A simple Plan

Dirty Bird 15km trail race, French Creek State Park

2009-11-30T22:44:00.002+08:00

My kind of race with a very reasonable start time of 11am. This means that I can roll out of bed and have a couple of cups of coffee before I hit the road for the hour long drive to French Creek.

My training has been pretty non-existent. I've been luck to get out of the house a couple of times a week. Although I put in my longest run in a long time on Friday. I intended to go out for about an hour, but after twisting an ankle about 10 minutes in, I found a cool new trail to explore (I got lost) and spent about 2 hours on my feet.

The ankle was a little bit stiff and sore on Saturday, but not enough to keep me out of the race. Getting ready for the race on Sunday morning I debated wearing an elastic ankle brace, but didn't feel like looking for it.

I got a late start on my drive and arrived about 30 minutes before the race started. I registered quickly and managed to find a toilet - good thing... Race started about 10 minutes late. We were warned at the start that we had about a quarter mile of road to spread out before the race turned onto a trail for a long slog up the hill. I tried to keep a good pace on the stretch of road so that I wouldn't be stuck behind too many people crawling up the hill. The climb was about 15 minutes of moderate grade. People jumped on and off the trail and jockeyed for position for the first 5 minutes, but then everybody calmed down as fatigue set in and we shuffled up the hill. The nearly 500 foot climb was followed by a 400 foot descent that took half as long.

French Creek State park is a rocky and rooty place. Footing was made especially difficult by the slick cover of leaves on the trail. There are many opportunities to trip, fall and roll your ankles. I tripped too many times to count, rolled my dodgy ankle 4 or 5 times and executed a graceful fall (no damage done). The entire route is challenging, whether climbing, descending or flat. My ankle can attest to that, today.

The field of 250+ spread out a bit after the initial climb and descent and I fell into line with 4 or 5 other guys running about the same pace. There was Clemson shirt guy, shirtless guy, knee brace guy, guy with huge thighs, 11 year-old boy guy, and black spandex guy. This was my crew for the race. We traded places occasionally, but generally stayed within sight of each other. At one point, Clemson guy got heckled by the race director because South Carolina put a beatdown on Clemson on Saturday (football) and also because he trailed the 11 year-old. Luckily, I was trailing further behind the 11 year-old and spared the heckling.

At this point, about midway through, the course goes into an out-and-back section with couple of tough hills and a loop at the end. I continued to trade places with people and stumble down the trail. It was on one of the downhills that I had my fall. As I got up and immediately started running again, the guy behind me, the heretofore unmentioned running club singlet guy, insisted that I make sure I was OK before continuing - but I think he just wanted to pass me, so I put the hammer down (well, I continued to run, at least).

My Hong Kong hill climbing experience came in handy on this section (being able to walk quickly and efficiently uphill). I passed people who were running - one of them the 11 year old - and saved a little energy for the last 2 miles of flat and downhill running. Actually, come to think of it, maybe I only passed the 11 year-old on that hill. Details are a little sketchy, but I don't think I knocked him off the trail or anything.

It took me about 13 minutes to cover the least section and I passed all the guys mentioned previously, so felt pretty good about myself as my heart threatened to leap out of my chest. Finished in 1:20:07 in 39th position. Got a sweet blue pint glass for my trouble. This is the second race I've run that's organized by Pretzel City Sports. They run a quality show, with a nice spread of food at the finish. I drove home through beautiful downtown Coatesville on a beautiful sunny day.

Dancing

2009-07-31T18:01:00.003+08:00

Not the greatest video in the world - Kate has put on much better displays - but I just happened to have the camera on hand. The music is from a homemade musical that was made by our World Challenge leader, Vicky.

Indonesia Adventure

2009-04-20T22:00:00.010+08:00

Just realized I wrote this back in April and never finished or posted it. Since I'm just too lazy to finish, I think I'll post it as-is.

Just back from our Indonesian adventure. April 6-13 in Bali. April 13-19 in Java (Nate and I).

Karen, Nate, Kate, myself and my parents set off for Bali after some unplanned delays. We showed up at the Airport Express station in Hong Kong to check in for our Cathay Pacific flight to Jakarta. Everything was going smoothly until the agent started flipping through Nate's passport, noting that he didn't have any empty pages left in his passport. This is a problem. Indonesia applies a large visa sticker that covers one whole page in your passport, so you need at least one page for them to allow you to travel. F**k.

