Ilanarama!

I am back from Spain and sloooowly putting together a trip report. But, as you may have forgotten, my vacation actually began with a trip to New Hampshire for the purposes of running across (much of) it, so I want to put down a few things about that, mostly for my own purposes (but you can read, too). Also some photos, taken by my teammates (mostly by David Sheehan).

( Whee! )

It's been a month since Britt and I bought our Priority Embark ebikes. Verdict: YAYAYAYAY!

In this month, I have ridden mine 172 miles! The longest ride was ~25 miles: a bunch of errands, followed by a long ride up a dirt road into the mountains for a picnic, and then back home. But I also rode 6 miles each way to a doctor's office twice, as well as lots and lots of shorter rides: to the library, to go running along the river or at the high school track, to the farmers market, to the grocery store, to the recycle station...basically everywhere I would otherwise have to drive.

I'm a lot more comfortable with the throttle-style gearshift for the continuously variable transmission now. Also, it's become second nature to turn up the motor assist going up hills, and turn it down on the flatter terrain. I rarely ride with the assist off completely, but I pretty much always strive for the combination of gearing and assist that means that I pedal against a little-but-not-a-lot-of resistance. This works out to being in eco or tour mode most of the time, with sport mode for hills and turbo mode for steep hills; I have only actually tracked my mileage after one battery charge, and that gave me 48 miles on the charge, woohoo! (I am trying to charge only to 80-90%, because that is better for long battery life, and I don't run the battery down completely because I want to be able to get home up the hill with some assist, so I suppose if I charged it all the way and ran it down all the way I'd get even more mileage.)

I bought some cheap (in both senses of the word) panniers, and they look ridiculous, but they work well for the purpose I require, that is, to carry groceries, empty bottles, and so on.



Look, I can carry a vase of flowers! (I bungeed the vase against the rack so it would stay vertical and not spill any water.) There is also a large bag of bok choi in there, behind the mail I just picked up from our mailbox, and two six-packs underneath. In the other pannier is my u-lock and the rest of my farmers market veggies and fruit.



This last photo also shows my mirror, which is so useful that now I keep looking at the space where the mirror should be but isn't on my mountain bike, as well as the cheesy little bell the city was giving away for free during Clean Commute Week last month. Today I installed what will hopefully be my last bit of extra bike gear, a handlebar-mounted water bottle cage, because it's been really hot and I've been getting thirsty while biking around town doing my errands.

If this were a real blogger's review, I'd probably talk about the belt drive, or the motor, or other technical stuff. But you know what? I don't actually notice any of these things. I just notice that I can get on my bike, and haul stuff around, and ride places, and not get overly sweaty or tired despite the hills and the heat - but also that I feel like I'm still getting some exercise. I bought this bike to fulfill a specific purpose, and it does so unobtrusively and awesomely, and this makes me happy!

My new electric vehicle: a Priority Embark e-bike!

When we first told our friends we were building a new house, most of them said, with dismay, "But your current house is so nice!" And yeah, there's a lot I loved about it, but when I thought about it I realized there was only one thing I was going to really miss when we moved: being able to walk or bike everywhere. Living right smack downtown we were about half a mile from the big grocery store and about a mile from the natural foods coop; half a mile from the library and a mile and a half from the rec center. We put around 5000 miles a year on our pickup truck. It was not uncommon for us to not get in the truck for days, or even a week or more.

Our new house is not that far from town (technically we're still in city limits) and we're easily within cycling distance of all the places we used to walk, but the mesa-top location that gives us those awesome views also gives us a 300-foot climb to get back home. It's doable - and we've done it - but not carrying 40 pounds of groceries or after a track workout with the running club. I'd long felt I really wanted a utility bike for just riding around town; I felt kind of silly doing errands on my fancy mountain bike, and it can't take a rack so I always had to wear a backpack for grocery runs. With our planned move, it made even more sense to get an e-bike! So last fall I started researching.

