Monday, August 31, 2009

Running some Trails



Trails. About time I ran some. Lord Hill is only 15 minutes from my house and I hardly ever run there. I actually got in a 60 minute run yesterday though, I only took one wrong turn. It ended up taking a couple miles off of my run. The downhills were pretty sketchy, it was like running on marbles. Some of the newer single track was great to run though, lots of traction, up and over fallen trees, hardly every stright. Good stuff for sure.

I didn't see any bears or cougars either. Although at the trail entrance they have the proverbial "what to do if you encounter a cougar while out on the trail" sign. Youmean, besides crap my shorts? I could offer one a gel or something if I have one on me. Would that be more tasty than...my throat? Not sure. Anyhoo, it was a great morning for a run. I need to get out there at least once per week at least until Baker Lake 50K is here.

Friday, August 28, 2009

Watch movie September 21st

http://www.ageofstupid.net/usa

Here's the link so you can find where it is playing wherever you live. Are we as dumb as a lot of so called expertws say we are? Probably. But watch the movie and find out why we don't do anything to save ourselves when we had the chance.

Here's a link to the trailer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZjsJdokC0s

There are lots and lots of arguments that climate change for the negative either is - or is not -happening. Either way it is really interesting. I think global weirding, as coined by Thomas Friedman, seems to be the best description of what is going on. But I am not a scientist. I just read a lot of books. But with all the weird weather going on in the past couple years it certainly makes me stop and think about what is going on. The valley that sits below my house has flooded the past 3 of 5 years. Before that it used to flood once every 20 years or so. Tsunamis? Can we blame earthquakes? What caused the destabilization to produce the quake? New Orleans flooded. Hmmm. 109 degrees F in Seattle. We are the same latitude as Montreal. Something that isn't right is going on. It may or not be normal, but evolution of the earth is progressing whether you want to believe we caused it or not.

Thursday, August 27, 2009

Tully's - I don't drink coffee...

but I sure eat donuts. I've been hovering between 165 and 170 pounds for the past 2 years. Last year I pedaled about 10,000 miles on the bicycle. This year I will be pushing 2000 running. I should be rail thin but people at work keep giving me Tullys cards for helping them, which is a nice gesture, but I just eat too many donuts. 500 calories and 20 grams of fat. What a waste of caloric intake! Sure, if I were 120 miles into a 160 mile ride it would probably be one of the best things to eat. Maybe even 30 miles into a run it would hit the spot. But at 600 in the morning it is something I should just not consume, yet for some reason I can almost never say no. I need to start giving these stupid cards away when they are given to me, and then I might just make it down to 160 and after that 2:55 marathons should be a bit easier to attain.

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Baker Lake 50K here I come

Well, I think I'm going to do this race. I'm not exactly in ultra shape, but this is barely past a marathon. I ran it before, finished 10th overall after not having run more than 15 miles. Seriously. I was running that far pretty frequently, so I just decided to run 15 miles 2 days in a row 3 weeks before the race. I ran slow. But it worked. I survived. And did OK too.

This year I have time to get in a couple 20+ mile runs. I've been doing 13-14 mile runs at 6:40 - 6:45 pace so I should be able to go out and run these at 8:00 pace OK. It's only been a couple months since I last ran a marathon anyway. Although I still think like a bike rider where I think I can just jack up my mileage and not pay the consequences. We'll see what happens though. I'll run 20+ tonight and mail in the entry afterwards.

Hopefully my next blog heading doesn't say...No Baker Lake...or something like that.

Friday, August 21, 2009

Books I need to read + other comments

1. Cradle to Cradle by Michael Braungart

2. Natural Capitalism by Paul Hawken

3. Plan B 3.0 by Lester R. Brown

4. $20 Per Gallon: How the Inevitable Rise in the Price of Gasoline Will Change Our Lives for the Better by Christopher Steiner

This is the short list right now. I'm currently in the middle of reading 2 other books, so I'm not about to engage myself in 3. Looking at the seriousness of these titles makes me realize I'm getting old; or maybe I'm finally starting to figure out my place and how I can make a difference. Naaa! I'm not really that philosophical, I must be getting old. It's just getting harder and harder for me to keep interested in books that are carbon copies of previously written books. Sure, the character development is a little different, the plot make twist "unexpectedly" every now and again. But the unpredictable nature of sitcom books as I like to call them is predictable.

