Overdue Snow Video and Animated Gifs!

I finally finished my New Years day run video... It was warmer that day than it was YESTERDAY! Crazy.

Tons of crusty snow to chew up our ankles that day - hope you enjoy it!



The other night I took my gopro with me on a run and followed the example of my bro-in-law.

Set the gopro on a 2 second interval timer and run by!

Lots of great pictures like these:

In some cases I think the 1 second interval would be better...

I also uploaded them to Google +, which has a cool feature of putting together similar pictures into a gif.

Everybody loves animated gifs!!

My favorite is the one where I move a tree...

The Struggles of November

I had a pretty epic month in October.

I ran my first 50 mile race in a time that I was more than happy with.

I then ran my fastest 50k race so far on tired legs!

And just two weeks before the 50 miler, I ran another tough 50k where I came in 3rd overall!

Oh, and I ran to the top of a couple of mountains as well!

NOT a bad month at all.

Actually a really fantastic month!

Especially since this didn't happen to me:



I love that picture.

I think my blog needs more pictures of wipeouts. They are unfortunately harder to find than I'd like!!

So anyways. It's November. I feel like BLAH. Part of it is I'm STILL somehow recovering from the Pony Express and Goblin Valley. I'm tired. My head hurts. I think there is some Seasonal Affective Disorder going on as well... which is SAD.

But I've still been able to get out and do some fun things.

I watched the kids while my amazing wife ran the Moab Trail Half Marathon - she did awesome.

And we saw Arches National Park, and I was able to hike/run 6 miles seeing some amazing arches like Landscape Arch, Partition Arch, Navajo Arch, and Double O arc. Definitely somewhere I would like to go back to and maybe put together an adventure 50k!! (I need to modify that route a bit probably...) At only $10 for a week's entry to the park? That is NOT BAD!

Beautiful area! I really hope to go back soon!

After getting back from that awesome family vacation/adventure, I was tired and slightly sick for a few days. That's not fun.

Finally on the next Friday I got out with Matt to hit another peak, Ben Lomond. Even BETTER than that, the day before I found out I had won a GoPro Hero 3 Black Edition in a work Benefits Raffle!
So we had a lot of fun, and I made a video to test it out:




Yeah I am still figuring some stuff out with it.

Ben Lomond was great - even though my watch paused and messed up the total (should be 15ish) a bit.

The next day I went up to the Steed Creek cliffs again with Professor B, the next door neighbor of MVH who is trying to get into trail running more. I was definitely slow after Ben Lomond!

Last week I finally made it back out in the morning for a run up Farmington Canyon with the Newman Group.

It is very nice to run 11 miles in the morning before work!

Friday morning I got up early and drove up to Antelope Island to bag the big peak on that Island - Frary Peak. I went with MVH who had just won the Frary Peak Climb 10k Race the weekend before. It was nice to get him beyond where the race turned around and to the actual peak. With the snow and the rain we took almost twice as long round trip as he took on his race! 7 decent miles on a trail I'll definitely have to do again!

Finally on Saturday I went with my wife up the Steed Creek Trail again - this time up the Hornet Canyon split to a cool little canyon that supposedly has a waterfall when it is runoff season. Of course, we decided to do it in a blizzard! Almost 4 miles. It was very slippery and we had a few slips and falls, my wife came down on her hand a bit hard and we hope nothing serious happened to it - but after 2 days it is already greatly improved. Yikes.

I took my GoPro but haven't had time to finish the video. Hopefully I'll finish that soon and get it up!

While driving out to Antelope Island MVH and I were talking about how there should be a shorts contest for the winter amongst the Wasatch Mountain Wranglers. So I put it out there and had some good response.

Here's my response to the challenges:



Oh yeah! It's ON!

So November. It's just over halfway through and it definitely started with a big BLAH feeling.
Somehow it was awesome too... I mean looking back at this entry and it's been an amazing month so far!

