The Hive!

Yesterday I got a very exciting email from HoneyStinger welcoming me to the Hive, their grassroots sponsorship program.  It seems like forever since I submitted my application, and was starting to assume that I wasn't accepted.  Needless to say I am glad that I was.

I have been a huge fan of HoneyStinger products for quite while now, and have enjoyed sponsorship for some time due to my affiliation with ROCK Racing, but this is the first sponsorship that is on my own.  Clearly if you are at all familiar with my training and racing, you realize that this is not a full sponsorship.  I will not be quitting my job anytime soon.  I wish someone would pay me to do this stuff!  Even though they haven't offered to fly me out to Steam Boat Springs to tour the factory and meet everyone I am glad to be part of the team, a small yet important part.  Maybe I'll get to meet Lance.

I use the HoneyStinger products because they taste great and they work.  I have used a lot of gels and bars over the years and these are by far my favorites.
In training or racing you can bet that I will have one or more of the following:

So if you haven't tried HoneyStinger products you should you won't be sorry!

You are Extraordinary!

The things you do are extraordinary!  

For quite some time this phrase has been rolling around in my head.  As endurance athletes from the first time Couch to 5k runner all the way up to the Multi-day Adventure Racer, you are all cut from the same cloth and continue to challenge yourselves each and every day.

The things you do are extraordinary!

Sometimes in the midst of the challenge it is easy to get down yourselves for not meeting a training or racing goal.  It's important to remember that there are so many people that will never leave their comfortable place on the couch.

The things you do are extraordinary!

The fact that you keep on striving day after day, achieving one goal and quickly moving on to the next is a testament to the sheer power of will in each and everyone of you.  Over the past few years I have been impressed and inspired by so many great people.  I have been as impressed and inspired by beginners as I have athletes that have completed IronMan triathlons.  

The things you do are extraordinary

I have competed in a wide variety of events in this, my second go round in the endurance world and across all of these events one thing remains constant above all else,

You are extraordinary!

Lost Valley Sunday!

This weekend was a good one for running, at least for me anyway.  Saturday I got to run in the falling snow with the Red9Runners.  I hadn't really thought about how far I was going to run and ended up doing 13 and change with Darrell, Miriam, and Gloria.  Darrell and Miriam were running 18 and I really wanted to finish with them but I knew the next day at Lost Valley was going to be tough so I decided to cut it short.  The route we ran Saturday had some really cute hills that really illustrated the difference between road hills and trail hills.

As for Sunday, check out Robin's and Kate's blog for all the details.  I could have written a detailed report but when you run with other bloggers sometimes it is just easier to blogjack them instead.

Trek Mountain Girl - Robin

What's on my mind today - Kate

A Challenging President's Challenge

For the past 5years I have been logging activities on the President's Challenge website.  Five long years.  This goes all the way back to the beginning when I got involved in a walking program during my lunch time at work.  I have been using this website longer than any other fitness related website.  I achieved the President's Active Lifestyle Award, the Presidential Bronze, Silver, and Gold awards.  Early on these awards were very motivational, everyday I would add my activities and watch my point total rise, everything was fine in the world.  There were some bumps along the way, for example for a long time I was in the category that only allowed me to log 750points each day, which in the beginning was no problem since my only activity was walking for 45minutes which netted a whopping 156points.  Later on though it really started to suck, like the time I ran a marathon that was worth almost 2500points but I only got credit for 750.  Eventually I did find out that there was another category that gave me credit for everything.  The point totals for awards were double in this new category but at least I wasn't short changing myself anymore.

In 2007 I earned my first Gold award, thinking I had made it to the top of the heap.  I am number one, numero uno, the big cheese.  Or am I?  Gold is the pinnacle right?  I have seen the Olympics once or twice, and it always goes: bronze, silver, gold with gold being the highest of the three.  That's why there are sayings like "You don't win a silver, you lose a gold".  This is why I was surprised to learn that there was another level higher than gold.  What's that you say? What could possibly be higher than gold?  I'll tell you what could be higher than gold.  PLATINUM that's what.  To earn the Platinum Award all I have to do is earn one million points.  Now I know when some people get involved in these types of things they log every single thing they do all day long.  I am not one of those people and at the same time I am not saying there is anything wrong with that but for me this challenge has always been about fitness with some nice awards to keep me motivated.  I know the awards will come and yes I wish I could get there quicker but logging one hour of house cleaning as a workout just isn't me.

So for the past four years I have been whittling away at this one million point challenge, and this is the part where you would expect me to tell you how close I am to achieving this long sought after goal, and I would except for one small problem.  I don't know anymore!  Not too long ago the good people running the President's Challenge decided that it would be a good idea to update the website.  They did a really nice job and everything looks great and works great.  There was however one small problem, when they rolled out the new website I was missing somewhere in the neighborhood of two hundred thousand points.  I never kept track of my points because I trusted the website to do it for me.  I know that I was missing that many points because not long before I had made it to the halfway mark, and was relieved that I had fewer points ahead than behind.  It was kind of like a light at the end of the tunnel moment.  Needless to say I was pretty upset!  After searching for a contact email address I sent off a polite note informing them of the error, and before I had time to get angry and send off a not so polite email I had my points back and everything was right with the world, for a while.

Lately I have been noticing that my point total shows 735,740points, this is not correct or at least I am relatively sure it is not correct.  It also tells me that there are 454,011points until my next award, which is the aforementioned Platinum Award.  With out going into all of the complex math, let me just assure you that those two numbers do not add up to 1,000,000.  On the Awards page itself it shows that I have earned 545,989points and that I am 56% of the way to earning a Platinum Award.  That number plus the other number do add up to 1,000,000, trust me on this one.  My question is, where did the almost two hundred thousand points come from on my total, and why don't they count toward the Platinum Award?

