I won’t have many more days like today. For the past year or so, I have been mostly working out of my home office, which has given me a certain amount of freedom that I won’t have in the very near future. This week I am basically unemployed, having finished my final contract with Ryati last week. Next week I’ll be in San Francisco at Google IO. The week after that I will start a new job at Adobe. So, you can see, my days of total freedom combined with amazing weather are quite limited. It behooves me to use them wisely. That’s exactly what I did today.

I spent 3 or 4 hours yesterday working the tiller through about 4,000 square feet of garden in my back yard. It looks great, but it really wore out my arms and back. I also came away with two very inconveniently placed blisters – right in the fold between each thumb and index finger. By itself, that’s not much of a big deal, but it really makes it difficult to ride a bike, shift gears, brake, etc.

As promised on Monday, I ran today without walking. Unfortunately, I ran slower today than I did on Monday, but I’m still very happy with the result. I blame the slightly slower run on the fact that RunKeeper only has one setting for audio cues, which is just stupid. I *never* want audio cues for anything other than running, and I *always* want them when I run. Unfortunately, because of bad design, I am forced to go into settings before each activity and change the setting. Today I forgot to do that, so I had no audio cues once again. Oh well, like I said, I’m still happy with the end result.

29:33

It’s definitely time to add more distance to my runs. I’ll look into that when I get back from Google IO.

After running, I chugged 10 ounces of chocolate milk. Then I debated working in the garden again, but it didn’t stand a chance against my favorite option: biking. Charmaine challenged me to ride up Provo Canyon to Vivian Park and see if I could go up South Fork. When I got to Vivian Park, there was no way I was going up South Fork. The wind was howling down that canyon so hard that it nearly blew me off my bike as I rode past.

The wind was an interesting beast today. It was very gusty, and I’m talking about extreme gusts. One time, while riding down hill and pedaling, the wind hit me and brought me to a complete stop. I was dumbfounded. Of course, most the time the gusts came from the sides, which made me a little nervous, but sometimes the wind got behind me and gave me that push I needed to keep going up. After deciding not to turn or stop at Vivian Park, I thought I should try to ride up to Deer Creek dam. The wind was a good friend on the way up. It seemed to get behind me every time I really needed it. It kept building and getting stronger as I got closer to the top. I went sailing up and across the dam with a huge grin on my face, but then I realized a subtle problem with my plan. I was on a divided highway and couldn’t just turn around. I had to keep riding until there was a break in the divider. Luckily, that wasn’t all that far.

48.69 miles

The ride back down the canyon was very difficult. That strong wind that helped me up the canyon was still building. My speed going down was quite a bit slower than my speed going up. Think about that. Part of the reason for that was safety. When you’re riding into a serious headwind and a semi trailer blows past you, it sucks you in way more than normal. If that happens right when there’s a side gust, it’s not fun. It didn’t take too long to get back down, but my legs were toast. I had anticipated being able to rest on the way back down, but it just didn’t happen. I didn’t know how far I had gone, but I figured I should just get home and get some food. Other than that 10 ounces of chocolate milk, the only other thing I had eaten was a small bowl of cereal. I would have had more had I known what I was about to do. Oh well, I’m still very happy.

It may be 6 weeks late, but it seems to finally be warming up a bit. Today was another beautiful day. I had a great first 2 miles, but then I walked the second half of the hill on Ironwood. I think I walked for about a minute, which means I probably cost myself 20 to 40 seconds by walking. That was the difference between the time I earned, and what would have been a new record.

29:02

It is sort of interesting to me that I can walk and still get my second fastest time ever, but I’m committing to not walk again… at least until I add more distance to my loop. I seem to have all this energy left over when I’m done running. Today there was a great debate between working in the garden (it really needs it) or riding my bike. My bike won. But I think it’s definitely time to add some more distance to my runs.

