The Present

"The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, worry about the future, or anticipate troubles, but to live in the present moment wisely and earnestly."

-Buddha

Muscles Not Motors

We were up in Hanover, NH when I first saw this phrase. In usual fashion I picked up the local Competitor Magazine or free race pamphlet outside the EMS. As I flipped through I found this gear review ad:

This caught my eye mainly because it reminded me of a friend that is a pretty hardcore motorcycle rider. When he badgers me about riding my bike my response is usually something along the lines of, “Why ride a motorcycle when you could pedal a bike?” Now we’ve socialized the ‘Muscles Not Motors’ phrase and its starting to mean a lot more to both of us, so I proceeded to Google search on the topic to see what returned. I found this interesting Blog:

MUSCLES NOT MOTORS   http://musclesnotmotors.blogspot.com/
Muscles not Motors is the motto for
Onion River Sports (in Montpelier, VT). It's a lifestyle statement. We think the formula is;
Healthy = get outdoors + self-propelled movement... that's it.
To you, it can mean whatever you want, just make sure you get some fresh air doing it.

Paris Mountain

Paris Mountain State Park, located in South Carolina just 4 miles from Greenville, is a place that any off-road athlete should visit.  The park is small, but conducive to all the attributes of challenging training grounds, including steady road climbing, undulating and technical trail terrain (extremely well-marked), and a top-side lake that’s crystal clear.  This place is beautiful and home to many off-road and downhill events.

Colorado Leadville Trail 100

"Make Friends with pain, and you will never be alone."

-Ken Chlouber
(Colorado miner and creater of the Leadville Trail 100)

From "Born to Run," by Christopher McDougall

Chris goes on to say,
"To get a sense of what he Ken Chlouber came up with, try running the Boston Marathon two times in a row with a sock stuffed in your mouth and then hike to the top of Pikes Peak.
Done?
Great. Now do it all again, this time with your eyes closed. That's pretty much what the Leadville Trail 100 boils down to: nearly four full marathons, half of them in the dark, with twin twenty-six-hundred-foot climbs smack in the middle."

Nasty!

For Russell: Wrap Your Mind Around It!

My final snippet of advice to my oldest friend in the world:

A bit of background first. Sometime in 2008 or so, Russell decided he would be a runner. He entered two half-marathons and in efforts of unguided misdirection, he finished these races in just over 2:00. He wasn't a runner in school, per se, but was a student athlete in soccer, basketball and tennis. The amazing part to his story, though, and the foundation that supports his pursuit this year is the unbelievable experience he had to overcome as a young adult to get to this very moment. The beneficiary of his philanthropic efforts this year will be the Spaulding Rehabilitation Center, where he spent a good bit of his early to mid-20s either getting his knee repaired or working diligently to recover from the damage. He still tells stories when the pain and medications got to a point where he was completely incapable of taking care of himself and had to rely on his care-giving mother to support his every need. He is probably lucky to be walking today. This coming Monday, not only is he walking, he'll be tackling his second Boston Marathon. His second ever attempt at the 26.2 mile distance.

2010 Pre-season Stoaked Off Road Preview

In four short months the dog days of summer will be upon us. When the Red Sox make their final surge before providing a rollercoaster finish and when humidity and mosquitos saturate the air, a little event known as the XTERRA Off-Road Stoaked Triathlon is staged in Hanover, NH. The race consists of a 1k swim down-and-back the length of Storrs pond, followed by a 2-loop, 16k total MTB ride of climbing and single-track, finishing off with a 2-loop, 8k total trail run around the Storrs pond recreational area. Having spectated this event in 2009, it feels more like a camp race than a staged event featuring professionals and men and women challenging themselves for points in the XTERRA world championship series all culminating with a race of top performers held annually in Maui, HI.

Time...

Finally, the never-ending days of winter seem to be over. The floods of the last several weeks have mostly subsided and the sun has shown itself in unseasonable summer weather with temperatures in the 80s. All this in early April for a single day in the middle of the week. Coming off a chest cold, I was determined to get out for a short run, if nothing more than to reminisce about my days in CA where weather like that is an afterthought in normalcy. Routine. So often do I miss those training days…but today was different than the others. I now spend my life in the land of extremes a coast away. Where 30-40 degree swings are common from day-to-day and where every sunny, warm day is precious. I tried to leave early from work. That being said, I rushed out at 5:00 p.m., feeling slightly guilty, to make the 50-mile, one hour plus commute home with pure determination that I would experience part of this day before the sun fell and another infrequent beauty would've passed. The whole ride home, which took an unreasonable two hours today really annoyed me - Murphy coming at me head on once again. A trip full of traffic where there usually isn't any and drivers that can't help but cause delay for everyone. Each second that passed me by, I thought of the second being removed from the duration of my time to enjoy outdoor activity. It frustrated and stressed me out, because commuting is nothing more than a necessary, non-value added, time-consuming activity.