Posted on May 27, 2021 under run |
You are probably familiar with the usefulness of carrying around a quality, high-powered flashlight. However, have you considered the benefits of owning a headlamp as well? A headlamp has similar uses to a flashlight, with the added benefit of being hands-free. Read on for five things you need a headlamp for.
Camping
If you are someone who goes on week-long backpacking adventures or someone who would rather go car camping, you need to come prepared with a headlamp. If you are backpacking long distances, you may sometimes end up carrying your things early in the morning or into the evening. While carrying all of your supplies in and out, it’s important to keep your hands as free as possible to help you climb or catch your fall in case you trip on something. If you are camping out of your car or a cabin, you may overlook the need for a headlamp. However, headlamps are extremely useful when you are cooking breakfast or dinner around the campsite.
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Posted on May 19, 2010 under Trail |
Happy to say that I survived my first trip to Midwest 🙂 There was some dead time after arriving in Des Moines and dinner with my colleagues, so I thought I’d check out the local trail about a mile away from our hotel. Although it is called Des Moines Trails and runs along this winding river surrounded by forests, it actually is more or less a narrow bike path made for walkers, runners and cyclists alike. However, running in a new environment was definitely exciting and I couldn’t wait to see what I would find during this 9-mile stroll (actually hit 1:10, 7:49 min/mile..not too bad).
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Posted on Mar 11, 2010 under running, Trail |
I have been hoping to finally run on some trails for the past couple of months, but things kept getting in the way. First, it was training for my first half marathon and my incessant need to stick to the schedule. Then, it was a matter of actually finding good trails to run on, which is a task in itself. Once I finally figured out worthy trails to run on, out of nowhere, it rained every weekend for at least 3 weeks straight. And this is in San Diego, where it never rains! I finally found a weekend where rain was not forecasted. Actually, it rained later that afternoon, but I had finished just before it started. It may have been perfect timing since it is just a few weeks before only the 2nd trail race I’ve ever ran, the Black Mountain Summit 7K. What I’m hoping is that combining these trail runs before and after racing the 7K, I will be more than prepared for my next half marathon, the La Jolla Half Marathon (2nd half of the Half Marathon Triple Crown). This half, I heard, has a few daunting hills within this scenic 13.1 mile course.
So the trail I found is called the Los Peñasquitos Canyon Preserve, which has (at least) two main entrances to the trail. You actually have to pay ($3) to park at the lot by the entrances, but there is a park just down the road that is free to park in. I didn’t want to pull a muscle while running the trails, so…I chose to park down the road and ‘warm up’ to the entrance (good excuse, right?). What I learned at the end of the run is that there is actually a path to get to the same point from the park! Anyways, once I got to started, I noticed that the trail is very wide, which accommodates walkers/runners, bikers as well as equestrians. Because of the rains, there were not many people on the trails that morning, which was OK since there weren’t really any forks in the main road that would potentially get me lost all alone. There were a lot of side trails that led to to what looked like steeper, funner, hilly trails. But again, the rain had caused these paths to temporarily close; definitely piqued my interest though. The only problem with veering off to these trails is I have NO idea where it’ll lead me. The main path is supposed to be about 5 miles East to West and about 3 miles West is supposed to be a fun stop at a waterfall.
It was nice being able to run to a destination as opposed to just doing one big loop. However, when I got to said destination, I was a little disappointed (only a little because I read other people’s account of this majestic waterfall and they were not too impressed either). It looked more like a rapid flowing river with lots of rocks surrounding than a Niagara Falls-esque waterfall. What was cool was if you wanted to cross the ‘river’ to get to the trail on the other end, you had to very carefully walk across the rocks that were laid across. That would have been quite an adventure (if I did it)! Check out the photos below as well as the secret bridge/path to the park that I took back to my car. I’m hoping to take another stab at this trail in the future, and if I’m daring enough to follow “the road less traveled” 🙂
Posted on Jan 06, 2010 under Random |
Welcome to 2010, runners! I hope everybody had a safe/fun holiday the past couple of weeks. For me, it was filled with lots of driving, eating, visiting family, lounging around and a little bit of running on the side. My half marathon was in mid-November and my next one is in late January, which meant I was supposed to start my 10-week training right after that half.
My 2009 year end report according to DailyMile.
I took a couple of days off to recover from my half and then didn’t really follow any training plan after that. I have been trying to continue to run so that I didn’t get out of shape and maybe even run more miles to build up my base. What I learned from my first half is that I definitely have the speed, but not the endurance. To compensate for that, I have been trying to run more miles than I did from my last training. One way to help is by running 7 days a week, instead of 6. Another thing I did was just have a regular run instead of intervals since that is usually 3-4 miles total. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on Dec 22, 2009 under Random |
I was contacted by an editor from Archie Grand, a notebook publishing company in Sweden. From his email, it sounded like he used to be a runner, but now with three kids (and probably many years later), he doesn’t run much anymore. As a thank you, he offered to send me one of his notebooks, Runners I Met And Liked. It was a very nice gesture and like always, I am very thankful for it. If you go to the site, you’ll see that they make these small notebooks with random “[type of person] I Met and Liked” notebooks. These are pretty nice notebooks: the paper is really thick and the binding and cover is very sturdy and smooth. But it’s so nice; I don’t want to waste the pages on just anything. I used to have a notebook to write down my runs, but then went digital and posted them online. Also during my first half training, I wrote down some of my splits during intervals. I’m still thinking about what would be the best use of this really cool notebook.