I guess that BLAH feeling is being overcome! The Struggles of November are showing their fruits as some great memories, and dedication to keep on going!

Life is amazing. Live it amazingly!

Just A Few Days Left to Fifty Miles!!

I'm definitely a bit impatient to get to Friday already!



As that exciting video shows, I checked another peak off my list this weekend! (I'll finish a video from all my clips taken... but it'll be a while!)

Thurston Peak, UT - 9,706 Feet - The highest point in Davis County and Morgan County.

Boy I wouldn't want to haul that slab of Granite up there!

There are gorgeous views of the Northern Wasatch Range and the Salt Lake and Morgan Valleys from atop Thurston!

We started from the Fernwood Trailhead, parking outside because the parking lot is apparently Federally funded and it costs too much to leave a gate open...

Yeah... that's fun. It wasn't too hard to walk around the gate, and we headed on up the trail.

The fall colors are gorgeous right now - so while we were going fairly slow, it was beautiful to look down into the valley below.

We finally made it up to Chinscraper and the snowier sections in the tops of the mountains. It was VERY windy but so refreshing to be up in the tops of the mountains. We followed the trail until the Thurston Peak trail cuts North off the Great Western Trail ( which is also the Wasatch 100 course). The icy winds had created REALLY cool looking ice formations on the trees and plants

The Trail to the peak was a bit difficult to see so we headed up towards the peak as we could. We found on the way down, it was probably more on the very windy West side than we liked! We 'summited' only to see that the REAL summit was a little bit farther.

One of the main reasons we could tell was the large Granite block sitting at the actual summit! (seen above)

We took some pictures and of course I did my customary Mayurasana/Peacock pose on the summit!

 

Our Friends the Orange Trail Monkeys have been here!

When we got back to where we took the icy grass pictures above, some hunters had arrived on horses.  They looked at us two guys in light jackets and short shorts and gave us strange looks, probably thinking we were crazy!

Not that I disagree...

We took off towards Francis Peak, and a couple miles later, right before the section the trail monkey video above was shot, ran into some older hikers who asked us "Hey which one of these is Thurston Peak!"

We pointed them the two 'peaks' down the line to Thurston and one of them said "Somebody lied to the fat guy!"

They had ridden their ATV's to the end of a road and then started the hike. About one mile after we left them, we reached their ATVs... and then had a nice conversation about relativity. About a year ago I ran the first 2 miles (and then back, so 4 total) of the same course we'd been following, and it was TORTURE when I did it... but now a mile or two is nothing!

Awesome to see progress! And funny how things change too...

Shortly after the ATV's, we were about a mile to a mile and a half from Francis, but we were short on time so we headed straight down the super-steep Bair Canyon.

Francis Peak! Let's head down!

Getting down into the canyon brought an EXPLOSION of color that was crazy and mind-boggling to look at.

This picture is gorgeous, but doesn't even do it justice!

When we'd finished at Bair Canyon we had gone just under 15 miles with a whole bunch of climbing up and down!

Another PEAK checked off the list of my summits! Woohoo!


When I arrived home my wife was antsy and NEEDING to get out of the house and up into the mountains. Nobody else was available to run with her, so I figured I'd go ahead and go!

Starting at the East Mountain Wilderness Park, we headed up the BST towards the popular Adam's Canyon. That canyon is gorgeous and a good hike - worthy of visiting.

But that's also it's biggest problem! It's busy! Too many people!

Ran 5.5 miles with a decent climb up to the waterfall, and my legs were definitely telling me they were tired by the end.

Google auto-creates gifs in uploaded photos sometimes!

It was a fantastically beautiful day in the Wasatch Mountains with fantastic people!

I'm thankful that I have a brother and an amazing wife that can do this stuff with me!

Hopefully good preparation for my race on Friday. I will probably run 5-10 fairly flat miles in the next day or two... and then REST and stretch out my legs in preparation for FIFTY MILES on Friday!

Holy moly! I can't believe I'm doing this!