( Choosing an e-bike )

( Actually buying an e-bike )

It's interesting, actually. Riding the e-bike is like...riding a bike. It's not a motorcycle; it doesn't have a throttle. I don't really notice the boost except for starting from a dead stop, and going up hills. And it's not like I'm not riding up the hill - it's just that the hill doesn't seem nearly as steep as it does on my other bike. Which is exactly what I want!

I'm still getting used to the continuously variable transmission, which operates by twisting a ring on the handgrip (sort of throttle-like) but I keep forgetting which direction makes it a higher gear vs a lower gear. And we need to get mirrors, I think, and I want to figure out a grocery-carrying method. But so far, so good. I am looking forward to using our new electric vehicles all summer (and hopefully sometimes in the winter, too)!

Earlier this week I posted my goals for this year's Steamworks half: I did not make my A goal, coming in about 50 seconds slower than my time two years ago with a 1:48:10, but that time satisfies my B goal of sub-1:50. I think I might I also ran a much better-paced race this year, which was really my primary goal, so I'm quite happy with how things went.

I biked to the finish, which from my new house is mostly a downhill coast followed by a half mile of gentle uphill, and then got on one of the buses for the start. I shared a seat with a guy named Tim who was running his first race of any distance, and if I hadn't already been fired up, his enthusiasm would have done it. At the start I saw quite a few people I knew, including Allan, who lives an hour south in northern New Mexico and comes up for a lot of our races. We first "met" via the old Runner's World forum, and it was fun to discover that we were sorta-neighbors. Allan is 62 and just ran Boston (and set a PR!) in April.



Heading from the staging area to the start. I'm in the white visor with my head turned, in the center front.

I was determined to not go out too fast this year (which is alas very easy to do, as the start is subtly downhill), so I placed myself well back from the start line. The start line had been moved back some distance this year; this has always been a short course, with my Garmin showing 12.9-13.0 at the end, but this year I think the distance was about right (I recorded 13.09), though the intermediary mile markers were too close early and too far apart late (which threw my pace math off like whoa). I kept a close eye on my watch and clocked my first mile at 8:06, a few seconds faster than my goal of 8:08 for the first miles but not bad. Second mile at 8:09, third at 8:12. Heart rate just a little higher than my easy-pace HR, a good sign that I was relaxed and not expending too much energy.



Still happy at mile 3!

Mile 4 went uphill, though, and my speed dropped as I strove to keep my heart rate under control, giving me an 8:33. But the next miles had more downhill, and I got my pace back into the 8:10-8:15 range I had been aiming at. My HR slowly rose into what I consider my HMP HR range.

Somewhere in the third mile I had seen Allan not far ahead - I hadn't realized he'd gotten ahead of me as we'd started fairly close to each other, and he'd told me he was aiming at 8:20 pace - running alongside a slender woman in a yellow shirt, and eventually I caught up and said hi. The three of us ran more or less together for the rest of the race. Occasionally one person would get ahead and then get reeled in. I walked at all the aid stations (and actually turned around and went back at the 8-mile aid station because they had gummi bears, and I had missed them and wanted some!) but Allan and the woman in yellow didn't, so after each aid station I worked on catching up. This was not just because I like Allan. It was because after glancing at the face of the woman in yellow, I was pretty sure she was in my 50-59 age group, and damn it, I wanted to win!



Just behind Allan and chasing my temporary nemesis

After the hill at mile 9 I decided that I had enough energy to start pushing, so I did. I started gaining on Allan and the woman in yellow, and passed them at the last aid station by not slowing to a walk. I used the downhill of mile 11 to push even harder, clocking my fastest watch-mile at 8:03. (The "miles" I'm listing are based on the mile markers, but as I mentioned they were pretty far off in places, so every once in a while I manually hit the lap button on my watch to bring things into sync. Mile 11 on my Strava record came out at 8:06, the same as my first.)