We decided that I would stay back with Nate to go with him to the Consulate on Monday to get pages added, but after dicking around at the counter for 20 minutes, the agent informed us that we could no longer check in at the train station and had to go directly to the airport. Long story short - everyone else missed their flight to Jakarta.

Cathay flights were changed fairly seamlessly to Sunday for Karen, Kate, mom and dad. Problem was that I had paid for all of the Jakarta to Bali Garuda tickets on my credit card. Another long story, a trip out the the airport Sunday morning, a couple of hours on the phone, a couple of hours at the Garuda counter in Jakarta, and the flights got changed. Nothing is easy, but they made it on Sunday.

Nate and I are not so lucky. After a quick addition of pages on Monday morning, there are no Cathay seats available on the afternoon flight at 4PM. We ask to be put on the waiting list and wander around Hong Kong, buying Nate some new shoes (his feet are growing again). About noon, I got the bright idea to try to go as standby passengers. How full is the flight, I ask. It's completely full - oversold in fact, they reply. How much oversold? About 5 percent. Is that a lot? Not really.

I'm convinced. We head off to the airport, arriving about 2 1/2 hours early. I haven't ever tried to go standby, but 9/11 has made things more difficult. No longer can you pass security as a standby passenger. We hung around the counter until 25 minutes before the flight, when they start barring passengers from checking in. Then we're told to follow a lady through the crew security channel at a jog. It's a long way to the gate, and we only make it a few minutes before they push back from the gate, but we're on our way.

I have not idea if I'll be able to change our Garuda flights again, but there's a flight leaving Jakarta at 9PM, and I'm prepared to buy new tickets if necessary.

We have a much easier time with the Garuda staff in Jakarta. We change our flight in a matter of minutes for about $10 each, and we're on our way. Only annoyance is that an Indonesian guy that pays our airline fees in rupiah for us and then tries to scam me out of double the amount in US dollars. I will come to expect this later in the trip, but it surprises and annoys me.

We manage to board our flight and arrive in Denpasar Bali around midnight, with an hours drive to Ubud where our gang has checked into Ketut's Place. Nate and I are relieved to have arrived - and almost a day earlier than expected. Bonus!

Ubud is a town in the south central interior of Bali, surrounded by art industry (furniture, batik, wood carving) and rice fields. It is truly a beautiful spot and I'm a little disappointed that I can't talk the gang into spending another night there. We spend Tuesday driving around looking for the places where they manufacture silver beads, but are instead led to the places where they sell crappy jewelry to tourists. The driving tour is a bit of a disappointment, but we'll get over it. We have a nice lunch at a tourist joint of the driver's choosing, on the second floor overlooking the rice.

Wednesday, we packed up and headed South to Sanur in order to catch the public boat to Nusa Lembongan, an island off the south coast. Karen, Nate and I had been there in December 2002, just after the Bali bombings - our first trip as expats in Hong Kong. Fitting that we revisit the place on our last holiday as Hong Kong expats. The island is known for it's seaweed farms in the broad shallow bay, its surf breaks, and is increasingly becoming known for it's diving. I think I'll stay away from the surf break called "lacerations", and the surfing in general, for that matter. We stay at a place called OKA bungalo No. 7, the more upscale version of Bungalo No. 7. The rooms are nice, but the staff are not very helpful. Our room has air conditioning, but the rooms are not designed to keep the cool air inside, with many openings to the outside. The AC can't keep up with the heat of the days, so we spend most days wandering the beaches, the town and hanging around the small, but beautiful pool. I have to acquaint myself with the location of the circuit breaker for our room, as it gets tripped intermittently and we wake up in a pool of sweat in the middle of the night.

Dad and I make a game out of finding the coldest bottle of Bintang beer on the beach. The place with the coldest beer, also happens to have the cheapest. Double bonus!! We also sample the food up and down the beach, from the cheapest of cheap to the 5 star place a couple of doors down. The five star place wins, hands down, with amazing tuna and swordfish steaks...and the Bintang's pretty cold too.

On a couple of days, we rented a pair of motorbikes for us to zip around the island. This set us back about $7 per bike per day. On our scouting trip, dad, Nate and I take a few wrong turns, explore a few distant beaches and make it most of the way around the island, leaving Karen and mom wondering what happened to us. It's about a 45 minute loop all the way around, and the bikes also make it easy for us to get to Mushroom Bay. A load of day trippers from Bali get dropped at this beach every morning, but other than the banana boats zipping around, they aren't too irritating. On 2 days we had a meal at one of the local restaurants and set up in their lounge chairs. Kate is becoming a real water baby, enjoying both the pool and the sea. We also explore the neighboring island, Nusa Ceningan, which is connected by a wooden suspension bridge to Nusa Lembongan. Quite a thrill to ride across. Ceningan has a little bit of elevation to it, and some of the roads are quite steep, affording a good view of the sunset from the top. Karen and I headed up there on my birthday, to the west end of Ceningan.