Despite feeling like I had a lot of energy, my legs felt pretty tired when I tried to make them climb the hill in Alpine. I had set out thinking I might even go up Suncrest today, but after the slow climb into Alpine, I doubted I would do the Suncrest climb. When I actually got to Suncrest Drive, my legs just said no. I wasn’t going to let them off that easily though, so we headed down towards the lake. I thought I might try the loop I did the other day, but in reverse. Well, I’m terrible with navigation and directions. I got a little lost in Lehi, trying to find a way under the freeway. I did eventually find the same one I had used the other day, but then I went off some other way and wound up over by Saratoga Springs.

When I crossed the new Pioneer Crossing highway today, I noticed that it had “Bike Route” signs. I decided to try it on my way back from Saratoga. I liked it a lot. Well, I stopped liking it when it dropped me onto US-89 in American Fork, but the traffic was light, so it wasn’t too big of a deal this time. Once I found Center Street in American Fork, I was back on my home turf. I love taking that road up to the cemetery and then jumping over to the Alpine Highway, which also has a great bike lane. There was a little bit of wind coming out of the canyon as I headed towards the final hill, but there was no wind going up the last big hill. I was still slow. My legs were pretty burned up by then, but it wasn’t too bad.

32.99 miles

I only wish my legs had more juice so I could have stayed out longer. It was that good.

I woke up to the sound this or that electronic gadget making noise a few times last night, but I knew today was a run day. All morning I kept thinking about how hard the run was going to be for this reason or that, starting with my perceived lack of sleep. As it turns out, my run was hard. It was exactly as hard as I thought it would be. I am pretty sure my thinking that it would be hard, made it hard for me. I’m such a psychological runner.

I did manage to recover fairly well from the last hill and sustained climb through mile 3, but is that really an accomplishment when I went so slow prior to that point? I’m not sure. It was probably the prettiest day and the best weather I’ve seen all year, so it was still nice just to be outside.

30:33

After I came in and mused about what a waste it would be to not spend more time outside, I convinced myself to go on a bike ride. I had no plan for where I would go, and I ran into quite a bit of construction detours and flaggers making me stop here and there, but it was awesome to be out there.

28.7 miles

At about mile 20, I decided to tack on an extra jaunt up through Alpine, to get a little climbing in. Around mile 27, as I headed towards the final climb up Canyon Rd, I found myself questioning the decision to tack on that extra climb. Just moments after that, a member of the Adobe cycling team went flying past me and up the big hill. I thought about trying to keep up, but quickly realized my legs had nothing left. I didn’t really care, in fact, having nothing left almost made it better. I had a huge smile on my face. It was such a great day to ride.

I didn’t run well today. It all started last night. I couldn’t sleep. I don’t sleep well when Charmaine is out of town. To make myself tired, I read a few chapters of Ron Paul’s new book, Liberty Defined. It’s an excellent read, but I won’t get into that here. I got tired of reading before I got tired of being awake, so I watched episode after episode Fringe, until I had finished all of season 2. By this time, it was almost 3 in the morning. I finally went to bed. I didn’t get up until 9 or 10, but I had been awake for a few hours listening to the construction workers building my neighbor’s guest house (ok, it’s just a shed, but it’s huge). I guess because I had been lying there staring into space for so long, I forgot to eat breakfast and just went about my day. By noon I realized I hadn’t eaten yet, which is not the right way to start a run, so I grabbed a can of the Costco equivalent of SlimFast and chugged it. 20 minutes later I was trying to run. Like I said before, it didn’t go well.

By the time I hit the first hill, maybe 1/4 mile into the run, I was toast. I walked up the hill. I convinced myself to jog into The Cedars, but then I walked again as I rounded the park. I knew I could run the whole 2nd mile, because it’s mostly downhill. My time on that one was 9:01, which is pretty good for me, especially considering how the day started. I walked up the next hill, but jogged out the rest of mile 3. Sadly, that made my overall time better than Wednesday, which means I need to figure out how to get back in the game.

31:24

I was actually feeling pretty good by the time I got home and had a big glass of chocolate milk. The weather was amazing, so I decided I would go for a little ride on my bike. It felt quite a bit cooler on my bike than it had when I was running, but it wasn’t too bad.

18.85 miles

I took it easy, but still had some fun. It was just what the doctor ordered.