I was pushing partly to pass my temporary nemesis, but also because I knew that the dappled shade of the downhill would soon give way to a sunny uphill stretch, which I always dreaded. Possibly because I had controlled my speed well early, or possibly because it hadn't heated up as much as expected (it was only around 66° F instead of 70° as it had been last year) it didn't seem nearly as bad as usual, and I passed a few more people, including a man I'd noticed at the start because he was wearing a Shiprock Marathon shirt. I was definitely getting tired, though, and I could feel I was slowing down as I reached the last turns. I saw the finish clock and knew I wouldn't beat my time from 2017, but gave it a burst of speed anyway. The announcer called my name as I crossed the timing mat, and then called out Allan's name - it turned out he'd been gaining on me for the last few miles and he finished only three seconds behind me! (If the race had been longer he probably would have passed me!) The woman in yellow was next, about 15 seconds later, and indeed she turned out to be in my age group. The man in the Shiprock shirt came in ten seconds after that, and he was in Allan's age group. So it turned out that both Allan and I won, but it wasn't a gimme for either of us.



Sweaty and happy at the finish! Allan is visible behind my left arm, and Yellow Woman just coming into the finish chute. #233 was one of the early starters - walkers and slow runners are given the option to start 45 minutes early - which is why she looks so fresh!

Despite coming in nearly a minute slower than I did two years ago, I'm much happier with this race. In my 2017 race report I compared my average pace over portions of the course with my 2009 race, which was the first time I ran it with serious training. Comparing those segments with today's run it's clear I paced much better:

segment	2019	2017
mile 1	8:06	7:37
miles 2-3	8:11	7:50
miles 4-11	8:15	8:18
miles 12-13.1	8:30	8:57

So, I'm still slowing down, okay. But I'm still a (relatively) fast old lady! For my first place AG finish, I got a $50 gift certificate to a local running store, which incidentally is the same award I got for winning the 5k in April. As it turns out $50 only makes a small dent in the price of new running shoes, and so when I used that award I actually paid more out of my pocket than I usually do for discounted older models online. But hey, I like to help out the local businesses, especially ones who sponsor our races, and I am sure they made some money off me. (The second place prize was a 6-pack of local beer, which I considered trying to trade for, though then I saw that it wasn't a flavor I was fond of. Oh, well!)

Allan gave me a ride home, which was good because otherwise I was going to text Britt and have him pick me up - I was not thrilled about the idea of biking up ~300 feet in the noonday heat after running a half! But this should be the last time I have to worry about biking up the hill to our new house (or feel bad about running errands in the car) because...as I've been planning ever since we decided to move, I finally finished my extensive research on e-bikes and ordered one, and it should arrive sometime next week! SO EXCITED. I will post more about it when it arrives!

As some of you know, Colorado had a late-season snowstorm earlier this week, but it cleared up beautifully for the Memorial Day weekend so we went on a bike ride! Here is the Strava map: basically, we rode the Skyline Trail (for some value of 'rode' which includes a whole lot of walking the bike up steep and rocky switchbacks, for me at least) up to Raider Ridge, then down the other side, then looped around through the Horse Gulch area and back through the trail system to the Skyline Trail trailhead, then back home. We actually rode to the trailhead on various bits of singletrack and one dirt road, so the amount of pavement totaled less than a mile, yay!

Here is Britt at our lunch spot on top of the ridge (and I know I've posted other photos at this very spot, but lookit all the snow in the mountains!):



I also wanted to post more house photos, since I realized that basically everything I've put up here since we moved in has been either the exterior or the great room/kitchen. Here is our sunroom, which will be getting houseplants eventually. It's designed so that in the summer, the sun doesn't come in due to the angle and overhang, but in the winter the sun should come in and warm up the black stone floor. The view is not as dramatic as on the other side of the house, but it looks out over - well, our driveway, first, but then a golf course (my beautiful lawn that I don't have to maintain!) and Raider Ridge in the background (the ridge we climbed today, though this view is further southwest than the spot where we were).



