Mountain Preparation - Day 167 - T-minus 9 days

I want to give a big hello to anyone who just arrived here after watching the promo video I put out. I hope you enjoyed it. It was really fun making. I decided it would be a good time to spread the word about my little endeavor just as things are starting to heat up.

I got over my mini-crisis the other day thanks to some words of encouragement and a good night’s rest. Now I’m ready to finalize the organization of my gear, start washing clothes and laying things out to see what I actually have. Be watching here for a video specifically on my gear.

I also got some new food prep toys that I’m looking forward to trying out and making videos on.

Basically, don’t go anywhere. I may even end up updating a day’s blog after I post it just in case something new happens after I post it. I’ll make sure to put an -Updated- at the top or in the title if I decide to do that.

As far as training goes, I’m still on it, riding 15-20 miles a day and getting some 2 mile walks in as well. I’m going to continue to work hard this week and on Tuesday or Wednesday of next week, 4 days before I leave, I’ll start doing a recovery exercise plan so my legs are good and fresh by the weekend.

I made it for the video below so I might as well share it 😄

Mountain Preparation - Day 166 - Unable to Sleep

Last night I had a bit of an “OMG I’M ACTUALLY GOING TO BE DOING THIS THING AND I’M NOT READY AT ALL!” moment. ’Wait,’ I hear you saying, ‘shouldn’t you have gone already?’ Why yes, I was originally supposed to on my trip the last week of June so that I was climbing the Mount of the Holy Cross on or as close to my birthday as possible, however, this spring had exceptionally heavy snow falls, 130+% above normal and the melt off was slower than usual as well.

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Weather on the Peak for the week of July 8th. - mountain-forecast.com

This means that even today, July 8th, there is still a good deal of snow on the mountain. Neither my climbing partner, Seth, nor I have snow climbing experience and we aren’t ready to learn just yet so we pushed our trip date back to July 19th - 26th to give the sun a few more weeks to do its work. I expect patches of the trail to still have snow, but they should be reasonably navigable or avoidable. Temperatures are in the low 40s on the peak and even today there is 1 inch of snow predicted.

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The gear on the blue tarp is what I’m planning to go in my pack

The extra month of prep time has turned out to be a good thing, but with only 9 days left until we leave, I feel like I could use another month! I’ve been getting my gear together and have nearly all of it, but I am still missing a few things such as a lighter, maps, and contact solution. Despite having nearly everything in order, I am still very stressed over it all. Do I have too much? Do I have too little? Am I missing something?

I haven’t begun to buy, prepare, organize or weigh my food yet and that’s a big looming weight over my head. On top of that, it all has to some how fit in my pack.

Anyway, I felt the need to vlog about it last night so you get the chance to see my worry manifest for yourself as I have a mini breakdown at 1 a.m.. Get ready for a wave of posts and updates over these next 9 days as I finally reach the last stretch of this months long journey to climb a mountain.

Mountain Training - Day 106 - Bike Riding and 2 milestones

How time flies! It’s been 45 days since my last post. Where to begin?

I’ve definitely been outside training a lot more. Mostly running, but doing some stairs as well. There is a flight of 50 stairs in a row that I’ve been going to and will run up and down wearing a weighted vest. But mostly I’ve been jogging.

Now that it’s nice out, it’s been hard to want to go into the gym, though I’m sure the weight lifting and other varieties of cardio would be beneficial.

I went on a 3 vacation to Las Vegas in there and managed to make time for 1 work out. I figure the miles and miles of walking I did the other 2 days counted as exercise enough.

Elliptical at the Park MGM in Las Vegas

Milestone 1:

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Last week, I felt fresh enough to try running the longest I’ve ever ran. I managed to run my first 10k and it felt great. During the run I even ran my fasted mile on mile 5 which is really crazy. I actually was speeding up on the back half. It was the middle 2 miles where I was afraid I wouldn’t have enough juice left in the tank if I didn’t slow down a bit. I ended with a time of 57:18. I ran a bit extra just because I wanted to make dang sure I hit 10 kilometers on the GPS.

Milestone 2:
After losing 15 lbs, I’ve been struggling to break 225 lbs, but yesterday I finally slipped under it at 223. I ate dinner and promptly popped back over it, but at least I have the potential to start moving down again.

Last week I finally was able to go buy a new bike so that is yet another way for me to mix up my exercise routine. This morning, I rode it to work and celebrated with the video below. I’ll be testing out more gear in the coming weeks because we are down to less than 2 months until all of this comes to a head and I tackle the mountain so be looking for more videos and posts coming soon.

Mountain Training - Day 61 - Getting Outside and Breakfast

It’s finally nice out! I’ve been making the most of it running outside a lot the past 11 days.

In fact, I ran 4 miles straight for the first time in my life last Wednesday. It felt great and I gave a little Rocky-esque arm cheer when I crossed my imaginary finish line. I ran it at a slower pace than I’m used to because I was focusing on staying in my aerobic heart rate zone, but I could have ran another mile if I wasn’t on a time crunch for dinner.