One morning, we left Kate with grandma and Karen, dad, Nate and I headed out for a couple of dives. First stop was a place called manta point on Nusa Penida. When I asked Rudy the dive master what the chances of seeing mantas was, he told me that normally he would have said 100 percent, but on his last dive he hadn't seen any. I was a sceptical, but my skepticism proved unfounded. We dropped onto the relatively shallow (max. 12m) dive site with a warning to watch out for stingrays. They were obvious from the moment we got close to the bottom - a hundred or more, dashing around and piled up on top of each other. Just a few minutes into the dive, the divemaster started pounding on his tank frantically to signal us - Manta! Such a thrill to see this 3-4 meter goliath cruising slowly past us through the murk. I would have been happy had we not seen anything else for the rest of the dive. BUT - there were probably 10 - 15 mantas circling around a rock outcrop in 6-10 meters of water. When we arrived, we pretty much had the place to ourselves. There were two other boats and 4-5 other divers there. I was so transfixed by the mantas, and snapping away with my camera, that I didn't really notice other divers arriving until we were completely surrounded and it was getting difficult to tell the members of our group apart from the rest. It became a total cluster@#(&. After about 20 minutes of watching the mantas, our divemaster led us away - I was a little annoyed at being told to surface with 120 bar in my tank (more than half), but in hindsight, it made more sense than battle the hordes. Back in the boat, we counted 16 other boats that had arrived (mainly from mainland Bali) since we had gone in. There must have been more than 50 divers on the site!

Our second dive site confirmed that my blood has become very thin during our 7 years in Asia. We dove a spot called Crystal Bay on Nusa Ceningan and within 8 minutes I was shivering and hugging myself for warmth and ready to call it a day. The water was 24 degrees according to my dive computer. I think the coldest I had dived before was about 26. As we descended the sloping reef, I watched the temperature drop to 20. The dive master later said his computer showed 18. Freezing. When we got to about 20 meters, Rudy started banging on his tank again - this could be good! He led us a bit further out and down and pointed to a large, hovering shape. It was a Mola Mola (giant sunfish) - just about the strangest fish I have ever seen (see video).

It was about 2 meters in length, and suspended vertically (facing up) in the water. Several bannerfish can be seen cleaning the mola mola - this is why it makes appearances on reefs - it is generally a pelagic fish. I almost forgot about the cold water for a moment - it had continued getting colder as I descended to a maximum of 32 meters. The rest of our group was waiting a bit shallower because of the cold.

Rudy later told us that it's pretty rare to see a mola mola at any time of year, but particularly in April, when the water is generally warmer. We were pretty lucky.

A video of Nate and I lost on Gunung Batur...

OMG

2009-03-03T18:11:00.001+08:00

We're in trouble now.

Mobility Part 2

2009-02-24T20:56:00.003+08:00

She's getting close...

mobility

2008-12-09T18:32:00.003+08:00

A couple of people have asked what the bait was. Kate, I think, is a little overwhelmed by all of the plush, colourful, noisemaking toys that she sees every day. She prefers muted with a touch of flash. Her favourite objects right now are the computer mouse, my black watch and my cameras. The bait was the camera with which the video was shot. That's not an inept videographer swinging the camera around at the and - that's Kate!

Update

2008-10-07T17:42:00.010+08:00

Been a while since I posted anything on here. There are some new photos on smugmug of baby Kate (http://kclaus.smugmug.com/).

It's been a fun-filled couple of weeks. A while back, I took Nate out on a nighttime hike up Violet hill (the "mountain" behind our house). It's been a while since I've been out at night and I had forgotten about the cool vistas available up there at night. We had some encounters with elusive Hong Kong wildlife as well. Saw some funky glow worms, a cool green tree frog, and on the way down, nearly stepped on a banded krait. From Wikipedia: "Fortunately, since kraits are nocturnal (!) they seldom encounter humans during daylight hours so bites are rare. Nonetheless, any bite from a krait is potentially life-threatening and must therefore be regarded as a medical emergency." Exciting stuff.

