Adventures in Onionism

I'm sitting in a rocking chair next to the dogs on the front porch of a cabin in the Shenandoah Wilderness in Shenandoah National Park, enjoying the fireflies. I heard a whippoorwill a few minutes ago and realized I didn't bring earplugs, so we'll see if the night turns out magical or sleepless. After seemingly endless rain the past few weeks, the sun finally came out today. Juneteenth (Thursday) I road my bike out the W&OD to my hometown to go to the pool with a friend from junior high. I got a flat but still got 20 miles in. Today was hot but either it was less bad in the mountains or I'm getting used to it. I need mileage and more importantly massive vertical for Hardrock in 3 weeks, so I rented a car for the third straight weekend. It's stressful arranging the logistics with the dogs and work, but it feels good when I get good and tired. Did about 18 miles and 4,000 feet of vert today, hope for steeper tomorrow. The dogs and I had probably two dozen ticks on...

Lots of things have happened. Mostly bad, like family voting to traumatize federal employees (side note: It won't help balance the budget! ), my moving back to DC across the country away from Amy, and my colleagues that I worked hard to hire getting fired because consumer protection is bad now. But some good has happened. So here's the good running stuff. The first few months of the year have gone mostly according to plan.  February 8 I drove down to the Wild Oak Trail and started a midnight loop of TWOT. TWOT is a 29-mile loop that has turned into a twice-annual self-supported vaguely Barkley-esque run of one to eight loops. The  website makes it seem much more sadistic then it is (my friend tells me the RD mostly just doesn't know how to update the website to get rid of the "you don't deserve to be here" tone.) I planned to do two loops, including the first with a midnight start. The creek crossing was high, and the rain was cold, so I wimped out and just ...

 I really like PEBA foam. They don't seem to make the super-cheap Reebok (yes, Reebok) PEBA shoes that I like anymore. (I've put 600 miles on them which I think makes them some of the cheapest shoes per mile I've ever bought.) So I had my associate Claude make some charts for me.   Running Shoe Foam Technology Chart Running Shoe Foam Technology Chart A comprehensive mapping of proprietary foam names to underlying chemistry PEBAX/PEBA EVA/Supercritical EVA TPU TPEE Mixed/Blend Proprietary/Unknown ...