Bandy Road Trip 2017 (part 2)

There’s nothing quite like driving through heavy lightning and thunder with Goofy singing “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” blaring through the speakers. While Katie and I cautiously navigated the Northern Utah mountain roads, Iris was singing away, jovial as can be. Of the many discoveries I made this trip, my wife’s intense fear of lightning was one of the funniest. I’ll qualify that statement by saying it’s not funny that Katie is afraid of lightning and thunder—I’m no masochist, after all—but the circumstances surrounding this discovery were amusing at least to me.

The weather was already in the nineties on the morning of our departure to the Wasatch Mountain State Park campground in Midway, Utah. Temperatures continued to rise during our drive through the desert and topped out somewhere above 110 ℉, which is scorching in case you weren’t aware. This being the case, we were dressed accordingly in shorts, tanks or tees, and sandals. Though the temperatures were nowhere near freezing by the time we finally arrived at our destination, we were severely underdressed for a cool, rainy thunderstorm.

Midway through the drive, as we headed further North, the weather grew bleaker with ominous clouds appearing more and more frequently. The forecast I’d checked a few days prior showed partly cloudy but warm weather so I kept hoping it would clear up, but to the contrary, it only proceeded to get worse. A light drizzle turned to rain, and then the flashing began.

First they appeared in the distance, as if someone has taken a picture with flash somewhere in the vicinity. Soon, however, we could see bolts streaking across what seemed like the entire sky followed by thunder that rattled the windows. We turned the Mickey Mouse soundtrack louder so Iris couldn’t hear Katie shuddering with each strike, and we made our way toward what we thought was the campground. Unfortunately, there was no campground at our destination, just a park with a few signs near the entrance of a building.

Katie jumped out and ran to read the sign while I scanned Google Maps to try and figure out where we were supposed to be. Despite the stress of the moment, I couldn’t help but laugh at the predicament. It’s the middle of June and Katie’s getting drenched in the rain while thunder and lighting go off all around us. (If you’re wondering, I volunteered to go out but didn’t have my shoes on at the time. I got plenty wet when we set up camp.)

I won’t forget setting up our tent in the rain only for it to cease almost at the exact moment of our completion or the look on Katie’s face as she stood out in the rain trying to figure out where we needed to be. This road trip was filled with little moments like this that I’m so grateful to have experienced. I thought I’d go into detail about at least one memory from this trip before highlighting some of the other moments from Iris and recapitulating my training.

One lesson from this particular story: when road tripping with a toddler, be sure to dress for the destination and keep some cheery, kid-friendly tunes for the ride.

Dad is the Best

We spent an inordinate amount of time together as a family during this road trip. If my memory serves me correctly, however, I’d say there were far more moments of joy, peace, and laughter, than moments of frustration or irritation. Overall, Iris was a champ. She blew through hours driving in a car, hikes in 3 different states, camping without running water, a likely UTI, bug bites, shopping, and even a tour of the Coor’s factory (it’s cooler than you might think). I couldn’t possibly list every great moment with Iris, but here are a few highlights:

Iris can make friends anywhere

-After driving for hours in the car, I was giving Katie directions to where we were heading when Iris said the following: “You guys better stop fighting [we weren’t fighting] otherwise I’m going to freak out again, and if I freak out again I’m going to throw up everywhere!”

-Again in the car, It had been quiet for a good 20 or 30 minutes when Iris breaks the silence with, “Ah, CRAPPERS!” I have no idea where she heard this phrase, but I’m not even mad.

-We’d been on the road for about a week but still had a lot of road and fun ahead of us when Iris looked up from her chair in the campground and said, “Ok, I’m ready to go home. Can we go home now? No? What about Grandma’s house? Can we go there now?”

Not exactly swimming, but this will do.

-Iris accidentally pooped on the ground and in her pants.

-In Utah, Iris led the hike for a bit and spontaneously burst into a run, shouting, “This is fun! This is fun!”

