Author: Greg

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Pole Class

When I was a kid in Boy Scouts, I loved tromping around in the woods  and finding interesting stuff in nature. One of the coolest things to find was a good walking stick. If it was the right weight and height, you could swing that stick, poke stuff with it, beat it against trees, and when you got bored with it, test your javelin skills. Using it for walking was pretty low on the list of applications for a good stick. That’s what your legs were for.

Now the walking stick has been replaced with carbon poles. Until this Kilimanjaro adventure came along, I never would have known that such a thing existed. But after we took a class on using trekking poles, I’m amazed at the difference they make. More power, better balance, and preserved knees. And who knew that there was so much technique required to go up and down steps?

After learning pole basics, the class moved into  parking lot to practice some fundamental “moves”. The instructor told us to “walk with attitude”, explaining that it gives you more power in your stride with the side benefit of reducing our chances of being a victim. We laughed when the instructor pointed out Bev as the model for “walking with attitude”. HA! That was nothing. I’ve seen her puff up like blowfish on the South Side of Chicago.

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California Winter

Today we discovered a gem in our backyard, the Sunol Regional Park. After running 9.5 miles around Lake Chabot in the morning, we headed to Sunol in the afternoon for a 7.5 mile hike up into the hills. We didn’t know what to expect and quickly found ourselves scrambling up the trail to beautiful lookout points.

On the fifth of February, we stood at the high point of our hike, looking west to San Francisco, nearly 50 miles away. California may be broken and overtaxed, but it would be hard to find a more beautiful place to live in the dead of winter.


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Running on Sandpaper

We’ve all forgotten things for a race or an event – cycling shoes, jacket, gloves, sunglasses, iPod, or a water bottle. Over the years, I’ve developed a mental checklist of those things and now I have Bev to help me remember things that I sometimes forget going out the door.

I’ve forgotten gloves, water, even cycling shoes. Now I add shoe inserts to the list. Yes, those thin, flimsy things that some abused Chinese laborer shoves into your running shoes to cover up all of the glue and the seams on the inside of the shoe.

Shoe inserts are something you don’t consider until you don’t have them. You never even think about those paper thin pieces until you run without them, your feet feeling like they’re getting a sandpaper pedicure with no arch support.

So, we’re at the staging area for the Coyote Hills Trail Race, 40 minutes from home, organizing our gear before we catch the shuttle bus to the start. I slip on my new trail shoes and my feet say “um, hello, dumbass – something’s missing down here”. Aaaaagggghhhhh! We consider skipping the run and returning home. I decide to suck it up, figuring that I can always turn around and walk back to the start line if it’s too terrible.

Oh, and did I mention that we were both registered for a half-marathon? 13.1 miles of my feet slapping the ground with flat, unsupported, freakishly thin soles on my new trail running shoes. Fortunately, it turns out that my adventurous spirit can still be tamed by rational thought, so I swapped my registration to the 5K route. My better half was nice enough to run the 10K so that I wouldn’t have to wait around for her at the finish.

So I ran 3.1 miles in shoes with no inserts and no orthotics (which is why I’d taken out the darn things in the first place). I flew through the course, passing people right and left, and when I got to the finish I noticed that there were only a handful of runners there. Go figure. I smoked those few miles in my funky, insert-less shoes. And now I’ve added “shoes AND inserts” to my run prep checklist.

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We Need A Plan

My sister Sheryl, during a recent dinner out with us, mentioned that she had begun her training for Mt. Whitney, including ten miles on the treadmill at maximum incline. She also reported that Laura, her partner, has created a training plan that includes hikes in the Great Smoky Mountains ranging from 8 to 18 miles. These are not routine statements coming from my sister. I’ve become immune to endurance junkie friends saying things like “I’m going to run 50 miles on Sunday but I might be a little tired from my 100 mile bike ride on Saturday”. But when Sheryl casually mentions a torture treadmill session that would kill me and most of my Ironman finisher friends, a little voice in my head said “Oh, shit. We need a plan.”

Later, on the drive home, Bev recounted Sheryl’s treadmill session, declaring “I’m the youngest person in the group and I’m not about to get my ass kicked. WE NEED A PLAN”. PLAN was definitely uttered in uppercase letters and rolled off of the tongue as PLAHHHN. Yes, we need a PLAHHHN. As the oldest person in the group, the odds of getting MY ass kicked are pretty damn good. I’m all in favor of a PLAHHHN. The discussion quickly moved into PLAHHHN-ing mode.

“Do you have a weight workout program that you follow at the gym?”, Bev asked.

“Kind of. I do some core work, a little bit of legs, and some upper torso.” A lot of words for “no”.

“We need a PLAHHHN.”

“I agree. We need to make a training schedule with lots of hikes.” This was my brilliant contribution to the PLAHHHN.

“We should do a hike every weekend. But I also want to keep riding and running. We need an extra weekend day for our PLAHHHN.” Mimicking a phone held to her ear, Bev has an imaginary conversation with my boss. “Hello, Ruth? Greg needs every Monday or Friday off for our training PLAHHHN. Take your pick.”

Sweet. Too bad that part of the PLAHHHN won’t happen.

“I’m thinking of vehicle pulls. Yeh. Cars or trucks pulled with a rope.”

Excellent. We won’t get our asses kicked AND we’ll be able to “take” any parking spot, anywhere.

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Economic Stimulus, One Shoe at a Time

 
Yeh, I’m old. Let’s get that out there right away. I remember when there were only seven television channels to choose from and if you wanted to learn about what was happening in the world, you read a newspaper, listened to the radio, or watched the evening news. Life was pretty damn good.

And if you needed hiking shoes, you went to a store and picked out a pair from two or three makers. It wasn’t hard because they all looked like this. All you needed to decide was high top or not. After making your big purchase, you took them home to spray waterproofing gunk on em and oil them up like a good baseball glove.

I don’t want a return to the days of breaking in old leather hiking boots and inevitable blisters but when did there become so many choices? Short, tall, GoreTex, mesh, leather, hard toe, not-as-hard toe, and shoes for carrying less than or greater than 30 pounds on your back. As Bev told the shoe sales guy at REI, if I’m carrying more than 30 pounds in a backpack, we’ve got a problem.

So off to REI we went. If anyone’s wondering, REI stands for Recreational Equipment Incorporated. It says so right on the awning over the front door. Who knew? I always wanted REI to stand for something cool like Radical Everything Imaginable, so some boring corporate name was a bit bubble bursting. The lawyers must have been in charge on the day they named the company. Happily, the name is the only boring thing about REI. Three steps inside the store and you want to turn to a sales person and yell “I’ll take one of everything, please”. If I ever win the lottery that I rarely play, I’m going to hire a personal shopper for me and Bev, and then accompany that highly compensated person to REI, where we’ll sit and have cool stuff brought to us while we dream of amazing adventures.

In the meantime, though, we settled for being assisted by Jesse and Toby in the shoe department. They were sort of like our personal shoppers, except that we had to share them with about 35 other people. They even helped another customer who was overheard saying that she was planning to hit the Mt. Whitney Permit Lottery this summer. Bev said something that sounded like “not if she breaks her leg trying on shoes”, but I couldn’t be sure. Jesse and Toby kept the hiking boots coming… Merrill, Vasque, Oboz, Keen… men’s, women’s, one size up, one size down… a parade of hiking boots!

And the winners were the Oboz Yellowstone II. One in men’s, another in women’s. So comfortable and snug like a sock. Now we just need to break them in and put them through their paces on the trails.

And we have the great sock experiment. Synthetic or “smart wool”. Thin cushion or medium cushion. So many decisions…