saturday market (it’s also held on Sunday). Playing this Weezer song to the touristas walking along the waterfront. They were *jamming*.
Linkedin has made it easier to break a connection than to unfollow connections’ long form posts. Nice product design. Kudos.
It’s a toss-up between calling it ‘user hostile’ and a ‘dark pattern’. As I was searching for the controls to unsubscribe I realized how many profile (and post) impressions I was giving to the user who authored the post. Ewww… kind of slimy design practices.
Someone (a designer) made the decision to not allow this link to be an active unfollow:
This Following button does not toggle to unfollow.
Neither does this one.
From the help docs:
As a means to drive engagement, another design decision was made to automatically follow 1st-degree connections. **The Unfollow button indicated in the above help text doesn’t actually work.
Increasing reach by authoring long-form posts is baked into the platform, but at the expense of spamming your 1st-degree contacts. In this case the decision was between allowing the user more clear controls over notifications (and following) or designing the system in such a way to make defaults to push engagement and impressions (which drive views on the post).
3:30 wake up.
4:20 cab to airport.
6:00 (inside!) the jet.
6:20 activate superpower! (sleep-on-plane).
7:45 arrive!
8:00 coffee!
8:15 cab to office.
9:00 – 16:00 talk talk talk talk talk….talk talk…talk talk talk.
16:15 cab to airport.
18:40 (inside!) the je… [delayed…delayed…delayed…]
20:30 (inside!) the jet.
20:55 blast off!
22:15 cab to home.
22:45 bed.
From Midway Claude Sylanshine then flew on something called Consolidated Thrust Regional Lines down to Peoria, a terrifying thirty-seater whose pilot had pimples at the back of his neck and reached back to pull a dingy fabric curtain over the cockpit and the beverage service consisted of a staggering girl underhanding you nuts while you chugged a Pepsi.
-The Pale King
I started. Even if the novel isn’t complete, I’m looking forward to the pure genius of the writing.
Chris Rivard / Product Designer 