-In Colorado, Iris made best friends with a kind family a few campsites over. They played “Chase the Monster,” “Catch the Lacrosse Ball that I’m Going to Throw in a Random Direction,” “Bubble King/Queen,” “Ring the Glow Sticks,” and, of course, “Tag.”

She's got a great poker face. Don't let her fool you into thinking she wasn't having a blast. This is moments before she got pee all over her shorts and had to use Katie's shirt as a dress.

Brew Overview

I enjoy craft beer. Fortunately for me, we live in a great time when microbreweries can be found on almost every corner so it’s easy for me to find tasty brews. I was afforded this opportunity many times during this trip and one such case occurred at Altitude Chop House and Brewery in Laramie, WY. This lovely little spot was definitely one of the nicer restaurants in the town that featured creative menu offerings and a variety of house beers.

Photo courtesy of altitudechophouse.com

Did you know Wyoming had delicious beers? Let me tell you a little bit about their Cat’s Meow IPA.

“This west coast IPA has a strong new world hop aroma and a crisp finish” (altitudechophouse.com). Clocking in at 6.8% ABV, it was a perfect beverage to enjoy over dinner. Despite being completely landlocked, Altitude nailed this west coast style brew, and it was a joy to drink this beer’s unique but familiar flavors.

Photo courtesy of altitudechophouse.com

Weekly Workout Summary

I fell short of the scheduled mileage in the second half of the trip because I played it safe and took an additional day off. With all of the traveling and poor sleep, I think this was the best decision. My ankle was bothering me, and, again, my main goal throughout this process is to continue to maintain good health. Plus, it was 110℉ in Vegas which is not a fun environment for running.

Week 1

Monday - 3 easy miles in Vegas (early before the heat) and some core strength training exercises
Tuesday - rest day
Wednesday - 2.5 mile hike in Midway, Utah with Iris and Katie
Thursday - 4 mile trail run in Midway by myself
Friday - 3 easy miles running up Utah hills
Saturday - 5 miles total in Laramie Wyoming. 35 minutes running and 1-2 miles hiking with family
Sunday - rest day

Total weekly mileage: 17.5 (inside the goal of  16-19 miles)

Week 2

Monday - 4 miles at hotel treadmill in Cheyenne, WY. Worked in some tempo intervals.
Tuesday - rest day
Wednesday - 4 miles hiking with the family in Colorado
Thursday - 5-6 miles  in Grand Junction, CO. I ran for an hour around a park while Iris played. It broke up the driving, but running after driving for 5 hours and then getting back in a car immediately thereafter for another 6 hours is not ideal running conditions.
Friday - 4 easy miles in Hurricane, UT.
Saturday - rest (should have run 6-9 miles but decided against it based on how my ankle was feeling)
Sunday - rest

Total weekly mileage: 17 (under the weekly goal of 21-25)

As always, thanks for reading. I hope you're able to get something out of these. It's a bit of work but well worth it for me.

Will write again soon.

Be well,
UltraDadRunner

Bonus Pictures

I have no idea where this is but we stopped here to take some sweet photos flying Katie's broom.

The first school in Wyoming is at Fort Bridger, which is confusingly on the Southwest side of the state.

Iris made everyone in that urgent care center smile including this cheery med tech.

Is there a wizard up in that tree?

Katie's convinced this is where Bella and Edward made out at some point.

When in Denver, try beer from a brewery based in Portland (oops!)

Yes, that's right. Iris fell asleep with her eyes partially open.

Bandy Road Trip 2017 (Part One)

I’m baaack! Did you miss me? I apologize for my absence, but I have been traveling the past two weeks on our family’s first big camping road trip. 

We drove roughly 2,500 miles in Katie’s Saturn Vue from California to Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, and back. This country of ours is beautiful, remarkable and vast. After camping in three different states, hiking some of the most breathtaking trails I’ve ever seen, and exploring both big cities and random historical sites along the way, we had a fulfilling, unforgettable experience. 

