It was a good first week full of friends, family, running and skiing.

The First Week of 2013

  My wife and I thoroughly enjoyed waking up before dawn and climbing Hatobuki Mountain to watch the sunrise. Together with some relatives and about half the population of this little town I live in we welcomed the year of the snake.  I can't even remember the last time we climbed that hill together but I look forward to doing it many more times.   As if that wasn't enough exercise, Nathaniel from GIFU runners called me up and we did an easy (for him) 10k that included a stop at the shinto shrine Shirahige Jinja, where we clapped our hands and bowed our heads and threw a little money in the hopper.  After lunch and a shower it was off to a temple called Narita San for another Hatsumode.

On the fourth the whole family went skiing at Arkopia resort in Takayama.  A great family ski hill about 2 hours from home. http://www.arkopia.jp/

• Logged 47 km and feel like I am on my way to getting back to running the way I want to.  

http://www.wnyc.org/shows/heresthething/2012/jul/02/transcript/

Here is the transcript(printed words) for an interview between the movie actor Alec Baldwin and a Pediatrician (children's doctor) speaking about the evils of the white stuff(sugar).

http://www.wnyc.org/shows/heresthething/2012/jul/02/transcript/

Merry Christmas guys,

Just wanted to make a comment about the response to my question on EndurancePlanet about knees and hips acting up half way through my first marathon. I mentioned knees and hips as opposed to say quads and glutes because I wasn’t feeling muscle fatigue as much as tightness at the ends of the muscle. This was my first marathon and I planned to go really slow and did, finishing in 5:16:xx . I hadn’t done a long run beyond 26 km since before the summer so when I got to that point my knees and hip flexors looked up and said “It’s time to go home, right?”. It was snowing lightly about 28-30F degrees and windy with more hills than I expected. 750m(2300 feet?) of ascent? Don’t know it thats much but i guess I need more downhill running practice. I don’t know if that is “cramping” or not but I ended up switching to a 2:1 run walk ratio for the rest of the race. I wore my Kinvara 3's by the way.

  

A shot of me at the Nara Marathon 2012

Untitled by k_brown at Garmin Connect - Details

Untitled by k_brown at Garmin Connect - Details