more fun with wings

i met up with mr.k this morning for a zero dark thirty trail run in el moro.  those 5am starts really make for some groggy mornings.  i forgot food this morning.  good thing i packed my socks and underwear last night.

i thought i'd take the salomon xt wings out for another spin and see how they did on a shorter run.  again, they held up to the initial review i gave them after saturday's 18 miler on the pct.  they were solid on the steep downhils, no heel slip and great footing on the climbs. 

we ran from the ridge park access gate and down to the laguna coast wilderness center.  the return features a 1.5mi climb that has some pretty steep sections on it.  mr.k and i were feeling frisky this morning and we both ended up pushing pretty hard up the climb.  we also hammered the return back to the cars and i was pleased with how well the shoes responded when we switched over into high gear;  light enough for quick turnover and aggressive enough tread to handle the loose trail surface.

when we finished up the run.  mr.k was joking around about the colour of the shoes and how coordinated it made me.  i noticed that my garmin was red and so was my car.  i like how thoughtful salomon was in ensuring that the shoes matched everything else i own.

[quick aside, the above picture was taken with the nokia n82 and immediately uploaded to my flickr account.  super cool feature.  and, no, dmitri, it's a one at a time upload thing.  no batch uploads and no queuing.]

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	lick: hipsters: wax:	Ballad of a Running Man Catherine Wheel Wishville

our mother's day

our mother's day dawned early with smsmh feeling sick.  sore throat, congestion, lethargy.  what a great way to start off your first mother's day.  i popped out of bed to get stuff ready for thunderclap and let smsmh sleep.  we had our morning awake time and then i made breakfast of french toast for all of us.  my parents were still with us, so it was a full table.  tc nibbled on french toast, too.  seriously, that boy is a bottomless pit.

when tc woke from his nap we quietly ate while smsmh kept sleeping.  we then loaded up in the jogger and headed down to the park to hang out for a while.  we played in the grass, which tc loved.  i had to be super vigilant because there were tiny mushrooms growing everywhere in the grass.  tc would be crawling along, grab a mushroom head and try to shove the thing in his mouth.

after a while of getting our knees grassy, we headed over to the swing and tried our best to throw up our lunch by swinging as high as we could.  i say we, because the higher he'd swing, the higher the likelihood that he'd kick me in the stomach and force me to spew, too.

after tc's second nap, we loaded up and headed to smsmh's folks place where my mom and both of my sisters would be meeting us.  i hopped on the bike to ride over while smsmh took tc in the car.  i tried out the sport tracker software again and had much better success.  my workout didn't completely stay live (must have lost signal somewhere), but it definitely didn't eat the battery like saturday.  i arrived with full battery bars after an hour of riding.

the afternoon was great with a wonderful dinner of smsmh's world famous lasagna, lots of moms to celebrate and a gaggle of kids going wild with the tissue wrapping paper.  for such a blah beginning to the day, it sure was a brilliant finish!

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	lick: hipsters: wax:	I Don't Like Mondays The Boomtown Rats Great Songs Of Indifference: The Best Of Bob Geldof & The Boomtown Rats

flying with the wings

okay...so at the start of the day, i thought for sure that the nokia n82 and the nifty sport tracker software were going to be the highlight of my workout.  funny that it turned out to be the one thing that failed miserably and it was the SHOES (gee, it's a salomon promotion, go figure) that were the highlight.

up at zero dark thirty and out on the road by 4am, i rolled up to the forest service road just before 6am and met lambert and judy.  we all hopped into lambert's truck and headed up to the fobes trailhead.  it was a brisk 33 degrees, so i bundled up a bit.  i started up the sport tracker software and we were off.  we had 15-18mi on the pacific crest trail planned, so i was running a huge risk of running in the xt wings for that distance without breaking them in first. 

the first mile and a half were a hard uphill haul.  no warm up here, it was scrape your nose steep.  what better way to shock your body into being warm, though, eh?  before we knew it, we were up on the pct and heading south toward lion peak.  after about another mile, judy turned around and headed back down the mountain since she had an 8am cut off time.  lambert and i continued on, constantly headed up.  ever time we made a quick stop for bio reasons or to re-fuel, i'd check the phone to see how it was doing.  it seemed to be recording the workout just fine, but the thing i did notice was that the battery was being eaten alive.  after an hour, the battery was almost completely gone, so i shut the phone off.  after review, i think the problem was that there was spotty cell coverage and the phone was working hard to establish a connection.  i'll try the sports tracker with the wireless option off next time and see how it does.

  i snapped a couple photos at the trail intersection with the nokia and realized that self portraits are not it's forte.  it kept focusing on the things behind me.  haha...i guess the phone knows best, eh?

