stuff

My mood is a little weird, as it's taper time.  I've been having great time with friends and family as you'll see in the pictures below.

Nailed the clay, I swear!

Wife & Father in law BOTH outshot me, again.

My wife and I  purchased a sweet little new ride, a Honda Fit, and were loving it.  Kinda weird that neither one of us have a pickup since we both did when we met... But I do see a Tacoma in our distant future.

Elissa & Lucille

I'm excited and nervous about this weekends race: PCTR's Santa Monica Mountains 50k.  Excited because there will be tons of friends there and Sarah always puts on a fun run, not to mention it's a gorgeous course:

A group of us are meeting up at a restaurant, the Wolf Creek Brewery, for amazing food and delicious craft beers post race, can't wait.  It will also be my wife's first ultra, and she's been training in the mountains a bit, so I'm excited to see her trear it up.

I'm Nervous because I haven't put in many solid long runs since Los Pinos and it's too late to sneak any long runs between now and race day.

I'm going to give this race all I've got, then forget about training for three weeks or so.  I'm not going to stop running or anything, but I am going to push the reset button, letting my body and brain soak up the experiences from this year before jumping into planning/training/strategizing for next years races (already have four tentatively scheduled but I'm not supposed to be thinking about them).

After a run a couple days ago, I thoroughly enjoyed listening to a couple friends discuss fun and running long distance races.  The first friend mentioned how he's been racing for awhile and doesn't feel compelled to run races in miserable conditions anymore, that he just wants to run and have fun, sounds pretty logical right?  The second friend chimed in that part of HIS fun with running ultras is being able to keep pushing himself towards goals in the face of high mileage ennui and other times when running flat out sucks.  Note:  this is my skewed perception and faulty recollection of a conversation that took place days ago, so the accuracy of the statements from the participants  may not be 100%.  Regardless, I guess it all depends on your perception of fun.

Cruising down Sam Merrill Trail

So where do you stand in the all run V. all fun spectrum?  I'm presently right about here:

The balancing act of life is tricky and I can't help but be critical of myself in my choices:  why am I wasting so much time running, I should be working on a MSN (masters in science of nursing) degree.  BUT, I am kind of in the prime time of my athletic age, why not spend a lot of free time training and competing while I can?  I love spending time exploring wilderness and it helps balance my life while relieving tons of stress.  This has alway been a facet of my life for as long as I can remember and its important to my being (whatever that means).  I can always get my MSN in a couple years... but it would be smart to do it BEFORE having kids right?  So when exactly are we going to start trying to have kids?  What to do, what to do.