If you’re curious about more specific details of the trip, let me know the next time I see you or feel free to shoot me an e-mail. There’s far too much to relay here, but I did have a few bigger impressions I’d like to share.

First, I’m proud that we were able to make this trip a reality. Katie has such fond memories of camping growing up, and it’s been important for her to reproduce those memories and feelings for Iris. Much time, planning, and preparation has gone into slowly acquiring the materials and gaining experience both in the car and at campsites, and we finally have actualized her vision in a massive way.

Many shudder at the idea of essentially traveling the length of the United States over the span of two weeks with a packed-to-the-brim SUV and a highly active toddler, but we met that challenge and exceeded even our own expectations. Iris was a rockstar (more on that later), we stayed relatively within our budget, and we successfully averted disasters along the way. With this trip in the rear view mirror, I’m beginning to believe I may actually be an adult—or at least close to one.

Katie insists that these roadside stops are the best. Iris took some convincing.

This outhouse is over a hundred years old. Hopefully most of the waste is fully dried out. Hopefully.

I am now officially the king of creating fires. Wyoming also allows you to collect your own firewood. What?!

The second impression I have from this trip is that I’m incredibly grateful for the life that I have. There are definitely not many commas in our bank account, but we are fortunate to have the luxury of traveling this great country of ours. Could things be better? Always. I think, however, that it is really easy to forget how great we have it when we focus too much on what is lacking. This trip helped me appreciate all the good in my life.

One final impression I’ll share before I get on with the rest of this post is that I am excited for the future. We are at a very pivotal period for our family. I will  be starting my new career soon. Katie will finish school in a year or so. We have worked hard and sacrificed time and effort to put our family in a better position, and we’re finally on the verge of reaping the rewards. I’m looking forward to the adventures to come, one of which is this crazy 50k I’m training for. Here’s a bit of a recap of what I experienced and learned these past few weeks.

Oh, Colorado... The Rocky Mountains are a sight to see.

Sweet Altras that Katie got me for Father's Day. Also, there were dogs everywhere.

Fortunately, Iris loves drinking out of this backpack so she was well hydrated on our hikes. Wearing your hat backwards makes you cool, or it keeps your neck from burning in the sun, or it's both. You tell me.

Runner Highs and Lows

A two-week-long road trip with a 2,500 miles of driving while mostly tent-camping is not the ideal situation to begin officially training for my 50k, I’ll grant you that. I wasn’t sure how the training was going to pan out because we would be spending a lot of time in the car, we wanted to hike together as a family, and I didn’t know where exactly I’d be running, but surprisingly it worked out fairly well.

Here are a few quick lessons I learned:

Hiking miles are a good substitute for “easy day” miles. I know running works different muscles, but at least I was able to get the mileage in, which I think is helpful. Plus, the 50k will consist of a fair amount of hiking so the training was still beneficial.

Iris led the charge on numerous occasions. She's sporadically start running and screaming like a banshee.

Life is good when you get pee on your pants and your mom is willing to wear a sweater in the heat so you can use her shirt as a dress.

Sorry, kiddo. There are way too many spiders for you to crawl and play down there.

Running on trails in the mountains is the best kind of running. This was my first chance to explore new trails while running, and I’m hooked! I got to see far more of the mountains than I would have were I hiking. It was also nice to receive encouragement and support from other hikers on the trails. One couple who both appeared to be enjoying their retirement by hiking in Laramie, WY shouted at me as I ran past: “We wish we had that kind of energy! Keep it up!”

Wyoming isn't all plains. This is in Medicine Bow National Forest (just outside Laramie).

Can you hear the trail calling you to see what other sights there are to see?

Sleeping in a tent doesn’t provide for the best rest. I attempted to keep my effort levels and mileage aligned with my rest. When I felt like I got decent sleep, I’d run a bit harder or further. On days when I was exhausted, I tried to take it easy. I stuck to the training schedule as much as I could and improvised along the way. I think it’s important to be flexible and look at training from a macro perspective. I have a lot of training left in front of me. If I miss a couple miles here and there because my body is fighting me, that’s OK. Endurance is a game of persistence and consistency.

