I won’t have many more days like today. For the past year or so, I have been mostly working out of my home office, which has given me a certain amount of freedom that I won’t have in the very near future. This week I am basically unemployed, having finished my final contract with Ryati last week. Next week I’ll be in San Francisco at Google IO. The week after that I will start a new job at Adobe. So, you can see, my days of total freedom combined with amazing weather are quite limited. It behooves me to use them wisely. That’s exactly what I did today.<\/p>\n
I spent 3 or 4 hours yesterday working the tiller through about 4,000 square feet of garden in my back yard. It looks great, but it really wore out my arms and back. I also came away with two very inconveniently placed blisters – right in the fold between each thumb and index finger. By itself, that’s not much of a big deal, but it really makes it difficult to ride a bike, shift gears, brake, etc.<\/p>\n
As promised on Monday, I ran today without walking. Unfortunately, I ran slower today than I did on Monday, but I’m still very happy with the result. I blame the slightly slower run on the fact that RunKeeper only has one setting for audio cues, which is just stupid. I *never* want audio cues for anything other than running, and I *always* want them when I run. Unfortunately, because of bad design, I am forced to go into settings before each activity and change the setting. Today I forgot to do that, so I had no audio cues once again. Oh well, like I said, I’m still happy with the end result.<\/p>\n
29:33<\/a><\/p>\n It’s definitely time to add more distance to my runs. I’ll look into that when I get back from Google IO.<\/p>\n After running, I chugged 10 ounces of chocolate milk. Then I debated working in the garden again, but it didn’t stand a chance against my favorite option: biking. Charmaine challenged me to ride up Provo Canyon to Vivian Park and see if I could go up South Fork. When I got to Vivian Park, there was no way I was going up South Fork. The wind was howling down that canyon so hard that it nearly blew me off my bike as I rode past.<\/p>\n The wind was an interesting beast today. It was very gusty, and I’m talking about extreme gusts. One time, while riding down hill and pedaling, the wind hit me and brought me to a complete stop. I was dumbfounded. Of course, most the time the gusts came from the sides, which made me a little nervous, but sometimes the wind got behind me and gave me that push I needed to keep going up. After deciding not to turn or stop at Vivian Park, I thought I should try to ride up to Deer Creek dam. The wind was a good friend on the way up. It seemed to get behind me every time I really needed it. It kept building and getting stronger as I got closer to the top. I went sailing up and across the dam with a huge grin on my face, but then I realized a subtle problem with my plan. I was on a divided highway and couldn’t just turn around. I had to keep riding until there was a break in the divider. Luckily, that wasn’t all that far.<\/p>\n 48.69 miles<\/a><\/p>\n The ride back down the canyon was very difficult. That strong wind that helped me up the canyon was still building. My speed going down was quite a bit slower than my speed going up. Think about that. Part of the reason for that was safety. When you’re riding into a serious headwind and a semi trailer blows past you, it sucks you in way more than normal. If that happens right when there’s a side gust, it’s not fun. It didn’t take too long to get back down, but my legs were toast. I had anticipated being able to rest on the way back down, but it just didn’t happen. I didn’t know how far I had gone, but I figured I should just get home and get some food. Other than that 10 ounces of chocolate milk, the only other thing I had eaten was a small bowl of cereal. I would have had more had I known what I was about to do. Oh well, I’m still very happy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I won’t have many more days like today. For the past year or so, I have been mostly working out of my home office, which has given me a certain amount of freedom that I won’t have in the very … Continue reading