Time? We don't need no stinking time!

Today was a non stop from about the time I got up at 7:30 till 8:30 and I still plan on running up to Woodmans for some shopping to get ready for new years. The day started with Running 1.5 miles, the climbed for about an hour and half. My folks showed up which is always fun, cause they take pictures. I boy do I love me so pictures. They also took some video, not sure where or how i'll post these, but i'm sure i'll figure something out.
Woodfield was packed! We did manage to do a number of returns and pick up a lot of fun stuff! Cloths cloths cloths! I had the best feeling today (sorry if i'm gloating here.....) walking in to stores thinking...I need new pants.....grabbing my size, trying them on and them fitting right off the bat. What a wonderful experience! Ok, i'm done now. I did also manage to swing by REI today and pick up a new watch (see above) for training and a second Mountain Hardware beanie. The Nike Triax has a twisted face, which took some getting used to. I will now be switching between this watch and my Ti-Chrono Seiko watch depending on the activity. But I hope to use this to better track my running times. A digital watch does this far more effectively then an analog one.

Sweet.......

2.02 Miles in 18:30!

Things that make me happy:

While I was out for my run tonight I started thinking of all the things that make me happy:

My wife, Kristen.
My Family
My Friends
My pups, Scout and Homer
My kitties, Maggie and yes....even Kramer

...the little things...
Trips to the dog park
Climbing
My morning run
Hiking
Reading
Under Armor (especially when it's right out of the dryer)
Sleeping
my iPods
Vacuuming
Camping out on cold nights

I am sure there is more and I will continue to add to my list. But for now I think that will do.

Sleep.....a lot.....

Today was restful and stuffing.....
This morning I woke up to 35 F degrees and rain....a lot of rain. I let the dogs out to go to the bathroom and they had different plan. Lets run across the field and try and find their buddy Porky Pug (my brother inlaws dog) to see if he can come out to play. (People who say that dogs are not like people are crazy). So I put on my hiking boots, rain coat and still wearing my pj's I took off across the field after them. They are good dogs, but the weather here the last 2 days and the 6 hour car ride, has given them cabin fever and they just wanted out. As soon as they saw me they came right back and followed be back to the Huff's. While drying off I had some coffee and breakfast......Watched "A Christmas Story" a few times. Ate dinner/lunch around noon. Around about 12:30-1:00...I fell a sleep on the couch. I only remember a few things, bits a pieces of "Office Space" and at one point one of the dogs had jump on the couch with me and slept under my legs for an hour..(I think) I woke up about 5:00-5:30. Apparently I needed sleep. I think i'm going to start focusing on getting at least 6 or 7 hours a night.

Saturday morning:

The dogs got me up at 3:00, 5:00 and 7:00. After 7:00 I gave up on trying to go back to bed. Scout is still in recovery (she sprained her hind leg last week at the dog part) so I skip the normal Saturday morning game of fetch in the back yard. She is recovering well, she can put about half her body weight on it.
About 8:00 am I went for my run. 1.47 miles. Good time. I got a lot of funny looks from people because I only had on my Under Armour (which is light brown) and a t-shirt on over that, which from a distance, really looks like I'm running in short sleeves. And when the morning temperature was a lovely 36 F and 10-15 mph winds...You get some fun looks.
Getting back I cooked a breakfast of eggs and smoky links, which Kristen as excited that they finally have up here in the northern part of this state.
After breakfast I got ready to go climb Mt. Libertyville. I met up with Dave and Reid had decided to come out and join me. Such a fun morning. We climbed a lot...... Even met up with a guy named Patrick, climber from out in Colorado who was back visiting family for the holidays.
Granted I stayed there for almost 4 hours today and I still keep getting stopped by the second crux of the the route with two roofs......I'll fucking get it........

Merry Christmas!

