My Backyard

First off, I would like to start with a commercial that I've recently seen.

For some reason or another, people seem to think that if they were to win the lottery, all of their time would be spent outdoors, doing stuff that only "rich" people can do.

African Safari for 2, probably $5k to $10k, all flights and tours included. Pricey trip, but it's not out of reach for the regular working Joe, such as myself. If you plan to save for a trip like that, it can be done.

Jumping off a cliff into the water, free. There are places all around that we can do that. It doesn't take millions of dollars to "finally" do that.

Helicopter tour of mountains and volcanoes, $150/hour. If you live in Hawaii, you are lucky and don't have to travel far to see volcanoes (just look down, really). But if you live in western Canada, you can hire a helicopter for $150 for a 1 hour sightseeing tour of sights that are just as fantastic. You may not see volcanoes, but you can see things that are just as beautiful, if not more. (Moraine Lake, for example).

So the world instantly becomes your playground and backyard if you win the lottery. Well, I disagree. People need to realize at just how accessible these places are nowadays. You don't need to be filthy stinkin rich to do outdoor stuff. You don't even need much money at all. Just enough for gas, some beef jerkey and a sweet potato, and you can live like a millionaire everyday.

Sweet potatoes, ready for boiling. Mash up, and eat after working out. Endurace food to the max. Your muscles will dig it.

Here is my backyard. I went for run this morning up Moose Mountain. I had done this run before, but this is the first time this year. It was pretty wet, and there were some pretty snowy/icy patches. I had to be at work no later than 8:30, so I only made the first summit, but that's ok. I slogged up to the first summit as fast as I could, and going down was a blast. I kept telling myself this is "faaaaaaaaaantastic!!!", "I love this" and "woooooooeeeeeeeeeee" the whole way back.

GPS data can be found here.

View from the first summit, looking West towards the ranger station. I needed about an extra 1/2 hour total to make it there, but I did not have enough time today.

Looking south, down my beloved Rockies.

Looking north. It was so beautiful this morning, I could have stayed there all day.

I am currently training for some upcoming races. Some of the races I don't plan on completing (although I will if I can), I am just entering in them for a motivational carrot to be dangled in front of me. As the first picture shows, I have learned the value of using sweet potatoes as a recovery fuel after workouts, especially after runs. I don't know why they are more advantageous than regular white or red potatoes, but they break down quickly into glucose and replenish depleted reserves in your muscles. So that works very well for me.

I have also confirmed that I am indeed gluten intolerant. Not celiac, but if I wheat on an empty stomach, I'm done. So a paleo approach to nutrition is going a long way in my training. People say it is 60% nutrition, 40% exercise. Well I believe that a good routine is 100% of both.

And lastly, I am back at blogging. It's been on hiatus lately for no reason other than just not blogging at all. I can see from my site tracker ticker that I've reached 11,000 views on this blog, so that's totally awesome! Lat time I blogged, it was around 9,000. That's awesome (reiterated).

:-)