I came home early from work tonight, with an upset stomach. After a while, I felt better and was feeling quite restless so I decided to go hit the trails for a quick run before dinner. My plan was to climb the south switchbacks that lead to the Farmington Upper Terrace. It is about 1,000 ft. elevation gain in about 1 mile of trail. At the top, a local trail building colossus, Ryan, had recently cut and flagged a new…
Here are a few recent outings: A run up the newly worked on lower stretch of the Farmington Creek Trail by Ryan Lauck, up the first section of the post-parking lot single track, and then looping across the creek to explore the Aqueduct Trail back – a first. All with a coworker, Spencer, who just moved here and is quickly getting hooked on the trails. 5.0 miles in 1:33:34 @ 18:44 min/mile and with 1,170 ft. elevation gain A night…
Music is a big part of my life. I did a solo singer-songwriter thing for years (250+ horrible demos recorded), I’ve had radio shows, and I run music blog (http://desertislandmixtapes.com). Fittingly, running has provided a great opportunity to put on new albums and listen to them front-to-back without much distraction. Music makes running a lot of fun. But, when things started warming up this year, and people began posting pictures of enormous rattlesnakes on the local trails, I rethought this…
Last year on Pioneer Day, a friend and I tackled Baer Canyon. It was only my 2nd trail run, and we were unprepared and it was rough. I thought I would continue that and make an annual tradition of pushing myself to do unwise things on Pioneer Day. On the top of my trailrun to-do list has been to bag Thurston and Francis Peaks. I have been to both, but only after driving up to Francis and then running the…
I wanted to get one last run in before this weekend’s Wasatch Back Ragnar race and tonight was my best chance. I drove up to the Farmington Canyon trail, planning to hike it up to the Sunset Campground and then run down the road for a loop. It went better than anticipated. Amongst the other local trail runners, I’m just about the slowest. On Strava segments, I am usually at the bottom of the leader-board and the only times that…
With an official diagnosis of ankle problems, a fibula stress fracture, and a strong suspicion that running on pavement severely aggravates it, I decided to hit the dirt today and test out my theory. I started at the Farmington Pond, ran north on the BST to Shepherd Canyon, up to the Upper Terrace, and took that back to the car. Its a great loop. My left IT band hurt towards the end, but my ankle did not. Often the pain…
I got home from work and it was just too nice to not go out. My knee was a bit sore, and I knew I would regret it (I don’t) but I went anyways. I was planning on parking at Famrington Pond and running the BST/Farmington Upper Terrace loop, but when I arrived at the canyon I saw that the gates were open. Yeah! Up the canyon I went.I parked at the end of the pavement and ran up the…
5.6 miles in 1:31:29 @ 16:23 min/mile pace with 2,270 ft. elevation I had to work from home today (long story) and around 3:00 saw that the forecast for tomorrow was rain. Boo. I was planning on running tomorrow. So, I decided to swap out my last hour of work for an hour later tonight (or tomorrow) and squeeze my run in this afternoon. I parked at the Shepherd Creek trailhead and decided to climb up the first mile or…
Over the past couple weeks I have been reading about active release massage and how it might be able to solve my ankle trouble. I have begun to suspect that the lasting pain on my peroneal tendon is from scar tissue that built up. Apparently, you can break up the scar tissue by massage it and so forth. So, along with rolling and stretching out the muscles that the tendons attach to, I have been doing it for…
So…I have still be really nervous about my ankle. But, equally nervous about getting out of shape. So, I have put in some miles on my mountain bike. 11 March 2014 All pavement, but first time riding the Lagoon Trail up to Farmington Pond 7.4 miles in 36:11, 12.2 mph average and 24.4 mph top speed 20 March 2014 I only have about 45 minutes, so I through my bike onto my car, parked at the bottom of Farmington Canyon…