How many things can one have stacked against him:

Yesterday morning I didn't run. I got up at 4:00 AM after going to bed at 11:30 PM and being prompted by Homer (my big yellow lab) to pee at 2:30 AM. Hitting the snooze bar....I thought to myself...this is insane....i'm getting up at 4:00 AM going to go run for 15 minutes...shower...get in a car..and drive my ass to the loop by 6:00 AM for some early AM server maintenance. Without waking up the puppies I went back to bed and slept another 30 minutes and then proceeded to...shower...get in a car..and drive my ass to the loop by 6:00 AM for some early AM server maintenance.

--WORK--

Leaving work at 4:30 PM it took me about 2 hours and 15 minutes to get home. Kristen (wife) and Robin (Friend and Co-work of wife/me) wanted to go out and grab a bit to eat after leaving work/school (they are teachers). I happily agreed. We went to this bar/grill place downtown Grayslake for burgers. Which promptly afterward we stopped by target so Kristen could pick up a shirt, and I picked up a reflective dry shirt for running at night and a 2nd hat because my MH beanie was not to happy with Running twice a day and being my daily wear hat (lots of washing)

After getting home, I figured I might as well go for a quick jog. I had made a promises to myself that I would do something active each day, and in the words of Cody Lundin you just have to "party on".

ADD side note: Reading Cody's book 98.6 Degrees The Art of Keeping Your Ass Alive taught me more then just "survival". From that book I took away the words "Party on". I recall one line was "You got a bone sticking out though you skin and 10 miles from your car? PARTY ON!" or something to that effect.

(Please note, that in no way does what I am about to write compares to any true survival incident.)

So I geared up, put on my polartech liners, Under Armour "Tactical" top (which is the greatest thing since sliced bread, it kept me warm on morning that was reported to be -7 F (with wind chill) (all I had on over it was reflective top)), dry pants, dry shirt (a material I have grown to love to wear while climbing and running) and my running shoes. After some stretching and putting on my cap, gloves and headlamp*, I took off. Before I got to the end of my block I decided that I would try for what I thought was a 1.75 mile loop past the local collage. (When I got back I used Google Earth to measure this path and it turned out to be 2.47 miles). Most of this route was on gravel, which had started developing puddles because of the heavy rain all day (and light-er rain that was still continuing to fall) so I used my headlamp to avoid the major ones and splashed in the smaller ones. About .75 miles into the run, the rain had turned to sleet/snow which had started to build up on my glasses (no fun) to see I shut off the headlamp (same principal if you are in your car in a snow storm/rain or have a some what foggy front window, you turn your high-beams off).

About 5 minutes later.....I was ankle deep in mud. The path had turned from gravel to dirt and the rain had turned that dirt to mud, deep mud. Having almost tripped and felt like I twisted my knee a bit. I started back for home, with wet muddy feet and slight pain in my left knee*, I started to run with a slight limp. After about 2 minutes of that...I felt like I hit a wall. I started walking. Looking ahead a 100 yards or so, I set myself a point as to start running again. To finish off the night I took a light jog the rest of the way home.

Looking back...I probably should have just taken my normal 1.25 mile "dog bone" route of two sub-divisions. I had gotten maybe 4 hours of sleep the night before, been in the car for about 3.5 hours during the day and had a dinner of a burger and fries (which I am happy to say I didn't taste for a second time during the run).

Ouch!

I got up this morning and ran the snot out of the "dog bone" about 9 minutes and 30 seconds.

*I take my headlamp running at night if I think i' m going to run though places with no street lights.

**When I was 11 I had this knee bashed apart in a skiing accident.

Holidays and offices goodies.

Over the last few days each time I walked in to the break room here at work, I always saw someone leaving out a tin of cookies or something like that, small take one and move on. However today when I walked in there to get a paper towel I noticed about 5 or 6 different boxes of stuff. Cookies, chocolate , chocolate covered macadamia nuts and did I mention chocolate cookies? I manaded to get away with sneaking a chocolate covered macadamia nut. However...I'm still thinking about all the other crap that's laying around there free for the plucking. The only thing I seam to keep telling myself is, something that Khalid told me a while ago as I was picking up a cookie one morning. "Dude...that one cookie....that's one hold you won't be able to get". So since then, epically with the free food that just pops up here in the office, this is what I keep telling myself. Though I will sneak one every now and then. I mean...you can't take all the joys out of your life? right?