Karen and I ditched the kids for the holiday on October 1st to go on our first junk trip in a long while. Mike from work was having a birthday - so lots of West Island people. Played bum off on the beach. Basically akin to all of the juvenile games where there is potential to inflict pain on your friends. It involved juggling a soccer ball. When you mess up 3 times, you have to bend over and let the other guys kick the soccer ball at your ass from 10 meters. Good times!

I helped to run an AYP trip last weekend. There was yet another typhoon threatening. The typhoon did end up petering out, but dumped plenty of rain on us Friday night. I spent the night dodging the drips from the ceiling of my tent. Saturday, I came down with some kind of illness on the walk. Bad stomach cramps. Managed to make it home just in time to toss my cookies.

Another development since my last post is that I'm all set to take part in Trailwalker again. I've spent the last 3 weekends training, including a very wet 35km run on Sunday, the day after hugging the toilet bowl. Not a great weekend in all.

Hope yours was better!

jumper action

2008-09-14T07:40:00.004+08:00

Kate's getting the hang of the jumper.

I think some of the screeching in the next video is Nate.

"Did you put her on the rug?"

2008-09-05T18:34:00.001+08:00

Karen asks, accusingly. Kate performed her first double roll off of her Ikea play-gym-thing. Oh God, she's mobile.

a treat for the grandmas

2008-08-26T17:53:00.004+08:00

Kate has been working on her skills...

A rare sight in Hong Kong

2008-08-23T11:34:00.003+08:00

The full moon last week. We had a few nights in a row of very clear skies, where we saw moon, stars, shooting stars (!) and a satellite (!!). This may never again happen in Hong Kong. The shooting stars must have been the tail end of the annual Perseid meteor shower. These photos were taken from the balcony:

I think my dirty lens produced this perfect image of the moon in the lower right-hand corner.

On second thought...

2008-08-23T11:08:00.008+08:00

Typhoon Nuri packed a bit of a punch. We had 4 or 5 hours of southerly 80km/hr winds that forced water through all of the tiny gaps in window sills, balcondy doors and bedroom windows. At one point, the power strip that feeds power to the TV and stereo was sitting in a puddle of water on the living room floor. That can't be good.

Down on the beach, the shark net was ripped free from some of it's mooring lines. There were some huge waves last night around midnight, as we were going to bed.

Here's where the net used to be:

Here's where it is now:

And a shot from our old apartment:

I guess that would be considered a direct hit

2008-08-22T18:46:00.003+08:00

but Typhoon Nuri has been a little disappointing. Some places in Hong Kong were getting 100km wind, but we've been sheltered by the hills behind us and haven't seen much at all. The wind has now changed direction and we're getting some wind.

Got out of school on the first teaching day of the school year, though. So I've got that going for me.

And in case you need reminding of that last reference:

Kate tells us all about it

2008-08-11T17:44:00.005+08:00

Kate has been very vocal, lately, and has figured out how to grab things and shove them in her face. Pretty entertaining, if you are related to her. If you're not, then not so much.

Forgive the video quality. We're not that fancy around here.

White River 50 Race Report - July 26, 2008

2008-08-04T15:55:00.001+08:00

I’d been eyeing up this race for a few years, as it always falls around the time that my family travel to Washington State for holiday. This year, I made a conscious effort at training for it. I studiously pored over available training plans on the internet. I compiled the best bits of a couple of plans, printed it out, and followed it for exactly one week.

With a month to go to the race, I had a hard decision to make. The training had been going OK, but I didn’t feel that I had put in sufficient mileage. I had worked up to about 50 miles per week, the bulk coming in one or two long (3+ hour) runs at the weekend. I was feeling relatively good, so I took the plunge and registered. Then I got sick with a 103 degree fever that knocked me on my ass for the better part of a week. Great timing.

I crammed a couple more long runs in after the illness, and then it was on the plane. My brother Brad met me at the airport in Seattle, and we drove down to preview the race course outside of Enumclaw Washington and near Mt. Rainier National Park. The course consists of two loops of roughly equal difficulty – 27 and 23 miles. Each loop has one massive climb and its complementary knee-bashing downhill. The total elevation gain for the course is about 9000 feet (2745 m), with a maximum elevation of about 5600 feet (1700 m). My plan was to do the first loop of the course for practice, but I was having second thoughts. That seemed like too much mileage the weekend before the race. So instead, I thought it would be a good idea to have a look at what I was in for on the second half of the course. I would do the 10 mile uphill section and the final, rolling 6.5 miles.