lambert and i cruised on, having a blast of a time running along and just constantly marveling at the beauty around us.  each new summit provided us with a new amazing view.  i commented at one point that there was too much world for me to take in.

the shoes were brilliant.  they were stable, gave good arch support and were lightweight enough to allow for a quick leg turnover without fatigue.  i hardly noticed the trail through the sole.  the pct in this section is fairly rocky, and not once did i 'feel' any of the rocks. 

after a couple hours of running, we came to the top of the cedar springs trail and decided to head on a little further down the pct and then turn around and head down the cedar springs trail and back to my car.  this seemed like a good option for time, since it would put me back at my car when i needed to be there and give lambert a couple more miles as he ran back up to his truck.  we estimated that we'd be looking at somewhere around 14 miles for the run with that option.

well, the pct has this magic way of foiling the best laid plans.  our short out and back before heading down ended up turning into several more miles than we'd planned and next thing you know, we're dropping down cedar springs trail with only minutes left before i need to be back at the car...and something like four miles left to go.

fortunately, we hit road pretty quick and we were able to run much faster than on the trails.  i'll tell you what, though, the singletrack down cedar springs was so worth all the climbing we'd done earlier.  it was great to let the legs fly and do all the fancy footwork through bolder strewn creek beds and along the grassy meadows.

the salomon xt wings were great on the road, too.  we were really flying on the downhill and i was able to run comfortably in them at a 7:20 pace.  i had a slight hot spot develop on my instep, but after removing the sock, realized that it was because of a bite in the sock fabric, not the shoes.  on all the fairly technical downhill and climbing, the shoes never let my foot slip in the shoe and the toebox was plenty wide enough for my feet.  in comparison to my sauccony trail shoes or my vasque trail shoes, i'd say they're better than both.  better on the toes than my vasques and more solid and better fitting than the saucconys.

anyway, lt and i hit the main road and ran the 2 miles back to my car for a total of 18+ miles.  we were out on our feet for just under five hours (that includes all stops) and all the gear held up incredibly well.  i'll beat the shoes up some more and give a more detailed report at a later date, as well as the phone, but at a first pass, everything worked pretty groovy.

once again, lambert took some fun photos so stop by the scth website and take a look at them.

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	lick: hipsters: wax:	Fisherman's Blues The Waterboys The Best Of the Waterboys '81 '90

they're heeeeere!

my package showed up today with all the gear for the salomon xt wings challenge.  i'm now a proud owner of a pair of salomon xt wings (bright RED) a salomon technical training shirt (bright RED) and a nokia n82.  woohoo!  the picture of the salomon gear was taken with the n82 and uploaded from the phone to my flickr account.  check out the resolution on that crazy thing! 

so, the gear is here just in time for another altitude training session on the pacific crest trail tomorrow.  lambert and i will be tackling a section between spitler and lion peaks in the san bernadino national forest.  i'll wear the shoes and shirt and try out the nokia sportstracker software.  if you're a twitterer, i'll try to sort out the logistics for sending the details in a tweet so you can watch our progress if you like.

you know, i really like the concept of letting real life bloggers test out gear and post their honest opinions about the products.  sure, there's a "free stuff is cool" aspect, but more important is the legitimate feedback that others are able to obtain.  at the same time, it is an honor to be picked to participate in this sort of event.  i feel like it's my responsibility to put the gear through the wringer and give a detailed, unbiased review.  i hope that all of us picked to participate in this challenge can live up to that challenge! 

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	lick: hipsters: wax:	Camel Walk Southern Culture on the Skids Dirt Track Date

cleared customs and on their way

my gear from salomon should show up tomorrow.  i spent some time this morning taking care of the customs details with fedex and they said that barring any flight delays, the package should be delivered tomorrow.  PERFECT!

i have another pct run planned for saturday and i can't wait to try out the shoes on the trails.  the other thing i'm excited about is the nokia sports tracker website.  seriously, this thing is cool.  with the n82 and the sports tracker software, not only am i tracking my workout, but it is uploading the information in real time to the site.  this means that if i share the workout, anyone can watch my progress.  this is such a cool concept!  it's cool how connected items like this can make you.  now i can just twitter that i'm starting my workout, pass a tinyurl in the tweet to the sports tracker website and presto, instant entertainment.  because, c'mon, we all now how exciting watching a dot move around a map is! 

seriously, though, from a safety perspective, this a great tool.  now, in addition to letting loved ones know where you're going to be running, they can check on your status in real time.  maybe this is what i need to keep my mom from panicking when i take too long on a run in the arizona desert.

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	lick: hipsters: wax:	Sleeping With The Lights On Teitur Poetry & Airplanes