Catching Up

Hi there!  Looks like we have rain coming our way towards next week, woo hooo!!  Los Alamos fire is doing better the evacuation was lifted.  The Sacramento  fire  evacuation was lifted.  We are seeing the effects still with smokey skies and abundant wildlife in areas they wouldn’t normally venture.  

I went to the mountains for the long weekend to visit the parents.  It was an awesome 75 degrees for the high and I did a 10 mile run on Saturday and 32 mile bike ride Sunday.  This is at 9,000 feet and I normally train at 5,400 feet.  There were also lots of hills to be conquered along the way.  For my run I was a more than disappointed with how slow I was.  It took me 1:50 to run the 10 miles.  I could tell myself it was the altitude, hills, and the fact that I totally forgot to take any water but I still thought I felt way better than that while I was running!  

I even got to learn about the Solar System while on my ride!  That's what happens when you ride towards a town called Sunspot..

Then on the ride it took me 2:20 and I felt good, granted pretty slow on the hills, there were a few at 9% incline and one was a 2 mile hill that felt like 10.  I saw three deer on my run.  On my bike I saw coyotes and a bear crossed the street right in front of me!  I will admit it was a little nerve racking, I was wandering how hungry he was.  I almost stopped to take a picture then I decided to just keep going.  I was going so slow up that hill though that I attempted to take my camera out of my back pocket and snap a picture, needless to say it came out blurry.  Got a flat with only 2 miles left to go and tried to ride it in as far as possible then walked it in the last ¼ to ½ mile to the car.  The nice forest service had left me a warning on my car windshield thinking I had gone into the forbidden forest but I was on the road.  I have too much respect for our open spaces to ever risk being the reason for damage to it.  

My legs were fairly fatigued from these hard workouts and that combined with reading fellow blogger’s opinions about compression socks I went to go buy a pair.  Then I saw they were $60 and decided I’d wait a bit, especially since I don’t think they are fully proven to work.  What is your opinion on those? 

My dear little dog is such a nervous car rider that I had to give her some puppy downers to try and calm her and with that she still let out some ear piercing yelps at passing cars (I don’t think my bro and his gf will ever travel with me and my dog again)  so we covered her line of sight with the window visors.  This seemed to work but the poor thing was so worked up and exhausted by the time the trip was over she’s still recovering.  I don’t know what to do other than not take road trips anymore.  She did seem to really love our trip to White Sands the only problem is she kept trying to eat the sand!  It was pretty funny watching her chase the sand down the hill and try to attack it if I kicked it.  I took an extra day off from work and it turned out to be an ENTIRE day of errands UGH! Which meant no workout on Tuesday.  Oh and on Mon. when we went to the pool I was told it was the 4^th of July so I should relax every once in a while and compromise by only being at the pool for 1 hour, which he failed to mention that 1 hour included my shower time, so I only got 800 yds in, don’t say I never compromise..  :-p

Did you know that Body Combat is just cardio kickboxing?  I tried it yesterday to overcome my lack of motivation and the class was so unorganized I could only stand it for 25 minutes then I ran to the treadmill and found my motivation again!

Hope everyone had a happy Independence Day!  There I’m up to date and will now catch up on some blog reading!