Grand Canyon

My wife and I went to the Grand Canyon during spring break, without the kids.  They didn't like the idea of hiking it too much.  We went with the idea of hiking from the South rim down to the river and back in the same day.  While people do it all the time, the grand canyon website is very adamant that visitors should not attempt to hike from rim to river and back in the same day.  After doing it, I can see why they would say that.  The day of the hike (4/10/12) the weather was great.  We started at the Bright Angel Trail at 6:15am.  The temperature was in the 40s.  We got down to the river by 10:15am, at that it feels like it probably was in the 70s.  We were feeling pretty good, and felt this hike might not be as difficult as we had anticipated.  The hike is about 8 miles each way.  We started back up at around 11am.  By 12:30pm we were back at Indian Gardens, (4.6 miles from the rim).  We were still feeling great, but the temperature has now gone up to about 95F.  The last 4.6 miles up to the rim took 3 hours and 15 minutes.  We used up about 1.5 liter of water each on that last stretch. The heat and the 11 miles of hiking finally took it's toll on us.  We made it back to the rim, and did pretty good.  But had it been a much hotter day, (it routinely gets over 100F in the summer), we would not done nearly as well.
In any case, the Grand Canyon was GRAND and beautiful!  Well worth the hike.  We plan to do this hike again someday, but this time down the South Kaibab trail and up the Bright Angel trail.

more goals completed

1. finally did 80 push-ups in 2 minutes. needed every seconds of those two minutes to complete task, but got it done. now I will work to be able to 100 continuous push-ups

2. rode my second 50 miles bike ride ever, the first one this year. this was fun, much better than the first one I did, I took about 5 hours to it though. I will try to do 1 50 miles bike ride in 4 hours or less.

13 miles under 2 hours

1st goal of the year checked off.
Went for a run on Saturday 1/18/2012, intended to run the 13 miles, hopeful that I would feel good enough to do it. The weather was perfect for running, a sunny low 50s morning.
3 miles - 25:43 m:s
6.5 miles - 56:20
10 miles - 1:28:20
13.0 miles - 1:58:51
still in pain on Sunday. Feet, knees and thighs are all sore, will try to do some moderate cycling to stretch out the legs.

six-pack challenge follow up

By the end of the year, I got my weight down to 115 lbs (normally 118), and my body fat % down to 11% (normally 12.5%). Alas, I only got a 4-pack, rather than the 6-pack I was trying for. The top four showed up easy enough, but the bottom 2 were hardly visible. Neither I nor my wife won the challenge. We both agreed to extend the challenge date until end of June 2012.

2012 Goals

Health/Personal -

1. 1000 miles on bicycles, 350 miles on foot (only 20 and 7 miles a week respectively) in 2012
2. run 1 half-marathon in 2 hours or less
3. do 1 50 miles bike ride
4. complete 2 of the 4 army ranger's physical requirements: 80 push-ups in 2 minutes, 80 sit-ups in 2 minutes, 12+ pull-ups, 2 miles in 13 minutes (currently can only do the 12+ pull-ups)
5. body fat at 10% as measure by my scale (currently at 12%)

Wealth - to increase net worth by $100K. This can be accomplish by investment gains, increased savings or debts reductions.

Skills/Knowledge - learn two cooking techniques from this list: stir-frying, braising, soup, sauteing, sauce

Reading - to read 10 books.

I can't think of anything more substantial at this point. So this will be the list for 2012. We'll revisit this list occasionally during the year to track progress.

Thang

2011 Year in Review

Work - no changes, still employed

Kids - no changes, 3 kids, each growing older

Spouse - no changes, 1 wife, growing older

Travel - NYC in spring

Health - body fat % is now in the 10%-12% range, slightly lower than last year

- cycling more this year than in the past

- slightly more muscular than in the past

- endurance is not any better

- better effort to exercise than in the past

Wealth - not much changed, more savings, but lower real estate holdings value

Knowledge - not anymore smarter/wiser/knowledgeable/skillful than last year (maybe a little more competent in the kitchen)

Friends - have not gained nor lost any friends this year.

driving a convertible miata

No, this is not a mid-life crisis! I just bought a 1999 miata convertible for my son. Since he still does not have his driver's license yet, I've been driving the car.

My impression of driving the miata:

1 - it's so small! (i've been driving a minivan for the last 12 years, so the miata is sooo low, and small. I've never felt so exposed/vulnerable on the freeway my whole life.)

2 - if you feel the need to drive a motorcycle, a great and safer alternative would be a small sporty convertible. I don't know if it's the same, but I think you get the same open/expose feel, without the inherent instability of a 2-wheeled vehicle.

3 - i won't miss it. it's kind of interesting, but i must be getting old & dull because i don't get any rush from driving this thing.

New exercise routine

I've been pretty good about staying active, and keeping in shape. I play tennis twice a week, I run/bike 2-3 times a week. I do push-ups, sit-ups and pull-ups on an intermittent basis. Starting this week, I'm going to add this exercise routine everyday:

In 3 minutes do: 25 push-ups, 25 sit-ups, 5 pull-ups and rest until the 3 minutes is up. Do this 5 times. Right now, I can only do this 4 times. I'm hoping to get strong enough to be able to do this 10 times (30 minutes).

I'll report back with progess at some later time.

Half marathon

I did it! 13 miles in 1 hours 59 minutes.