I have always enjoyed the President's Challenge and I think it is a very motivational tool to provide people with a way to track their progress, and anything to help get people off the couch is a good thing in my book.  I will keep logging points until I get a message saying that I achieved my goal, after that who knows?  I suppose I could send another email to find the answer to my questions or I could go back and add up all the points myself but I would rather be out running, or riding my bike, or snowshoeing, and isn't that really what it is all about.

Another Mountain Lion?

file photo

Yes, yes, y'all there has been another mountain lion in the area although this one was shot by more than just a camera.  Click here to read the news story on  the Macon Chronicle-Herald website.
I'm not saying that I am scared of being attacked by a mountain lion while out trail running, but these recent sightings might signal the end of carefree adventures out on the trails that we have enjoyed in this area for so long.

Remember to be safe out there.

See you on the trails!

A PSA From Trail and Error.

Remember, when you are out on the trails you might not be alone, and pepper spray will only make you more palatable to even the most discriminating mountain lion.

Snowmageddon or Snowpocalypse? You Decide

Last night Mother Nature dropped 12inches of fresh powder on the Edwardsville area.  I woke up early because I knew it would take a while to dig the cars out and get ready to head off to work.  I dug everything out in about an hour and a half of hard labor.  I was taken back to the days when I used to shovel snow as a kid.  Ah, the good old days.  Too bad there weren't any kids out this morning.  I got in the truck and started to back up.  The truck moved a couple feet then the front end started to slide to the right toward the tree.  I did not want to hit the tree but more importantly I did not want to hit the neighbor's car that was parked close to me but on the other side of the tree.  I pulled forward and then tried to back up again, still the front end moved to the right. I was getting closer to the tree so I got out and looked to find that my passenger side front tire was on the other side of the landscape timber that borders my parking area.  It is only a few inches high but combined with the copious amounts of snow it was enough to keep me from pulling out. I called work and told them I was having trouble and would be on my way soon?  After some more digging and scraping I finally made it out onto the road.  Victory is mine!  Not quite, once out on the road basically all my tires did was spin and spin.  After some difficult maneuvering that may have included me pushing the truck, I made it off the street and back into my parking space.  I called work and told them I was going to wait for the plow to come through, but if they didn't come I would just stay home.  As much as I love a day off from work I did not want to use a vacation day.  Well you can't say I didn't try to make it in, and let's face it if you are going to get stuck right outside your house is the place to do it.

Now all that is just a long way of saying SNOW DAY!

YakTrax Pro y'all!

While I was waiting to see if the plow was going to come down my street I decided that it would be a good time for a run.  Why not?  I was already warmed up from all the shoveling and what-not.  Once I was all geared up (including my YakTrax) I headed out the door.  After about a tenth of a mile I had to turn around to get my sunglasses.  The snow was bright and the stuff that was falling was hitting me in the eyes pretty hard.  I was disappointed that I wouldn't be able to hit the trails.  That would have been fun.  I ended up heading out on the MCT Nature trail, since the trail head is so close to my house.  The Nature trail is the trail that I first started running on, and I don't get out there much anymore so it was cool seeing all the old landmarks.

When I first turned off the road I was really enjoying the feeling of the semi-fresh (someone beat me out there) snow fluffing up to my shins with each step.  So refreshing.  After the first mile I decided it wasn't so refreshing anymore, it actually kind of sucked.  It was around this time that I started thinking about how far I was going to punish myself.  I decided that I would run to Beth's office and shovel the snow for them since she always hurts her back when she does it.  I made it to rt157 after what seemed like forever and started to pick up the pace since I wasn't dragging my feet through the snow anymore.  Everything was going fine until I saw the snowplow headed toward me.  At first I thought "Oh crap!" but then decided to wave them on as if to say "hit me with your best shot!"  They moved over to the next lane so I guess I won that round.  When I got to the office Beth was surprised to see me, but not totally surprised.  Over the last 20years she has learned to expect the unexpected.

The snow was fairly easy to shovel and Beth's boss said dinner was on him, Score!

I stopped and took this picture with my phone.
It's not blurry that's just how Big Foot looks.

The rest? from running while shoveling the snow was welcome, since my legs were so tired from running in the snow, but with the snow shoveling finished it was time to hit the road.  I guess I should have mentioned it earlier but I don't like to run on the road when there is snow, the cars and the people get pushed too close together.  Like a good runner I switched sides of the road so I could run facing traffic, however this side of the road did not have the shoulder plowed as well as the other.  At one point I had to sprint and duck into a driveway to avoid getting too close to a big truck.  In truth it probably wasn't that close, but it it was close enough.  I switched back over to the other side where I could cut through some parking lots.  Much safer but the drifts going from parking lot to parking lot were sometimes waist high.  Even though they were so deep they were loosely packed so it wasn't too difficult to power through them.  On my way through the Wendy's parking lot a guy in a truck with a plow almost backed into me, that one was close!  From Wendy's I crossed over and ran through the High School parking lot them it was back onto the Nature trail.  Once on the trail nothing interesting happened just a long slow mile and a half to home.

I can't really say how much the YakTrax helped but they certainly didn't hurt.  I plan to use them more this year in different conditions.  I know some people who swear by them.

Even though this was the toughest 5miles I have ever run I still thoroughly enjoyed it.  Running in the snow is by far my favorite running scenario.  Hopefully we will get more snow this winter as long as I can get to work on time.