Riding the wave of good weather feel good vibes, I decided to do some training on hills with my 23 lb backpack. My goal is to do an exercise wearing it each week because I want to get used to wearing it and work the extra muscles involved with carrying it. I drove out to Pioneer’s Park and ran some laps up and down 2 hills with 60 foot elevation rises. I had an audience while doing it. There was a couple hiding behind some bushes having a picnic watching me. Then when they got up and left, another couple sat down to enjoy the sunset right at my turn around point. I just used it as motivation not to slack and walk more than I absolutely had to. 😉

It’s just over 1,000 feet to those trees

Finally, I thought I’d share with you my morning meals.

I have tried to reduce the amount of sugar in these smoothies since recording this because it felt like a lot once I watched this video back by taking a multi vitamin and lower sugar protein powder in lieu of the chocolate breakfast powder on some days.

Mountain Training - Day 50 - Milestones

This is just a quick post because I’ve hit 3 milestones today. The 1st is that I’ve been officially training for 50 days. It doesn’t seem like it has been that long. I kind of feel like I should be further along with my preparations by now, but this winter has just been so snowy and cold (the snowiest on record in Nebraska) that I haven’t been able to get outside for what I need to do. I’ll have to do some catching up when the warmer weather comes and the flooding we’re experiencing now ebbs.

The 2nd milestone is that I’ve lost 10 pounds finally. Again, I feel like I should be further along than that. I’ve been building the muscles in my legs pretty heavily so I know that affects things, but I hoped it would be closer to 15 lbs. by now. I am eating much healthier, but still consuming about 300 calories too much each day. I’m going to try to do more meal planning to help reduce random snack attacks, especially at night.

The 3rd is that I’ve gotten myself back up to running 3 miles non-stop. My mile pace is still kind of slow at an average 9:45, but at least I’ve gotten my endurance up. 2 years ago when I was running 5 days a week, the longest I ever ran was 3.1 miles. I did it a lot faster back then, averaging 8:30, but never made it further than that. I feel like I could have gone further than 3 miles today so that means my leg training is paying off.

Yesterday I started doing work outs again with a weighted backpack. I did my normal Stair Stepper workout wearing a 23 lb backpack. I adjusted the weight accordingly on the machine so my legs didn’t feel the difference much, but I noticed my feet had to work much harder to keep myself balanced. It’ll be good to keep doing a backpack work out each week to get used to it.

To conclude this post with some humor, when I was running today, it started raining. My shirt was clingy and you know what that means, chafing nipples! I’m pretty sure I rubbed off the top layer of skin. It’s Neosporin and a shirtless night for me.

Mountain Training - Day 44 - Staying Warm

Wow! I can’t believe it’s been 17 days since my last post.

A month or so ago I was given a lot more responsibility at work and it’s been taking up a lot of my time and energy. The past week and a half it’s been all I can do to drag myself to the gym. I have to park 3 blocks away if I don’t go late at night and it’s been bloody cold. I hate walking with sweaty clothes in sub zero temps back to the garage. It’s been hard to stay motivated with all the extra work at my job and the temps, but I’m still getting through it.

When I go to the gym, it usually ends up taking about 1 hour 45 minutes which sucks up a lot of my free time so I’ve been more eager to run outside where I can get a good work out in about 30 minutes. But with the cold weather, it’s meant I’ve had to figure out how to stay warm.

Below is the stuff I wear when I’m running in freezing temperatures.

Mountain Training - Day 27 - Cold Weather Running

Today was a rest day, but let me tell you about yesterday afternoon.

After complaining about the pain I was in yesterday, I ended up having an awesome workout in the evening. I hit up the chiropractor before lunch and that got my flow back in alignment.

I decided that the only thing keeping me from running outside in the cold was my face so I stopped by the Lincoln Running Company and bought a Sauce Frosty neck and face warmer.

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The Frosty

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As a Neck Warmer

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As a Face Warmer

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As a Pirate, err a Bandana

This thing made a world of difference. I wore it as a mask for about 5 minutes while I warmed up, but it does get hard to breath through it when you’re sucking wind, so I had to pull it down to just a neck warmer once I got going. It might not be as tight across your face, but I have a ginormous head so it fits pretty snug. Regardless, even having it as a neck warmer kept me toasty warm.

So I went out to Pioneers Park and had a great 2.59 mile run in 20° weather just before the snow came down. You might say, that’s it? Well, even when I was running 5 days a week and 30 pounds lighter, the furthest I ever ran nonstop was 3.1 miles. Baby steps.

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Let’s just ignore that slow down on the last hill 🙄

I also pulled out my Xero TerraFlex shoes for the 2nd time to give me some much needed traction along the snowy parts of the trail. They aren’t your average running shoe. They have a wide toe well, and not much in the way of padding to allow you to feel the trail better as you run. My ankles and calves are really sore after using them because I worked muscles I don’t normally use when running.

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Lots of traction. I plan to wear these or something similar on the mountain.

But the long and short of it is, it was a great workout after feeling so bad earlier in the morning. I’m looking forward to continuing to do cardio outside.

One final note. I’ve finally figured out a way to share videos with you on here and not have to host them on YouTube or pay for a service like Vimeo. It’s not perfect, but it’s at least a start. To test it and celebrate, I made a cheesy timewarp video of this run trying out more features than I should. :) Let me know in the comments if you have any troubles watching the video.