Push Up Challenge

August 1 begins the pushup challenge (two more days). I don't believe single-arm pushups, like the female in the image is doing, are necessary. But go ahead if you are in that kind of shape.

What if you can't do 15 pushups to start day one? Begin with the number you can do, be it one or two or five, whatever. Try modified pushups with your knees on the ground if you need to. The important thing is to just do it.

If you already can do more than 15 then start with whatever that number is and then add to it each day as above.

Make sure you are using good form, no saggy midsections. Once your form fails stop, there is no sense getting injured or doing them poorly.

Westward Ho!

We recently completed our cross-country adventure, traveling from upstate New York to Beaverton, Oregon. Not exactly a journey like the pioneers of the 1800's traveling the Oregon Trail, though Jan insisted everyday on wearing dresses like the woman below. They got a bit cumbersome on our hikes and runs, but otherwise seemed to work well. At least Jan didn't have to worry about ticks or snake bites, they wouldn't get through the dress material. My beard didn't get that long, though there were many days shaving seemed to be an unnecessary evil.

Amazingly I have a top ten list of what I liked best about the trip from east to west across the states!

1. Camping just outside of the main entrance to Devil's Tower National Monument, hiking around the base of the Tower and the next day running on a couple of the trails. Our KOA Kamping Kabin had a direct view of the Tower.
2. Having the speed limit be 80 mph in many of the states. The first 80 mph sign we saw was in Minnesota as we headed toward South Dakota. It makes one wonder why NY can't be at least 70 mph from the border near Erie, Pa to south of Buffalo.

3. Driving highway 59 and 387 through extremely rural Wyoming. Make sure the gas tank is full before leaving Gillette, it's pretty much the last chance for 200 miles. The road was extremely lightly traveled and more interesting, in a desolate kind of way, than the interstate. We probably didn't see 40 vehicles on these roads.
4. Lava Hot Springs, Idaho. A tiny town in the south part of the state. We stayed at a small local motel called the Alpaca Inn. Very peaceful. We swam laps in their local community pool, went to the springs twice, hiked and relaxed.
5. Craters of the Moon National Monument, Idaho. You have to want to go there to get there. It's not on the way to anything. It's worth the side trip if you like weird things Mother Nature has to offer. Remnants of volcanic activity that you can drive and hike around in a few hours. From there we drove to;
6. Hailey, Idaho.  A neat small town heading toward Sun Valley, Idaho. We basically picked staying there for a night by chance. I got to run on a trail while Jan biked alongside. The motel was great, they even had a pancake machine for breakfast! Yes, I'm a rube. We had the motel pool and hot tub to ourselves. The town is nestled in a valley with gorgeous mountains all around. It's a place you could spend a week visiting.
7. Traveling for 9 days with Jan. She was the navigator I was the driver. There were only a few meltdowns by me when traffic was an issue or we were "lost".
8. Running Pre's Trail in Eugene, Oregon. It was hot, we got lost thanks to my poor sense of direction, probably the only people to get lost on a mostly circular trail, but I'm still glad we did it.
9. Hiking up the Centennial Trail in Lava Hot Springs. I can say we liked it even though the 45-50 minutes "easy" walk/run turned into 2 1/2 hours of mostly being lost because we made it back down the mountain and have a story to tell. It was also nice recovering with a gallon of water each, then having dinner and plenty of wine before heading to the hot springs and soaking while looking up at the stupid mountain again and saying, "hey, we made it all the way up there!"
10. Being away from work, disconnected for long periods from the noise of the world. We had free satellite radio and hardly used that, the local stations, cd's or anything else considering all the time we spent on the road. That was nice.

Runs Like a Welshman?

For our July 4th race Jan and I did a 5k uberthons.comUberthon event in Beaverton, Oregon. We got lucky with the weather as it was only 60 degrees at the 8:30am start time. It was a fairly small race with 363 participants. After traveling 3,200 miles in 10 days with a mix of running, weights, 2 swim workouts, lots of walking and a couple of hikes in the hills we didn't have huge expectations for finishing times.
Ten things about this race;
1. Nice flat out and back course making getting lost even hard for me.
2. Start and finish at same place, nice for spectators.
3. Electronic timing at start/finish.
4. Didn't wear Garmin, figured mile markers would be enough for a short race. There were no mile markers.
5. 20 port-a-johns! For just 300+ people! Many NY races don't have that many for 1,000 runners.
6. Not knowing the city well I picked a cross street that during my warmup run took about three minutes to get to from the finish line. I knew coming back in the race I would be pretty tired at this point, but having a landmark to know the slowest it would take me to finish would be helpful.
7. A weird start. The announcer let about 70 people go first then made the rest of us wait 8 seconds before going. It didn't matter with the chip timing but if you were actually racing a person or for an age group award it did make a difference.
8. I sprinted in the last 250 yards trying to beat a guy who appeared to be in my AG. Turned out he was one group older, but my kick still worked.
9. Most results were up in a few minutes, Jan's took awhile. We walked away with 2 third place awards though! Two hours later I checked the complete results and discovered I was 4th, not 3rd, by three seconds. There was no one within 3 seconds of me at the finish. I think this may have had something to do with weird start and I just never saw the guy? Oh well, still had a good race, running almost the same time I did in my 5k in Rochester in late June. Jan also ran well 8:57 pace.
10. Our 3 year granddaughter ran her first race 1/4 mile, which was cool. She also got to hear the bear (me breathing during my sprint).

The "running like a Welshman" part? That's what my son-in-law said my running style looked like, which I am taking as a compliment! http://youtu.be/8kG9j5Io6yw

Running the Pre Trail

Jan and I drove to Eugene, Oregon today to run the Steve Prefontaine trail. We had hoped to stay in Eugene but the motel prices were double or triple normal due to the Olympic Trials. One day ticket prices were $90-180 per person, if you could even find an unobstructed  view of the track.
The path seemed easy enough looking at the map. Alas, it wasn't to be. The promised quarter mile marks were non-existent. The color-coded green, red and yellow markers were not to be found. So we took off with much hope for an easy 4 mile run with no water.
Thirty minutes later we had to backtrack after realizing we had no idea where we were. We ended up with a very solid 4 miles on a nice smooth wood chip path, but not without some anguish on an uncomfortable hot day. Still, one more running goal off our bucket list.