For starters I'll give a brief recap of my running lately. Travel, travel, and more travel. I spent 10 days on the road for work, traveling from Atlanta to Denver and then on to Seattle. I got an awesome run in out in Boulder, Colorado as you can see in my last post. I actually ended up running nearly 50 miles for the week that I was out in Seattle despite some truly miserable weather, We stayed outside of the city, so I didn't get to make a trip to Gas Works Park, but I got some really nice running in around the Bellevue area. Despite the crappy weather it was really beautiful. We got two great days of 65 and sunny but after that it was nothing but rain until we left. I also ate one, maybe two, too many donuts (sorry that's how I'm spelling it, don't care) at Top Pot.
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| Still working on the GoPro photos |
This week also marked a return to racing for me at the XTERRA Battle at Big Creek. I know I've recapped it in the past so I'll keep it short. I finished the 10.3 mile race in 1:05 and change, which is one of the faster times I've run on that course. I was pretty pleased with the finish despite taking second place. I lost to Matt Johnson, who is training for TNF 50k in about a month so I'm not really too upset. He's fit. Like really fit. He looked like a Ferrari and made me feel like I looked like an old beat up F150.
What I'm Reading...
I sort of stole this idea or adapted this idea from Mario Fraioli's Morning Shakeout newsletter. Every Tuesday he goes through a few different things that are going on in the world of running. He's a coach, former editor of Competitor Magazine and All American at Stonehill who brings smart and insightful commentary on what's going on. I look forward to getting his email each Tuesday morning. You should too. The Morning Shakeout
Sometimes it's hard to find the time to get my running in. Other times the difficulty comes from feeling like all I do is run-work-sleep which can make running feel like a chore. That's why being part of a running community is important. Even if you only see people at races, it helps to know that other people are facing different struggles when it comes to getting their running in but they're still doing it. This post on Level Renner - 5 Ways to Fit Your Training into a Busy Schedule - is a great reminder that it's not always easy, but there are ways to make it easier. I pretty much live by the first two things on this list and they are probably the two biggest factors in going from someone that maybe ran twice a week during the football season to someone who runs 6-7 days a week for the entire year.
What I'm Listening to...
Like most of America, I've become a huge fan of podcasts over the last year and half or however long it's been since Serial came out. I like to mix up what I listen to and I still haven't quite found a running podcast that I love, but I have really enjoyed pro cyclist Phil Gaimon's Real Talent podcast. Gaimon is a pro rider for Cannondale-Drapac and he wrote an incredibly entertaining book about his journey from being an overweight kid to a WorldTour pro called Pro Cycling on $10 a Day. In his podcast he sits down with pro cyclists, triathletes, and a few non-athletes about how they got to where they are today. In a recent two-part podcast he sat down with former pro Mike Creed. I found this episode particularly interesting because Creed had some really interesting insight on routines. He spoke about how routines have a place but you can't allow yourself to become a slave to your routine. He talked about how some of athletes that he has worked with have self sabotaged themselves with their routines, allowing the routine to become a built in excuse if they didn't stick exactly to it. I thought that was really interesting. It bordered on OCD or superstition but I know that I've gone into races sandbagging because I was a little off my routine. It's difficult but it can be a little freeing to think about things that way.
If there is a way for me to keep my connection to New England alive, you know I'm doing to do it. In the spring I stumbled on Outside/In, a podcast from New Hampshire Public Radio about the natural word. It quickly became a favorite of mine. I've fallen a little bit behind on it but I definitely recommend giving it a listen. The host, Sam Evans Brown, is an environmental reporter for NHPR that brings enthusiasm to each topic and has a real knack for storytelling. The format they've created for this show has had me locked in on topics that I normally would have skipped over. Since it's Halloween, I recommend giving a listen to the episode about the downfall of Keene's Pumpkinfest. Obviously, this topic hit close to home for me so I was immediately interested but I thought Sam and crew did a good job of explaining what happened. It was a little hard to hear some of the residents that were disappointed that it was cancelled right after you hear from some jackass kids that thought the whole thing was hilarious and awesome (goddamn millennials!), but it's definitely worth a listen, especially if you've ever been to Pumpkinfest.
What I'm Following/Liking/Retweeting...
In the spirit of keeping this "short" here are a few of my favorite recent people/posts from Instagram.
I stumbled on this one when I was looking at pictures of Cannondale Slates. This guy took an old Cannondale mountain bike and turned it into a Frankenstein Stale, which is awesome. I been seriously contemplating trying to make one of these myself, however I know there is no way that I possess the necessary skill and or funds to do so. I'll just keep day dreaming.
I'm a little bit of a sneakerhead but only when it comes to running shoes. I've got five or six pairs of Saucony DXN Trainers and a few pairs of New Balance 574's scattered around the house. When I saw these, it took everything in me to not order them. Thankfully they sold out before I got home from work, otherwise Amanda and I would have likely had matching pumpkin spice latte Sauconys. Go ahead, call me basic, but that tongue artwork is (fire emoji).
People outside of Georgia, myself included when I moved here, don't realize that Georgia has some awesome mountain terrain. It doesn't have all the 4k footers of the Whites or the above treeline stuff, but the North Georgia Mountains are really spectacular. Wander North Georgia is a great place to get ideas for adventures up there.
My good friend Joe Reynolds has been traveling lately, which means some great landscape photos like this one.
Tanner Foust was up in New Hampshire recently and I'm a sucker for some foliage and a gravel road.
Zach Andrews is an ultra runner from Alabama. I raced against him up in Chattanooga a few years ago and I've been following his runs through Instagram for a while now. He does a lot of epic stuff in Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, and North Carolina as part of the East Coast Ultra crew.
That's all for the first Trestle Run. It wasn't quite as short as I'd thought, but I'm long winded. Hopefully, I can keep cranking this out weekly. I haven't done anything like that since back in the Red Seat days, but we'll see. If you know what the Red Seat days are then you are truly a friend...or my mom.
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