The weather was fantastic, temperatures around 50 (10 C) degrees in the morning with beautiful dry air. After my summer training in Hong Kong, it seemed like it took much less effort to propel myself up the hill. I was breathing easy; my heart rate was 10-15 beats lower than in Hong Kong. The wildflowers and views of Mt. Rainier were more than enough reward for the effort. The end of the climb is called Sun Top. Heavy snowfall in the winter months meant that there were still small patches of snow around at the end of July. My brother met me there and we chatted with a guy manning the fire lookout hut at the top.

We drove down to the start of the final 6.5 mile section along the river. I had been warned that the rocks and roots on this stretch would be a challenge, so I wanted to see it first-hand and before mile 43 of the following Saturday’s race. It had everything promised – tricky footing, steep climbs – and even some sand to test the wits of exhausted runners.

Race weekend approached, and we travelled down to the packet pickup and pre-race pasta dinner on Friday night. I gawked at the faces I had seen in ultra photos on the internet. Since this race is the US National Championship 50 mile trail race, many of the big names in US ultra running were there. A few years earlier, I ran in the Delaware Marathon – a tiny race where a guy named Michael Wardian was the winner by 30 minutes or so. He had since gone on to run the US Olympic marathon trials and had become the National Champion over the 50 and 100 km distances and was looking to add 50 miles to his CV. I stuffed myself to the bursting point with spaghetti and garlic bread and we headed down to our campsite to get a little bit of sleep.

I was up at 5:00 AM with my re-heated Starbucks coffee picked up the night before. The sky was bright and the temperature was about the same as the previous weekend – it would be a great day for racing. Although the race start was only a 2 mile drive from our campsite, we managed to arrive just 10 minutes before the start. I didn’t have time to warm up – I just had to stay warm and wait for the gun.

The first section of the course was a 4 mile, mostly flat section along a trail that paralleled the highway. I was probably in the top 50 out of 238 starters at this point, trying not to go out too fast, but feeling comfortable. I reached the first aid station in 32 minutes and didn’t recognize it for what it was. I had expected to get there in about 40 minutes. I ran right through without picking up any gels or extra water – a very rookie mistake.

Shortly after the aid station, I passed a port-a-john and decided to take the opportunity for a necessary purge. This allowed a further 50 people or so to pass me and I found myself in a huge slow pack walking up the first climb of the day. I decided that this was probably a good thing. It would keep me from burning too much energy at the beginning of a very long race. I felt great and passed a few people heading into the second aid station at mile 12. The trail gradient made it possible to run much of this uphill section. At the aid station, I managed to beg one Gu gel off of a volunteer and to fill my water bottles. Some very dedicated volunteers had trekked in 2.5 gallon jugs of water from Corral Pass, 5 miles away.

The next 5 miles to Corral Pass were an out-and-back section with more uphill to the top of the ridge and then about 3 miles of running with fantastic views of Mt. Rainier. Some of the leading runners passed me heading the opposite direction soon after the aid station – they were flying. I had made up some ground, but there were still probably 75 to 100 runners ahead of me, and I saw all of them. The aid station was full of cheering spectators and volunteers and really gave me a boost. My brother helped to fill water bottles and I helped myself to the melon, sandwiches, chips and salted potatoes.

The next section retraced the last 5 miles. I had filled both water bottles and stocked up on gels and salt capsules at Corral Pass intending to race through the next, limited, aid station without stopping. I ran with a couple of guys on the downhill chatting about strategies and fueling when one of the guys did a somersault off of the trail. He seemed to be OK and got up with a little assistance. About 5 minutes later, he did the same thing again. I made it back to the start/finish area in 5:06 and without incident, although I was beginning to feel the IT Band in my right knee – not a good sign at the halfway point. 27 miles down – 23 to go.

Again, I fueled up on melon and all things salty, refilled my water bottles with Gu20 and headed up the trail. This was the beginning of the second climb and I was glad that I knew what to expect. The temperatures were warming up to around 65 degrees (18 C) and I ditched my long-sleeved top. I traded places with a couple of guys and passed a few more runners. I was feeling great on the uphill, running most of it. The knee didn’t bother me at all on the climb. There is a false summit at the top of the hill, dropping over 600 feet before making the last climb up to the Mile 37 aid station at Sun Top. It would have been demoralizing, had I not seen it before. I grabbed one last bite to eat at the top and a couple of gels and began the long descent of Sun Top Road.