Here is my office! I waited to photograph it until I got my new office furniture (the Metro line from Pier One, rather simply made but solid wood). I still need to KonMari some of my office things (and put up some pictures!), but I am pleased with it as a workspace.



The thing on the left side of the view with the rock wall is the cat perch, which - I'm thinking of getting rid of since it doesn't seem to be bringing Lucy much joy. Instead she likes to sit in the bottom windows, which open and have screens across them (she loves sitting in them when they're opened), and the other evening I caught her sitting in the small upper window:



We still haven't put out the patio furniture because the landscapers are still working (well, the past few weeks they have not been here, which is a bit aggravating - we want this all done!) but I'm looking forward to moving our primary living space outside!

Our friend Ryan puts a White Rim trip together pretty much every year, and because she likes us :-) we get to go pretty much every year: I've posted here about 2017, 2016, and 2013 (and we also did it last year, though I only mentioned it briefly in a general post, and we did it twice with other groups when we lived in Boulder in the 1990s). This year's trip was only two nights as opposed to the three we had always previously taken for the ~100 miles; we went clockwise, which we'd only done once before (in 2013). It was just three couples: me and Britt, Ryan and Steve, and Kristin and Rolfe, with whom we have done many vacations before but never the White Rim. Rolfe had done it solo as a one-day trip several times, but this meant he'd never stopped at any of the interesting side-hikes, while Kristin had never been here before, so we were all looking forward to showing them the amazing sights. We also opted to take our Sportsmobile as a support vehicle, which was the first time for it as well.

The reason for compressing the trip into three days, and going clockwise, was so that we could camp at White Crack, which is usually a lunch stop for us. But this meant that the first day would be on the order of 46 miles, so I cheerfully volunteered to drive the first leg from the staging area at the Mineral Bottom Road: paved road to the turnoff for the Shafer Trail just inside Canyonlands National Park (the ranger gave me some shit for using Britt's parks pass for the rest of the group riding behind, and apparently gave them some shit as well, but she eventually let everyone in without making anyone pay extra); then down the Shafer Trail switchbacks, which was fortunately not too exciting - I did have to jockey around one tight switchback, but luckily I could see ahead enough to use the pull-outs to avoid oncoming traffic, as I wasn't too thrilled about the possibility of having to back up to a pull-out, as uphill traffic has right of way on these twisty one-lane roads; and then along the 4wd shelf road to Musselman Arch, where I traded off with Kristin.

Even after having driven the first 17 or so miles, it was a long way to camp, especially since the weather was dark and threatening; there was a bit of drizzle and a lot of wind, which (of course) was usually in our faces. But it made for some dramatic photos, as the Indian paintbrush seemed to glow against the dark clouds:



( More photos and blah blah )

Flickr album with these plus a few more photos (and no blah blah)

Huh, from recent posts in my journal it looks like all I'm doing is building a house. Well, that's...not far from the truth. I see that the last time I posted about running was last August, when I decided to DNS the Thirsty Thirteen half marathon, and the last biking was our Thanksgiving vacation to Scottsdale. But I get super antsy without physical activity, so I've definitely been doing stuff, I just haven't been writing about it.

After several years of "exceptional drought" we finally had a relatively epic winter. It snowed a lot in town, and it snowed a LOT up at Purgatory. We pretty quickly earned out our ski passes, going once or twice a week.



Even with the snow, I was able to run 4-5 times a week throughout the winter, because Durango keeps the (paved) river trail plowed, and at midday it was usually pretty pleasant. Because of the issues I had after my pelvic stress fracture, I've been trying to keep up my stretching and core exercises and increasing mileage verrrrrry slowly, so I'm only up to a slow 35mpw right now, but I registered for the Steamworks Half Marathon in early June, so I've got something to train toward.