It has been a goal of mine to run the half marathon in 2 hours or less. This is roughly twice the time of the half marathon men's record time. This is the 5th time that I've attempted to do this. And the best I've done in the past was 2 hours 12 minutes, the worst is 2 hours 30 minutes.

My learning from these attempts:

1. the most important element is temperature. it was 60 degrees when I started, I think this is the coolest it's been of all the time I tried. I didn't even need water. (i could have used some, but my daughter who was supposed to ride a support bike with water slept in and didn't get out to the trail until I was done)

2. upper body strength is important. Even though I've been running/training a lot less this time compared the previous attempts, I've been been doing a lot more push-ups than before. Even though my legs were tired, but my upper body was less tired than usual.

3. in my condition, it was important that I forced myself to take walking breaks during the run. This time my plan was to run 9 minutes and walk 1 minute, throughout the run. I was able to run at a faster pace when I ran (8 to 8:30 minutes per mile), and it took a lot longer before my legs got sore. In the past, I was in better running shape so I ran continuously, and by the 10th miles, my legs and feet were so sore I wound up walking a lot in the last 3 miles.

4. better preparations. This time I ate a yogurt 1 hour before running, as well as drinking a lot of water. I didn't do that as much before. It really helped because I wasn't running out of energy during the run. In the past, about 90 minutes into the run, I would feel depleted of energy and water.

Notes from the run:

1. felt a twinge in my right ankle at the start of run, that went away quickly

2. at mile 3, felt a twinge in my left knee, that also went away quickly

3. at mile 7, the left knee now begins to have a light constant dull pain

4. at mile 11, the right knee now begins to have some pain, fairly noticeable. the 1 minute of walking in between does seem to relieve it somewhat

5. at mile 12, both hamstring seems to tighten up, i slowed down my pace a little, and that kept the legs from cramping up even more.

3.0 miles mark at 26:55

6.5 miles mark at 57:49

13.0 miles mark at 1:58:53

Six-pack abs challenge

My wife and I are challenging ourselves to get 6-pack abs by Christmas this year (2011). The person who achieve this will get $2000 to spend as they want. I figure we need some kind of incentive to go through the trouble of getting 6-pack abs.

This will require getting rid of a layer of fat and bulking up the abdominal muscle as well. We'll see where this gets us. It's a good thing there's no downside to this challenge.

Cracks in the mortality armor

I passed out (blacked out or something) this morning. Getting out of bed to wake my son up, I got to the bedroom door and felt the blood flushing away from my head and just slumped over. I banged my head on the bed frame, and according to my wife was out for 5 to 10 seconds. I didn't feel anything abnormal, and the worse part was banging my head on the bed, but this may be signs of things to come.

Old age is showing up in force.

Running diary

10/10/10 -- Ran in a 5K. My time was 22:41, which was much faster than I had anticipated.

As noted in July, I was going to try to run/train on a regular basis to get in shape to run a half-marathon in under 2 hours. I kept up the training for about 3 weeks, and just totally slacked off. So it was a surprised to me that I was able to run the 5K as fast as I did. My previous 5K in July was at 24:12.

10/16/10 -- Went for a 13 miles run to see what kind of shape I was in. The results was the same as before. That is decent time up through 10 miles, but all pain after that.

I got through 3 miles at 26:10, 6 miles at 53:00 and 10 miles at 1:33:00, but after that I mostly walked, essentially all of the last 2 miles to finish the 13 miles at 2:22:00.

I'm going to try to do this once a month until the end of the year. I have 2 goals.

1st - to run the 13 miles faster 2:10:00

2nd - to run the 13 miles in less than 2:00:00

I'll report back to update my progress

half marathon challenge

When I started to regularly exercise again a couple of years ago, my fitness goal was to be able to run any distance at twice the world record time. This was a fairly reasonable goal, not too fast, but also not too slow. So far it's been easy enough to meet this goal in the shorter distances, 400m up to 10k, but beyond that, I haven't been able to meet the challenge. The biggest reason is fitness level. I'm going to have to train to be able to handle the pounding my body will take for that long of a distance. I have run/walk 13 miles 3 times. 1st time at 3 hours, 2nd time at 2h30m, and the last time at 2h10m. My goal is to do it under 2 hours. I'm going to start a 10 weeks training program to get my body in shape enough to handle running for 2 hours.

The program is from runner's world. It consists of 3 workouts a week. 1 speed, 1 tempo and 1 long run. I'll report back on my progress.

Hiking at Yosemite

Went hiking at Yosemite this past Saturday. Left the bay area at 6:30am, hiked up to yosemite fall and drove home that evening. Got home at 10pm.
The hike was very tough. It was only a 4 miles hike one-way, but it was steep most of the way. The trail is somewhat small (average 5-6 feet wide) and rocky, so you have to watch your step all the time. You don't get to take in the scenery while you're hiking, only if you stop. On the way down, it started to snow. We hiked while it snowed for about 1 hour. I'm still sore from the hike. The fall was beautiful, full of water and so tall.

Parent/Child estrangement/relationship

Boy,

I'm reading the comments for the article about parent / child estrangement and it's just gut wrenching. I don't know if this will ever happen with me, but I've seen some of this in other people's lives, and it's difficult to deal with.
Anyway, here's the link to the article:
http://www.well.blog.nytimes.com/2010/05/03
"When the ties that binds unravel"