By far this was the coolest campground we had. Likely, it's the coolest I've ever visited. Note the sweet, level tent pad, trees for some shade, and the rocks for climbing and jumping.

Running doesn’t go well with sitting in a car for extended periods of time on poor sleep. In retrospect, I may have benefit from an additional day or two of rest or broken up the mileage a little more to make it easier on my body. Aches and pains piled up along the way because my body wasn’t healing enough. Especially early on, it’s not worth having a small niggle turn into a debilitating injury because I got overzealous. I’m grateful for my body allowing me to complete what I have thus far and want to be as nice as possible to it so that it allows me to continue.

Two weeks was a long time to be constantly shifting both in place and routine, but I have survived and am still ready for more. It was so nice to get some rest and feel fully recovered. I have some good workouts to share in week 3.

This was the last run I did of the trip. I ran in Hurricane, UT (just outside of Zion) in the morning before some of the heat kicked in. The road ended here, and I turned around and ran back to our hotel.

Because it’s been a few weeks since my last post and so much happened on this trip, I decided to break the post into two parts. I’m hoping to get you all up to date with my training and everything in this next week or two, and I think this is enough to share for now.

In the next few days, I’ll post some parenting memories/reflections and highlight a cool brewery we got to try out in Laramie. I hope this brings some light to your day.

Will write again soon.


Be well,
UltraDadRunner

Blips on the Radar

Does a week ever pass so quickly you weren’t able to really processed that anything happened? That was this last week for me. At first I thought, Man, I didn't do anything last week. In looking at my calendar and training log, however, I see that I worked 5 days, spent time with my family, and threw in some really strong runs.

I half-dread writing these entries sometimes. It's daunting to take the time to actually out the words down. Why waste the time? Who really cares?

Those questions are ultimately misguided. When I'm my best self I realize that these are largely for me. I share them in hopes that they might inspire others, but I know that I benefit from them.

I am holding myself accountable to a goal. Documenting the process along the way will keep me focused. It also helps me be more mindful about how I'm living right now. As an added bonus, it will be a time capsule of sorts, a way to remember details I would otherwise miss about this time in my life. I can live with that.

So, in this week in which “nothing happened,” here's what happened.

Runner Highs and Lows

This week’s training goal was to get some good, hard runs in combined with strength/core training so that I could get a taste of what my official training will look like a couple months in. Contrary to last week, I made a plan for this week and executed accordingly. This was my last opportunity to make some improvements before taking a rest week and subsequently beginning my official 50k training. Of the workouts I did, there were two highlights.

First, I had a solid tempo run on Thursday. I planned to go 6 miles with miles 2-4 being at a harder effort. Even in the afternoon heat I was able to output a solid performance. I huffed and puffed my way through the last tempo mile but finished mile 4 feeling strong. Thanks to Strava, I was able to see that these tempo miles are my fastest 5k effort to date (since high school, anyway).

This run went well not only because of this but also because I’d not exhausted myself to the point where I could go no further. I didn’t finish very fast, but I was able to finish at a slow and steady pace. Once finished, this felt like one of my most productive runs to date. It was balanced, and finished running precisely the way I intended to. That, and I got to cool off by jumping into the pool.

The second high of the week was my long run on Saturday morning. If you’ve kept up with the blog thus far you know that last week’s 11-mile long run was rough. My legs felt heavy, and I had to force myself to finish. This week, however, I ran 12 miles with seeming ease. What a difference a week can make.

Beginning on the Pacific Electric Trail (PET), I ran for a few miles and then ventured up a random wash to explore a bit. I discovered a beautiful trail with a wide dirt path that’s shaded by giant trees. Traffic was almost nonexistent during my crossings, and I had a peaceful, serene jaunt to my mile 6 turnaround.