The only section of the course that is not single-track trail was probably the toughest for me, mentally. The incessant pounding down the gravel surface began to affect the left knee as well as the right. I was hoping to fly down this section, but instead, slowed to a crawl on the last couple of miles to the last aid station. The never-ending road finally ended and I met up with my brother who again handed me a full water bottle and a couple of gels before the last section.
Again, I was glad to have previewed this section of the course. I think it would have been much tougher, had I not seen it before. Although the trail parallels the river, there is a net elevation gain of 700 feet (225 m) over the 6.5 miles, through short ups and downs. At this point, the knees were screaming on the both the ups and the downs. I passed a few more runners in spite of my laborious pace.

The finish came into view and I was greeted like I had just won the race – a great way to end my first 50 miler. I was very happy with my 9:21:15 (56th out of 202 finishers). Michael Wardian ran the 4th fastest time ever on the course to win in 6:52 – amazing. The top woman, Susannah Beck, finished just 40 minutes later in 7:32. We hung around at the finish for about an hour, soaking it all in and then jumped in the car for the 3 hour drive back to the San Juan Islands and to friends and family.

The race went about as well as could be expected for me, I think. I have to wonder what would have happened without the toilet break at mile 4 and getting stuck behind all of those slower runners. I have a feeling I would have burned myself out and not been able to finish as strongly – but who knows. I finished upright and in fairly good shape, and might even try another one of these someday.

I am not a blogger

2008-08-04T15:45:00.002+08:00

I thought I'd give this thing a try and hoped to update it maybe once a week. Obviously, 3 months after my last post, I haven't done a great job.

Katherine Olivia Claus was born on May 7th, weighing in at 9lbs 6oz.

I finished my first year of teaching at West Island School.

We traveled to the US to visit family and I completed the White River 50 Miler.

That's the update.

Still Pregnant

2008-04-28T20:52:00.000+08:00

Karen is still pregnant. We both thought she would have popped this thing out by now. Nate was 5 weeks early, so we're +4 weeks from the day where we started saying "could be any day now", yet still one week away from the due date.

Haven't said much on names lately. I like Katherine for a girl. Also liked Kieran for a boy. Karen's not too crazy about either one, I think. We're going to have to meet this one before we decide.

This 50 mile training plan is a bit ridiculous. I ran 30km on Saturday, starting in Repulse Bay, via Black's Link to the Peak on the Hong Kong Trail. I ran the Action Asia Sprint Race in Discovery Bay on Sunday. Only 12 km, but 800 meters of climbing. I was pretty happy with a 15th overall (3rd in 54-39 cat.), especially with a big effort on Saturday. I won a women's GoLite top. Printed on the prize envelope was "Give it to your girlfriend."

So I was feeling pretty good about the mileage I put in over the weekend, and then checked the plan. While I am currently on the right training load, more or less, I'm a little put off by the middle of this plan, which has me doing 4-hr (Sat) and 5-hr (Sun)runs back to back on consecutive weekends. Still a few weeks away, but a few light years from where I am at the moment.

And we're about to have a baby...

What's Harder?

2008-04-20T21:43:00.001+08:00

Running a 50 mile race or giving birth? These are the things being contemplated in our house, of late. Karen being 8.5 months pregnant leads naturally to discussion of the latter. My obsessive-compulsive running bent gives rise to the former.

I've been thinking of running this 50 mile race (White River 50) for a few years now. The training hasn't really come together, yet. Maybe this is the year. So I'm one week in to the plan. Back to back 2:25 and 1:40 runs over Saturday and Sunday this weekend.

A close call with Typhoon Neogiri made Saturday's run most enjoyable - seriously. The rain on the ridges hurt (blowing sideways at 50 mph), but the mudpuddles made it all worth while. I dragged my buddy Philippe up and down more hills than he's used to, and he had me sprinting the flats. Run stats: 21km with 745 m of climbing.

Sunday went out for a slow slog up the hill. Yesterdays saturation made for a very hot very humid day today - also could have something to do with the fact that I left the house at 12:30. Lots of little niggling pains accumulated this week from playing football (soccer) Wednesday and from yesterday's run. Run stats: 17km with 350m vertical.

Karen is being a good sport putting up with this brand new neurosis. She is definitely fed up with being pregnant, and every day we wake up wondering if today is the day. Well, maybe tomorrow will be the day.