Let's begin at the beginning

Hello! I'm back from a long hiatus from blogging. A partial account of the adventures from my field semester can be found here. A lot of it is focused on writing and the experience of living out of a horse trailer with 23 other people. Initially I was just going to tag team it and change the focus, but I decided that would be a little too scattered, so I began this new blog as a chronicle of the adventures I'm sure to have during this next 6.5 months of living in the Sierras. Also, thanks to a new friend here and my friend Shayna from Whitman, whose blog Chacosontherun can be found and followed here, I've renewed my inspiration and motivation for various athletic goals. I'm hoping this blog serves as both a log of my accomplishments and a way to inspire myself and others to maintain focus.

So let me introduce myself. I graduated from Whitman last May (2009) after four years of good friends, great education and lots of travel. I also played volleyball in college and thus have struggled with various joint issues. I had a minor knee surgery last September and have fought a bum shoulder since I was 16. This makes some recreational activities difficult, but I think if I can learn enough to be careful about these things, I can be successful at maintaining my physical health. ANYWAY, upon graduating, I had the great fortune of finding a wonderful job in a beautiful place surrounded by people that I love (lucky, right?). The only sad part of that story was that the job lasted only 3.5 months. I begrudgingly left in mid-September, digging in my heels most of the way home, and committed to coming back as quickly as they would agree to rehire me. So here I am, 7.5 months later, back in the Sierras. I love my job and my co-workers, and I'm excited to have another summer of adventures here.

The only strange thing about living here is that there is a significant amount of downtime. Not that I'm complaining about that - it's like a ginormous playground here with hiking, climbing, birding, biking and any other sort of "ing" you can imagine except things like shopping or clubbing. I just need to focus on taking advantage of these opportunities rather than getting sucked in by movies and junk food. Hence the creation of this blog: I'm going to use this to log my adventures. I've only been here two weeks, but I've already missed a lot, too much to catch up on, so I'll just start from yesterday.

I had the day off so I started by doing chores around the house - cooking, cleaning, laundry,etc, but by noon I was bored of this. (I forgot to mention my other problem - a mild, yet frustrating, case of ADD which manifests itself during movies, long meetings, sedentary social gatherings, etc). So rather than finish any of these tasks, I decided to go hiking.

The cool part about my job is that I am forced to become intimately familiar with all the little nooks and crannies of the Mono Basin. Bummer, I know. So on a drive the other day with my boss he pointed out a little dirt road that apparently leads to a trail up the back side of Reverse Peak via some beautiful little glacial cirques that are now just snow fed lakes. Sounded pretty good to me, so I headed up yesterday afternoon. The trail was just a dirt logging road for about 1/2 mile and my little car Sebastian could probably have driven up most of the way. Oh well, it felt good to get out and stretch my legs. There's something really invigorating about pushing yourself on a walk uphill. About a half mile in, the road narrows down to a rock-strewn trail and starts going straight uphill. After another half mile or so, I lost the trail completely under pretty big snowdrifts, so I started bushwhacking through the manzanita heading for the ridge line. Shortly thereafter, I crested the ridge and got a glimpse (through a dense forest of Jeffrey pines) of the first lake. They were still mostly snowed in, but I trekked around for a little while exploring the lakes and trying to get a good vantage point of the actual peak and the rest of the June Lake Loop. The mountains are so steep that it's hard to get a good view of anything below you because it's actually underneath you, but the view from the top was great - the full panorama from Lewis to Carson to the west, the craters to the east. As for Reverse Peak, I wasn't actually at the top, but it was really far away from me to the north and pretty bare - covered in sage brush and dirt - so I decided to stay where I was and enjoy the view. I found some pretty awesome campsites up there and can't wait for it to melt out. It's going to be a great overnight backpack later on in the summer!

After I made my way down I stopped at the Aeolian Buttes for a bit of bouldering. This is my biggest athletic challenge right now. I'd really like to climb more, but my upper body strength just isn't there so I figure if I do a little bit each day, soon I'll be able to build up and actually hold my own on the boulders (no pun intended). That's the strategy at least. So after a kind of brutal first session with Jess the other day, I've gotten out for 15 min or so each day to stretch my muscles and convince them to keep trying. Let me tell you, those baby muscles on your forearms scream loud when they are tired and there's nothing you can do about it. But even though I didn't get much actual climbing in, the view from the buttes is spectacular, so I sat and enjoyed that for awhile too. You can find more pictures from my adventures so far this summer here.

So last night was my big running research night. This was spurred by reading Shayna's blog, so thanks for the info and motivation Shayna! You're a rockstar and I love your upbeat attitude. Anyway, I've been thinking about training for and running a half marathon for awhile now (props to Meg and Leslie for showing me this can be done!) and this info session really boosted my confidence and heightened my motivation. So this morning I woke up and went for my first run since I left Seattle - that's over 2 months ago. Ouch! For those of you familiar with where I'm living, I ran through town to Utility Rd, popped out on Tioga Rd and then down to 395 home. It was only 3.13 miles, but there's an almost 500 ft gain in elevation between .5-1.2 miles which was pretty brutal for me on my first day back. It took me longer than I had hoped it would and I even broke down and walked up a couple of the steepest pitches, but that gives me something to shoot for. It's funny to live ON a highway because the running options right out my door are pretty slim. Additionally, I live on the side of a mountain around 7000ft above sea level, so I'm almost always guaranteed a pretty big climb either at the beginning or at the end of a run. But there are lots of dirt roads around that I can drive to and I'm sure once I get tired of this loop that'll be my plan of attack. Plus, this is all really going to help me when I'm running a half marathon at sea level later this year (hopefully!).

In addition to the running, I'm really going to focus on strengthening both my upper body and my core. Again, thanks to Shayna for posting great informational sites for this kind of thing. I've started the 100 push-up and 200 sit-up training programs, so I'll keep you all posted on how that goes. You can find these programs here. I'm pretty confident in my ability to work up to 200 sit-ups. This was something we did a lot of in my volleyball training. But because of my bum shoulder, I haven't done a REAL push-up since I was probably 17. I can do push-ups from my knees all day, but I thought this would be a good way to really do some serious, but gradual strengthening of my dumb shoulder. So far, so good. I did a total of 17 real push-ups today. Doesn't sound like much, but it'll help me get to my goal. Plus, push-ups will also help with my climbing goals.

Whew! That was a ridiculous amount of typing. From here on out, I'll try to make it about one thing at a time, but I had to play a little bit of catch up. I'd love to hear from anyone out there - suggestions for running routes, fun strengthening ideas, good recipes, whatever you've got.

Until next time!

3.13 mi run/walk / 32 minutes