I hydrated well and ate enough calories that my travel back was just as solid as I started. Unlike last week when my final miles progressively got slower, I finished this run with my last mile being my strongest (at 8:26). Even more, I was able to successfully work a 6-hour shift at the restaurant after my run without feeling like I was falling apart.

I could not have asked for a better week to lead into my rest week. I feel good now taking the time to recover and will hopefully start my official 50k training healthy, fit, and ready.

Dad is the Best

Iris and I got to hang out a lot this week as Katie has been finishing up her semester, part of which involves clocking the last of her 60 field hours at the animal shelter in Norco (SO MANY HOURS!).

On Friday, Iris and I ran to the park to have lunch and hang out for a bit. Iris will be participating in a race of her own this Saturday, and she wanted to train like her dad. I took her on plenty of training runs, and, when I suggested we run to the park she said,  “Dad, I gotta train for my race!”

So we ran to the park. Well, there was some running that took place. Iris, like most kids her age, likes to run when there's a game involved. It doesn't have to be a regimented game. Chasing each other around or running down a hill as fast as possible are fun enough goals on their own.

If there is a destination in mind, however, the impetus dissipates. While this can be frustrating at times, it mostly serves as a great reminder for what life should be.

I'll be the first to admit I'm terrible at it. Where are we going, and how efficiently can we get there? I tend to attribute part of this to living in Southern California, but I think parts of it are also modern society and the nature of humans.

Why are we in such a hurry? Where are we going that’s so important? What are we missing along the way?

While I'm running I miss a lot of rocks, trees, bugs, flowers, and nasty bird feathers which are likely infested with unspeakable diseases. What am I missing in life? The ability to enjoy the moment, to appreciate the place I’m in right now.

This is a lesson I have been struggling with for years. When I was at Norco college, I tried to take a look at life through an expanded perspective. What did I want to do in the long-term?

All the things I wanted to do seemed out of reach so in my head that the best I could hope for was eeking out a living until I could eventually retire and then I'd be able to start living. WHAT?! Asinine to think now, but I that's how my deranged mind worked at the time.

I remember a conversation I had with one of my English professors at the time. I was contemplating going to school to get my PhD in English. “But there's just so much schooling,” I whined at him.

“Yes, but you can live along the way,” he shot back.

But how? I wondered but was too embarrassed to ask. 

My brain’s tendency was/is to see life as all or nothing. The way I saw it, I couldn't really live until I finished school. Well, then I'd have to get a job and wouldn't really be able to live until I could buy a house. But then, I wouldn't really be able to start living until I retired.

I’ve invested time in appreciating the moment and being present in my daily life, but I know I still have a long way to go.

May we be like Iris, appreciating the bugs and flowers on our journey to the park.

Brew Overview

Katie bought me some awesome brews this week. Saturday, after my long run and walking around at work for 6 hours, the idea of enjoying Wolf Among Weeds had me nearly salivating.
This double IPA is packed full of flavor without too much edge.

This beer is, “Gold in color, this full-bodied IPA is a balanced showcase of the majestic hop specie, in Latin, Humulus Lupulus, which translates “Wolf Among Weeds”. At 8%, Wolf will sneak up on you from behind the dank earthy hop notes and subtle rye spice” (goldenroad.la).

We got to enjoy this brew while Iris swam around the pool like a fish, jumping and splashing with all alacrity.

Weekly Workout Summary

This was the last actual training week before my official training kicks off. Next week will be a few easy runs to allow my body to fully heal before beginning my 50k training plan.

• Monday - Rest
• Tuesday - 3.3 easy miles plus core/strength training
• Wednesday - 6 miles with 3 at tempo pace (higher effort)
• Thursday - Swimming with some core and PT work
• Friday - 3.2 easy miles running to the park and back with Iris
• Saturday - 12.1 long miles on the PET
• Sunday - Rest

Total weekly mileage: 24.6

Should I break this up into 2 different entries and just post twice a week? What do you think?


Will write again soon.

Be well,
UltraDadRunner