Adventures in Onionism

Pretty underwhelming trip to the Sierras this weekend. Since I taught this summer and will be traveling most of September, this was perhaps my best and possibly only opportunity to turn it into something really big. My next race is in three weeks (Plain--fire gods willing), so I thought this would be good timing for big training miles, too. So I drove an extra couple hours (5+ instead of the normal 3+) and headed to Sierra National Forest. However, the Rough Fire was uninterested in my plans, and the views in the normally stellar Kaiser, Ansel Adams, and John Muir wildernesses were terrible, as was the air quality. Friday afternoon I did a short run to Potter Pass. I intended to bag Kaiser peak and do a fairly significant loop, but the trail signage was sub-par so I went the wrong way, and the trail was really sandy (and heavily horse-traveled?) so I wasn't really feeling it. Also, cows.  The lakes were pretty though. Saturday I drove out to VVR and the end of Kaiser Pass Ro...

Gf and I did a quick overnighter in Eldorado National Forest. We car camped on a road on the way to Wrights Lake and hoped to catch the tail end of the Perseids. We saw one gigantic, amazing, spectacular meteor, and the sky was incredibly clear, but not anything with any regularity. Saturday we hiked in Desolation Wilderness from Wrights Lake to Rockbound Pass. After making breakfast and coffee in the parking lot in the morning, George had disappeared, and it took us a while to find him, because he'd wandered over to the campground and somebody turned him over to the ranger.  One that got resolved the hike was really pretty--Desolation is easily the closest real granite to the Bay Area.

Gf visited and we rode bikes to local wineries. By local I mean three blocks from my house. It was the best. I also went running with dogs, as usual. Titan Surprisingly, this is not George. When I got the inkling that gf has come around to liking bikes, I jumped on it and bought another one so we could more comfortably ride together. Found a KHS Aero Turbo in Alameda for pretty cheap on Craigslist. It's pretty comparable to my Lemond, but with a slightly more racing-oriented geometry, which you can read about in an old Bicyclist magazine article . I took of the aero bars as soon as I got it home. At former owner's house At new owner's house Obviously what I really need to do is buy gf this bike . Somebody take my old Nishiki off my hands.

I went to Utah last weekend to run Ultra Adentures' Tushar 93K . It was a gorgeous race, and since obviously this is the only 93K I've ever run, I suppose I set a PR, despite the course's nearly 17,000 feet of climbing, almost all of which takes place between 10,000 and 12,000 feet above sea level. The race was part of the US Skyrunning series , which the NYT just wrote about, and is definitely my kind of race. I flew to Utah on Thursday, and cowboy camped on a random BLM road outside Fillmore (Utah's first capital--the BY trying to curry favor with Millard.) Friday I worked remotely and hung out in Beaver, where there is not a lot happening. In the evening I drove up into Fishlake National Forest to Eagle Point Ski Resort to check-in and hear the RD give a completely scatter-brained course preview due to lack of sleep. Mostly he told us to take our time because the course was overgrown, extremely steep, and gorgeous, all of which sounded good to me. He did make me w...