We also took out our mountain bikes for the first time since our Arizona trip! Things are still muddy up here (though rapidly drying out), but there are a few trail areas near Farmington, New Mexico, about an hour's drive away. Last Saturday we went to an area new to us, the Road Apple Rally trails, and spent a very pleasant couple of hours.



Other than that, we are still madly packing and moving things and cleaning. The movers come on Friday! The closing on our old house is a week later!

Nearly two months after discovering problems with the wood flooring, we...still don't have a new floor. The old floor has been ripped up, though, finally, and the new flooring that we chose is in boxes waiting to be installed. The delay is because manufacturer wanted a second inspector to come look at it, and he couldn't get here until about a week into February, and then we had to wait for the approval, and then the guy who was going to rip out the flooring couldn't get here because we got a lot of snow. The cement underneath needs patching before the new new floor gets laid, and the trim will need to be redone. For a manufacturing error that we are not having to pay for, we are still having to pay for an awful lot of labor...

(Btw, if you want to see the sort of problems we had with the original flooring, here are two photos showing the cracking along the planks.)

A few things have been finished, though. The hardware in the master bath sink area is looking pretty good:



The picture was taken before the bedroom floor was taken out, so you can still see it in the background. Also, our custom range hood has been installed, along with the redone backsplash. The black under the cabinets is the same metal as the hood; the inset granite panel is the same "volcano" pattern that is on the kitchen island (hidden under the blue protective foam). The rest of the countertop is a black granite with a very subtle pattern.



Britt and the contractor have also been discussing putting rails on the roof to keep the snowslides under control. Right now our unfinished back patio is rather covered, as seen by the view from the patio looking along the wall where my office and bedroom are, and by the view out my office window:



Seven weeks to closing on our current house. I suspect we'll need every bit of it...

Our original Thanksgiving plans had us moving into our new house, but if you've been reading this journal, you know that our move-in has been delayed until sometime in January. This left us with both a hole in our schedule, and some frustration, since we've been putting off vacationing in order to keep an eye on the building process. Because of this, Britt suggested we - go on vacation. And I had the perfect idea. During last year's Thanksgiving trip to Arizona, during which Britt and a couple of our friends rode a hard point-to-point trail while I car shuttled for them and did easier day rides, a real highlight was my solo day at the McDowell Sonoran Preserve. I had told Britt that someday we had to take a trip there together, so he could experience it as well - and so we decided to go to Scottsdale, Arizona, and stay in a hotel near the Preserve, and ride there and in other nearby areas. (Of which there are many. We rode and hiked in the two large connected areas on the east of this map, and also on the "Sonoran Loop" which is the furthest south part of the large area at the top-center of the map.) Spoiler alert: excellent decision.

I'd actually been up for camping, but Britt wanted to go full-vacation-mode and stay in a fancy resort. As it happens, Thanksgiving is still low season in Scottsdale - one of the waiters I spoke with said that it's really not that busy until Christmas - so we were able to get a decent deal at The Boulders. This is a lovely resort with two golf courses, but for us the main attraction was that it is only a few miles from a connector trail to the McDowell Sonoran Preserve. (Well, that and the hot tub. And the four restaurants!) Also, the name is not a lie:



( Lots of photos! And me blathering on! )

In conclusion:



(40 photos - and I might add more - and no blah blah blah at Flickr. I haven't put captions on the photos yet, though, and...I might not get to it, be warned.)

The November issue cover story, "Battle for the American West", talks about the reduction of the Bears Ears National Monument and includes a dramatic nighttime photo of Procession Panel, which I posted a (much more amateur) photo of back in September.

Later in the same issue is a short article "Caught in Chaos" about refugees from Venezuela fleeing to Brazil. These refugees are the indigenous Wareo people, who live in the Orinoco River delta - where we visited on our sailboat in 2001! Our website is no longer online, but here's a page from the Wayback Machine about our visit to the Wareo: Cambio