A night at the wall:

Last night after cooking a dinner of grilled Johnson BBQ chicken and some sort of instant frozen veggies (eh...) Kristen joined me for a night of climbing at what I have dubbed "Mt. Libertyville". Climbing went well I would have to say. Kristen was getting back in to the swing of things after taking a month off because of coaching and the other stresses that teachers need to endure. I scaled up (twice) the right side of the front face (I need to come up with route names for these...) We'll call this one "Z cold nose". For months I had tried to climb Z cold nose a number of times, but kept getting shot down by it's crux. I found the trick for me a few weeks back. In involves the "one arm death hang" and the ability to lift your knees to your chest at about the same time. (Sounds fun huh?) After my warm up of climbing up and down* (which actually took place before I climbed Z cold nose) I had decided to give my two most recent projects a go. The first is a bitch, a mega-mini-crippy 5.9 (or so Brain has rated it ;)) i'll call it "The Crimpy Bitch" the biggest hold is about the size of your thumb. I have managed to work my way up to the crux, a 1 foot roof. Which is about the time my hands just recoil by themselves, my middle finger sticks it self up and I fall to the ground. (Note to self: develop more finger strength. )

"They are called Fingers...but you never see them fing" - Otto

The second (which there is a pic of me getting of the first of two cruxes on my flickr page) is a double roof route. I have just about mastered getting over the first roof, which involves a nice little dyno to a hold that is just above the second roof. That's about the place where I get stuck. Just gotta keep climbing it like I did with Z cold nose.

* Down climbing:
There are a few key benefits to adding down climbing to your routine.
1. Teaches you good footwork as you are constantly looking down as to where to place your feet next.
2. You might need to down climb a route out on real rock for one reason or the other.
3. Twice the workout!

Using Google Earth for Jogging routes.

I'm sure i'm not the first person to think of this, but I found Google Earth really useful is setting jogging routes around my neighborhood. I my morning runs consist of anywhere between 1 mile and 2 miles. The length depends on if I want to go for distance or speed. Generally the shorter the run the faster I will try to run it.
Using Google Earth I found about 6 or 8 routes that range from 1 mile to 5.56 miles. The 5.56 mile route is my goal by spring.

Why I started this blog.....

The last few months I have really pushed myself to get in shape. Putting exercise a head of just about everything else, changing my diet, and focusing on portion control.

Why? I have realized that this will be the only way that I will ever get in shape. For as long as I have remembered I have always been....well....fat about 290-320+ lbs if I had to guess (44-46 waist). Never felt really good (physically), got made fun of a lot (and I mean a lot), and couldn't do the things that I wanted to do. finding cloths was a pain in the ass and so on and so forth.

In June, I was exposed to the sport of Rock Climbing. Granted my first time out, I couldn't climb up a 5.6 to save my life, my arms where so dead after 45 minutes that I couldn't open my own beer while at my 26th Birthday party later that evening. At that point I had started to see climbing as a fun hobby. I have enjoyed only a few other sports. Skiing and Snowboarding (I never cared for team sports even though I played Lacrosse for about 6 years though Jr. High and High School) With climbing...it's You vs. the Wall vs. Sir Issac Newton.

After climbing a few more times with in the following weeks I started to realizet that Sir Issac Newton was right about gravity. While skiing and snowboarding can be a workout, you have one allie, gravity. However, you learn very quickly when climbing that Gravity is clearly working against you. So I started to climb more and more. I joined a gym with a wall and have been climbing 4 to 5 times a week. Giving a day or so to rest my fingers.

About 4 weeks back, I had attempted my first 5.9/5.10 mix route. When I got to the 2nd fixed draw (20 feet up). I could not move, I was out of gas drained, not even resting while my belay held me could have help. It was after that climb that I decided to start running. Been running daily at least once (twice on non-climbing days).

That's my back story over the last 6 months.

Currently I weight about 230 lbs if I had to guess (38-40 inch waist). My mile time is around 8 minutes.

While my goal is to be a better climber, it is still second to my goal of being healthy.