Been awhile since an update….

The 12/24 hike went well. Keith, Raquel, and I hiked 20 miles in around 7 hours and then I bid them farewell at Brockway Summit as I hiked an extra 30 miles solo. I ended up doing 50 miles in 19hrs 15minutes - as I was hiking I decided to either do 24hrs of hiking or 50 miles whichever came first….50 miles came first. The hike itself was very tough with a couple sections above 10,000ft. Eventually, I’d like to repeat the hike in the winter hauling sleds and such. That would be superfun and tough.

Last night I was able to get in some night mountain biking - I had neglected to charge my bike light so I only got 45 minutes of it before it died. Luckily I had my headlamp (and it was a full moon) so the ride continued. Mountain biking downhill in the dark is tough work!

Today I’m just relaxing and cleaning up my place for my parent’s visit next week. Tomorrow I’m doing an epic ride up at Tahoe - 30-35 miles on the Tahoe Rim Trail. Hopefully that will go smoothly!

Off to the 12/24 Training Hike tonight - updates on Monday!

Here’s the gear list if you’re interested:
- Backpack (mine will be roughly 1892 cubic inches)
- Headlamp with enough batteries to last 12 hours
- Water purification (either water tablets or pump-based purifier)
- Sunscreen
- Bug spray
- Camera
- Hat for sun shade
- Non-cotton t-shirt
- Non-cotton shorts or pants that can take some abuse and don’t chafe
- Warm jacket for night time
- Stocking cap for night time
- Socks
- Extra pair of socks
- Trail running shoes or hiking boots
- Toiletries you may need
- Whistle
- Emergency space blanket
- Trekking poles if you need/have them
- Spare compass
- First aid kit
- antiseptic wipes
- duct tape
- anti-inflammatories
- bandages/gauze
- small knife
- blister care kit
- Food
For adventure races I eat roughly 1 energy gel or energy bar every 45 minutes - then every 6 hours I eat a bagel, beef jerky, peanut butter, and trail mix. It is easier if you try to keep the weight of the food down since, ideally, you’ll be carrying a lot of water.
- Water
- Electrolytes replenishment (either in the form of gatorade or in E-Caps
form)

See ya!

The past weekend was busy, fun, and interesting just like I said it was. Friday morning by some grace or miracle I was able to get up at 5am to meet Aaron up at Tahoe for a nice 29mile mountain bike ride on the Flume/Red Flume trails. The Flume was totally uncrowded and it was the perfect temperature - a great ride overall however it was much longer than I had expected it to be. Aaron is a good downhill rider so I had a fun time trying to increase the speed on the downhills to keep up with him!

Saturday, after travelling on Friday night to Sunnyvale with Dan, I got up early to head off to the SVS #3 put on by Shooting Star Adventures. This was put on a Almaden Quicksilver County Park near San Jose. I was doing the “adventure run” portion of the race - essentially just doing the trek portion of the multisport adventure race. I gotta tell ya…it was brutal out there. It turned out to be a really superhot day and most everyone did poorly on the trek. I ended up running out of water and making some huge navigational mistakes which really slowed me down. All in all it was good practice which was the intention but as a race I did quite poorly.

Saturday night I joined up with Shelley and Kate for dinner and then completely crashed afterwards - I was dead tired. Sunday the idea was to go mountain biking if Ritwik was back and town but he wasn’t so instead I napped most of the day and then headed back to Reno as I bid farewell to Dan who was heading into San Francisco for a few days.

Yesterday I slogged my way on the stairclimber for 45 minutes and then prepared for today’s ride with Keith and Raquel. Hopefully I’ll take it easy this week because this weekend is the 12/24 Tahoe Rim Trail Training Hike! A bunch of us are hiking for 24 hours straight on the TRT to prepare for upcoming adventure races - the TRT is no joke of a trail so hopefully everything will go smoothly this weekend!

Man, my run last night was sluggish! I don’t know if it’s the heat or just my lack of conistent running lately but I felt like an elephant trying to cram itself into a paper towel tube. Gotta keep on the run or else I’m going to bomb that section during the Big Blue Races!

The next 3 days are going to be busy and interesting. My friend Dan from back in the Midwest is showing up sometime - he called me from “somewhere in Wyoming” last night and presumably he’ll be showing up sometime today. Tonight I’m going to be racing a mountain bike race up at Northstar and then tomorrow morning I’m doing the Flume trail with Aaron and another dude. Afterwards, I’ll probably convince Dan to join me in scouting for the 24 hour hike that is occuring the next weekend. Then it’s off to the Bay Area - I’ll be racing the Adventure Run in the Shooting Stars SVS #3 and volunteering by taking down controls after the race. Sunday I’m hoping to ride in ECDM and/or Soquel with Ritwik if he is back in town. It’s going to be a fast paced busy outdoorsy 3-day weekend!

Keith, Raquel, and I met up for a quick 9 mile mountain bike ride after work yesterday in Keystone Canyon. I forgot to start recording the training session on my Forefunner until we had biked into the canyon a bit so it looks like we only did 8.58 miles.

Here’s the profile:

Here’s the topo (clicky!):

Tonight I’m going on a run - first time in a week or so! Need to stay focused for September races!

I had a nice time up at Tahoe this weekend meeting up with the Norcamba folks (http://www.norcamba.org) for some trail work on the Tahoe Rim Trail and then a couple of rides on Saturday and Sunday. The trailwork on Saturday turned out not to be the excruciating work I thought it was going to be - it was actually fun even though I got sunburned a bit. After working on the TRT a bunch of riders met up for a super secret locals-only ride near Brockway summit. It was a bit of an uphill on really thin single track to a ridge and then powdery-dusty-switchbacky descent down to a meadow and then on out to a road. It was great because we didn’t see anyone else on this ride - the trail was completely crowdless.

Saturday night we had a get-together at Northstar for pizza and beer. The Norcamba organizers sponsored a raffle for some fancy bike stuff and I actually won a new suspension fork from Fox Forks! Fancy dancy! Everyone else got lots of great swag too. I was pretty tired from the days working and riding so I hit the sack hard on Saturday evening.

Yesterday we rode an epic ride starting from Tahoe City and going north up into the hills on the Western States and Tahoe Rim Trails. There was major amounts of climbing and descension and it was probably some of the rockiest-nastiest stuff I’ve ever been on. I got beat around on a lot of the trail but I think just riding yesterday has improved my confidence on technical singletrack 100 fold.

Anyway, it was great time overall!

This week I’ll be doing some trail running and mountain biking in preparation for this weekend’s trip to the Bay Area. The SVS trail run and mountain biking at Skeggs/Soquel beckon!