Just watched a fantastic film called A Map for Saturday (website). Well worth watching if you’ve traveled a bit, are planning to, or just like watching movies about travel. It’s a documentary that one dude shot while he traveled the world for a year. Basically chronicles the backpacker ethos and life on the road. Really great movie, but not on Netflix yet. Buy your copy on the website above. Worth the cost!

Relays for Life are happening all over the place this month. Ours is coming up this weekend. We’re hanging out with Amy’s former co-workers on Friday and Saturday. Tru will be camping with us and it oughta be super fun! If you’d like to contribute to our campaign, you can hit this page and drop of a couple bucks. 🙂

I’ve been still, as in ‘not running.’ I’ve been active though–hiked a mountain, did a 5k, did an adventure race. And I walk stairs instead of elevators when I get the chance. I’ve got a 5k coming up this Monday. I’m in L.A. (at a conference) and the weather’s been nice. The 5k will be at 4pm on Monday, so it’ll be warm running. I haven’t run since I arrived on Thursday. I’ve intended to run each morning, but always wake up too late. Then today I resolved that I’d run in the evening, since I can’t be relied upon to run in the morning. But I’m going to visit relatives today and tomorrow, which’ll probably preclude any running. So I probably won’t run again until tomorrow evening, which I’ll take slow. Then the next day will be the 5k.  So I’m hoping that, at the very least, I’ll have run twice while I’m down here. Hopefully more.

I did nab some geocaches yesterday, and there are several more within walking distance that I’ll try to get before I leave. So there’s that, too.

Amy, Asher, Truman and I are participating in this year’s Relay For Life with some of Amy’s coworkers. We’re aiming at raising $2,000 (our whole team, not just our little family). If you’d like to contribute, hit this page.

Don’t worry, I’ll remind you again later. 🙂

This past weekend we went over to Redmond to hang out with our friends Troy and Ruth and their kids. A while back Troy invited me to run in a 5k called Heaven Can Wait. I thought that sounded cool so I registered online. A few days later Troy called back to see if I’d want to do a 5-hour adventure race the night before the 5k. I was a little apprehensive and said no at first. He explained more about it and it didn’t sound like you had to be a total superman to do the race, so I said I’d go for it. Eventually we had five guys on our team–four of whom I already knew and one guy who I’d met once before.

If you don’t want to read all of this, and just jump straight to the pictures, here you go!

So the big day came and we all (our family and Ron and Erinn’s family) drove to Redmond. Hung out with Troy and Ruth and the kids for a few hours, then Troy, Ron and I piled ourselves and our bikes in Troy’s truck with his friend Cory (one of our teammates) and headed to Bend to meet our fifth teammate for the race. We hung around the starting place (a pub) for a half an hour or so, until the race started at 7pm. Just prior to the race beginning we were given maps of the Bend area, with instructions not to open one of them until the start of the race. When told, we opened the mystery map and found that we had a few “checkpoints” in Bend that we had to find on foot. So we started running. We ran around Bend for a little over an hour, finding checkpoints and noting their codes on our maps. There were other teams to deal with along the way, so sometimes we had to be a bit stealthy when finding checkpoints.

Once we’d found all the “on foot” checkpoints we ran back to where our bikes were locked up, jumped on them and headed a few miles out of town to some local singletrack. Got there around dusk and spent another couple of hours riding around and never found a single checkpoint. That was alternately fun, frustrating and nerve racking. Fun because singletrack is fun to ride; frustrating because we backtracked a lot and never found a checkpoint; nerve racking because riding on singletrack in a forest at night by headlamp is….nerve racking. You’re always waiting to hit an unseen rock or hole or downed tree, etc. Plus, since I didn’t know the trails, I rode in back–in the dust. Did you know that dust reflects off of lights just like fog? I didn’t, but now I do! More nerve racking moments when you’re speeding downhill in the dark, faster than you can reasonably stop if you do happen to find a tree in your path, trying to see through dust-fog that has essentially blinded you!

Anyway, we got through that and decided that we should really try to hustle back to town and pick up the two mandatory checkpoints that were attended by people. After some navigational struggles we arrived at a mysterious pipeline that was about 10′ in diameter. Our instructions told us to put on our climbing harnesses (which we’d be running and riding around with all night) and climb the pipeline. We did it and eventually determined which way we were supposed to run on the top of the pipeline. Went about a quarter of a mile until we ran into a guy who was manning the high end of a zipline across a river. There were a half a dozen people in front of us, so we waited our turn then clipped in and zipped across the river in the pitch black. On the other side we started running back to our bikes so that we could hop on them and get back to the pub in time for the midnight end of race deadline.

We were already disqualified from the race, since we didn’t have time to hit the second mandatory checkpoint (which consisted of getting naked and traversing a bridge over the river. The naked part was so you didn’t drown if you went into the river with shoes/clothes/pack on. Sorry to have missed that. NOT.

Anyway, we were riding back to the pub and were only about 10 minutes away when one of our teammates rode off the sidewalk into a drainage ditch! Pat got scraped up pretty bad, but shook it off and we made it back in time. Disqualified due to missing the second mandatory, but still felt victorious!

Got home and in bed by 1am. Woke up at 6:45 when Asher came crashing in on my sleep. Ate a little breakfast then headed out to the 5k which began at 9am. Ran a really slow race since my legs weren’t exactly recovered from the previous night’s efforts–ran about a 30 minute 5k, which included walking a couple of sections. Lungs and heart felt great, but my legs were just beat.

Got back to Troy’s house, ate lunch, packed up and drove the 3 hours home. Actually, Amy drove the last half hour because I was just too tired to keep driving. I spent the rest of the day drinking fluids and not peeing–I was so dehydrated that I needed all the water I could get (and that was after drinking 2 full liters of water in my backpack during the adventure race). All in all, a fun weekend!

Ran the 3.2 mile loop today at a nice pace that felt sustainable: 8.59. Bodyfat has been dropping lately too (looks like I’ve just edged into my goal bodyfat!), but weight isn’t doing much. I could stand to eat healthier, though, that’s for sure (not gonna happen).

I ate pretty good yesterday, I guess! Weight is way up, and I can feel it. Tasty huge cinnamon roll at Camp 18 yesterday morning, plus some great brats and beer for dinner. Whew!

Today’s sprints went fine. No pulled muscles or anything. My Achilles tendon is still sore, but I’m hitting the Aleeve and that helps. I’m on the countdown to the adventure race and 5k in Bend. I think I’m going to be really tired next Monday.

Taking a little rest right now. Got a strange pain in my left Achilles tendon that won’t go away. Probably from the new shoes plus the superfeet inserts. They make my heels higher than normal and I think that’s hurting the tendon when I run. Gonna let it rest for a couple of days (yesterday and today).

This evening I’m doing the monthly hike. Ron’s going too. We’re going up Saddle Mountain, which is in the coast range. There’s a geocache at the top which we’re aiming to nab as well.