Runners I Met And Liked
Writing about this book gave me the idea to talk about running in 2009. I ran for a short time in 2008, but it just got too hard and I wasn’t really motivated or had much support. I tried again early this year and was on a running forum and someone mentioned a website where you can post your runs and talk to other runners. Runners on DailyMile were very supportive and provided me with that bit of motivation needed to keep me running. That, integrated with Twitter really got me into running and racing for the first time in years helped push me over the top. Since then, I have ran 3 5K’s (including an AG win), a 10K and my very first half marathon. That half marathon was my greatest achievement to date; I never thought I would be able to race that many miles. With that under my belt, I know that a full marathon is just around the corner (Rock n’ Roll San Diego). I have quite a few half marathons planned throughout 2010, admission into the Brooks I.D. program and like I just said, my first full marathon.
I’m not necessarily going to name runners that I met and liked, mostly because I haven’t really met any runners, per se. I have gotten to know, received support, and talked to many runners in 2009 from: DailyMile, Twitter, blogs, forums, Meetup.com and Nikeplus.com. I probably wouldn’t still be running today if it weren’t for all of the people from these great places. I have also received many running products from some generous companies for me to test and review. Although that is very nice of these companies, I have to say that getting to know all the runners is the best gift I can ask for. I feel very thankful this holiday season; I know not everyone can say the same. It has been a very tough year (economically) with so much happening around the world; you’d think it’d never stop. 2010 is a new decade, which can mean many things: a new year, new job, new running season and just a fresh start all-around. Hopefully everyone enjoys their Christmas and New Years to get 2010 started off right.
Keep on running!!
SDrunner
Posted on Dec 07, 2009 under Race |
I know I’m a little late with this post, but with Thanksgiving dinner, Black Friday and the first week at my a new job, it has been really hard keeping up with the blog. But I can’t put this off any longer and I am way overdue on all of my product reviews. I admit I did contact some companies, but there is a good amount of stuff where companies contacted me on their own (which I am always grateful for), and it’s too hard to say no to free stuff.
Anyways, back to running: the 5K Turkey Trot was about a week and a half after my first half marathon, the Silver Strand Half Marathon. The 13th Annual Thanksgiving Day Turkey Run was a very small race for 2K, 3K & 5K distances. It pretty much was a local race, but it was the nearest one to my LA house, and cheap enough to pay the day of the race. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on Nov 16, 2009 under Race |
I just completed my first half marathon, the Silver Strand Half Marathon and the main takeaway I got from running my first half marathon: it’s very hard!! While I was waiting in line to use the restroom, a guy was talking to another guy about how on his last half marathon he said, “Man this is really tough, but I’m almost done. When I finally finished, I thought to myself, wow, I would have only been HALF done if this were a full marathon.” My thoughts exactly. First let’s get to the overall results on the half marathon: 1:38 (6:52, 6:41, 6:48, 6:44, 6:46, 6:47, 7:08, 7:36, miles 10-13.1: SLOW). Placing: 14th in my age group (20-24) out of 72, 181 out of 2600+ overall. It’s sad that I was on pace to hit my goal of sub-1:30, but then just flopped at the end. I’m not going to let that discourage me from running additional half marathons and dare I say, a full marathon!
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Posted on Nov 09, 2009 under Training |
It’s been a while since I wrote a post about my half marathon training, the good thing is that I have still been running and training (for the most part). It’s not necessarily due to laziness, but I just had to attend to other very important things that were going on in my life, outside of running. It is fairly safe to say that I will be able to focus on running again (maybe even more than before) very soon, if not in the near future.
There are some cool stats in DailyMile: TVs Powered, Gas Saved and best of all, Donuts Burned!
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Posted on Oct 28, 2009 under Random |
I’ve always wanted to create a running quotes page (link also on the top of the blog..), but just never had the time to find all the good ones and compile into one list, and I still don’t.
After my first year of running cross country, I had one of the senior XC captains (also a friend of my older brother) sign my yearbook. What he said was pretty encouraging and got me to train really hard that summer and improve that very next cross country season.
My old high school cross country coach did this thing at the end of the season where he got a picture of each of the runners from a race, wrote something about that runner, framed it and gave them as gifts during our cross country banquet. And behind that frame, he wrote a more personal note that only the runner got to read, I decided to share what my coach said to me.
I’m hoping I could think of more of these types of quotes, if not, at least put up some other ones that I remember from high school cross country or even now. I do get daily running quotes from Runner’s World, it shouldn’t be too hard.
Maybe this will help encourage others to either start running again or continue to train and work hard at whatever they’re trying to achieve.
Posted on Oct 21, 2009 under Random |
This is what my business card would look like if running was my job.
If running really was a job that I got paid for doing rather than just a hobby/obsession that I do on the side of my actual job, then I would be able to do all the things that professional athletes and coaches suggest to do as a runner. What I mean is, there is so much great advice from other runners and articles in magazines and online that will give you tips on how to be a better runner, but who really has the time to do all of that? From what I have read from runners on twitter, DailyMile and on blogs, it does seem like a fair amount of people do dedicate a lot of time to running, but for others (like myself), it’s hard to be able to follow through on all of the great advice that other runners provide. With that being said, if I actually got paid to run and could focus on it 24/7, I would do/focus all of the following:
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