My world always becomes fairly small during the summer. When everyone else is out vacationing and taking trips, I tend to stay closer to home. Even during all of the Tahoe Big Years in which I participated over the years, and driving and grinding, I was still basically restricted to the Lake Tahoe Basin. Not a bad place to be, but I just find it funny how “local” I stay during the summer.

This year, despite not having any scheduled activities beyond work, I’m traveling around the area even less. That’s mostly because I’m focused on work and trail running. And, each week, I basically combine both of those activities!

This summer I decided to trail run commute to work three times per work week. On top of that, I begin many of my longer runs (on my days off) right from my front door. To be honest, though, I don’t mind this life at all. It’s simple, yet there are a lot of benefits to it. The first being that I’m getting in great shape. The second is that I rarely buy gas nowadays. The last time I filled the tank was on June 17, and prior to that it was May 22. So, like, once a month!

That said, instead of buying gas, I’m spending more money on fuel for my body in the form of electrolyte/carb/sodium powders and gels – haha! It’s all good, though. I’d buy that stuff regardless of whether or not I was driving 😉

My current approach to focusing on an 11-14 min/mile pace (for flat and rolling terrain) is going great. I’ve been able to exceed my intended mileage of 25 miles/week fairly easy. In fact, I managed to log 150 total trail running miles in June. And that included 28,000 feet of elevation gain. So I continue to feel strong, and have been watching my health stats increase every week.

Mid-July, I’ll be running as a pacer for my friend who’s going to attempt the TRTER100 (Tahoe Rim Trail Endurance Races). I’ll be linking up with him around midnight July 18/19, and then running with him for the last 28 miles of his race. Of course, this is based on his preceding day going as planned. By the time I start running with him, he’ll have already ran 72 miles. So it’ll be an interesting experience. This wasn’t on my schedule until a few weeks ago when he asked. So I’m probably more nervous than he is about running!

Here’s my most recent Tahoe Trail Guide article.

Learning to Learn (Part 1): Getting Out of the Way of Ourselves

Recently, I watched an interview of a scientist who studied athletic performance as it related to age. She found that so long as you train smart and hard, into advanced years, you can minimize the decrease in your performance…

Although I’ve mostly been trail running lately, I still managed to get an assortment of shots of Sierra Nevada birds last month. As I look at this selection, however, I see that some are either haggard-looking juveniles (i.e. not in full plumage) or they’re parents who are gathering food for the juveniles 🙂

I made one YouTube video this month, which isn’t saying much as it’s a basic update. But it’s at least something to illustrate some of what I’ve been up to lately 🙂