I'm recently read a Thomas Friedman book (well, most of it before I lost it somewhere : ) ) and Auden Schendler's Getting Green Done - which was a very engaging and somewhat frustrating read. Only frustrating because I can relate to so many of the obstacles to overcome and I am not in a powerful enough position to change policy. Books like this are opening my eyes up to a new America which is quickly marching itself into the new dark ages. Everyone is so caught up in the now that they forget that in 10 or 20 years some of the choices they make, or do not make or going to be severely impacting the climate, culture, and economy of this country. But this is America, home of the fat and out of shape, and I may start adding apathetic to my favorite descriptive gibberish of this country. But I don't have time to write about apathy right now, I can only control what I do anyway. But it could snowball for a while...maybe next time.

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Fat Guy Gripe

If I see one more hot girl holding hands with a fat dude I am going to kill myself. Well, not seriously, but I will roll my eyes and wonder what the firetruck is going on here. I ran on the trail in Snohomish a bunch last week and I don't know how many times I've seen it. Or they are riding bikes together and the girl is just in super shape, awesome smile, and the dude she is with has a big beer belly, or is just plain fat. C'mon guys, if I had a super hot girlfriend I'd at least try to keep myself fit. Who hasn't seen an "Adult" movie with some big fat slob of a guy on some hot chick, it's disgusting. Are these guys that nice? Do they make that much money? Is personality really that much of an attraction? Seriously. We are such a superficial culture -just like my little rant is proving)- how can this make sense? Are the girls just humongo bitches that no one else will put up with? I doubt it. Maybe they just paid for the girlfriend experience. Yea, that must be it.

Monday, August 10, 2009

Job

I'm thankful I have a job that pays as well as it does, but it really, really sucks!

Wednesday, August 5, 2009

ISO 14001 my A$$

Something that is very frustrating is working for a very large company that promotes itself to the outside world as being leading edge in the great green cause. This is a company that serves it's employees meals on Styrofoam. Every single day. Over 20,000 meals a day. Over 20,000 paper plates a day. ISO 14001 certified my a$$. I guess they just bought that distinction.

Working on environmental projects within my own work organization is another thing that has proved very difficult. Yes, the company does support this endeavor by its employees, even promotes it. But my immediate manager, one born back when it was cool to have cars that got about 12 miles per gallon and and still living in that era mentally, thinks it is a waste of time. There are a ton of examples I could use to support this, but for the sake of my crappy typing I will just use one. Not too long ago a couple of my fellow workers and I did a dumpster dive - which is exactly what is sounds like. We had two 5 x 5 foot dumpsters filled with garbage. We went through all of this garbage; and to make a long and stinky story short, we ended up finding that over50% of the items in the garbage were recyclable. When we were done we shrank the garbage down to less than one 5 x 5 and filled seven 90 gallon bags with recyclable material. And our manager told us this was a colossal waste of time. "We have product to build." Which is true, I understand his point, the product needs to be the number one priority while at work. But what this example proves is the company I work for has not created any sort of cultural change by adding the ISO 14001 tag to its name. Trying to do anything "green" almost feels like a waste of time at this company. Which of course it isn't, not in the least as we have made strides, it is just an uphill battle that is a lot of work met with a lot of resistance. We'll get there. Last week's 108 degree temperatures must make it obvious to even the dumbest and most naive of the workforce think there is some sort of a problem. I'm not if the majority of the company will fully embrace this sort cultural shift before they have to, but we are making some strides thanks to individuals and their teams. And I can say that I am learning a lot about the process of change and just how hard it is to implement.