"The City"

Quick outing to San Francisco today to go hunting for sales prospects at the Amazon Web Services conference. Since I took the train I'm choosing to count the walk to and from the convention center from the train station as training...3 miles...What? That counts! That so counts! :-)

Coyotes and King Snakes

Time for a little envelope expansion. Up to now my longest walk was a 13 mile slog that half killed me. Time to up that to 15. The venue, the coyote trail (a previous hike from "school's in") but this time much further. The day started foggy and cool but soon got HOT. The walk was uneventful, which, given the fact that it was an envelope expansion, was a very good thing. A few lessons learned however: sunscreen, water and sunscreen!

About the only real high point was a two foot long King Snake that was sunbathing on the trail. I stopped to take a picture and get acquainted. At the same time a jogger was coming the other way. She was clearly lost in her thoughts and didn't look to see what I was photographing until she was about two feet from the snake. She screamed and jumped about four feet in the air. It scared the crap out of both me and the snake!!!

Anyway, mission accomplished. We are up to 15 miles and in doing so have just broken the 250 mile point! Yay!

Rocky Mountain High

In my quest to walk around the planet, my travels this week took me for some altitude training in Denver.  The "Mile High City" sits at 5,500 above sea level right on the edge of the Rocky Mountains......quite bizarrely so actually.  The high plain goes on for miles and miles absolutely flat and then...boom...Rocky Mountains.  Anyway, I digress....

So the actual reason for the trip was that (and excuse the Twitter speak for those that don't) @DragonFlyData was doing a live webcast at #SFD3 so @mark1liver (yours truly) was recruited to go introduce the session.  The forecast for Denver the day of our arrival was for snow and sub zero temperatures.  I packed heavy.

Since this week has been a total disaster for training, I was determined to get a walk in.  The morning of the webcast I was up way before dawn and found myself making coffee in the hotel room until it got light enough outside to see the trail that my phone GPS told me was out there.  I set off into a biting, very, very sub-zero morning and was treated to the most spectacular of sunrises.  Reds gave way to gray and brown as Colorado came into sight.  An unusually fast pace to keep warm soon had me gasping for breath and remembering that this was indeed altitude training.  Wow.  Nine miles was about all I had time for before it was time to retire to the hotel and rehears the pitch for the webcast.  Fortunately, the hotel room had a view of the Rockies getting ever brighter and brighter as the day turned....just spectacular.  Hope the pictures do it justice....

The First 200 Miles

So a couple of short walks over the weekend and a quick 4 miles over lunch today et voila.... I passed the 200 miles point.. Yay!!!! Here is the view from mile 200

So this has been a whole lot of fun.  When I signed up for the Avon walk I used to do 7 miles from time to time at the weekend and be exhausted at the end.  Right now, 200 miles later, I am doing walks of 13-15 miles to get the same level of exhaustion.  I must be getting better.  I do keep reminding myself that the first day of the walk is 26 but there is still time and that is what training is all about.

......and what a wonderful set of scenes and images I have managed to collect.  Wow!! There is something to be said for getting out and exploring the area you live in.  California is quite the beautiful place.

 

For those of you following along, thank you for reading and sharing the journey with me.  I really look forward to sharing the next few hundred miles with you.  Who knows what we'll discover.

Thank you.

.....and if you haven't already made a donation, go ahead and click the link at the top right of this blog.  It's for a great cause  :-)

Going Social....

Kind of a frustrating week this week.  Lot's of small walks in training but nothing ground breaking...nothing higher, further, quicker....and no exotic new food.  A couple of nice pictures though...Don't you hate it when work get's in the way of a good cause!

Funding raising is slowing down too so, while I can do little about a busy week at work, I think it's time to take the fund raising into a new phase.  Up until now this blog has not been private, but has only been publicized to people who have donated money and committed support for the walk. We have some nice content in here now and some cute pictures to share.  It's time to invite the world to come join us here.  Be neighborly now!!

As a reference point, so far, the blog has been looked at 190 times with  readers coming from all the places you might expect (US, UK, France) but we have also attracted interest from people who have found us from Germany (10 times), Russia (three times just today), South Korea (twice) and Thailand.  We currently have right about 20 people who have donated to the cause and you have collectively raised $1,115.  I am stunned, grateful and humbled by your generosity. 

From tomorrow on, we are going social baby!!! @mark1liver will start to tweet some walks and hashtag #avonwalks and see if we can get some of the other walkers to come join us here and interact.  If you are a twitterer, please follow @mark1liver and feel free to retweet whatever you find fun.  We'll also be doing the LinkedIn thing, participating in some groups and Facebook friending the Avon population.  I'll give you a little running total of the results.  I'm kind of excited.  Those of you who know me, know what I think of social media but hey....I spent the evening learning Tweetdeck so I'm armed and dangerous.

......just as a tease, I'm thinking of upping the stakes here and announcing some silly breaking news.  More later.....

6 'n' 6 for Shrimp & Clucks

10 miles across and 2200 feet up yesterday and I was mobile this morning without too much of a problem. The mileage total so far stood at 141 and I wanted to break 150. That meant another 9 miles in training today. So when I say "without too much problem", well ok so I was a little sore. If 9 was to be put on the clock then a little insurance was needed.

I would drive 5 miles or so out, walk back for lunch.....and then be forced to go get the car :-)....

Result: A lovely walk up and over the local hills to my Red Robin (pretty much next to the house). A plate of Shrimp and Clucks for courage and a lovely walk back over the same hills to where I parked. Nice!! Chalk up another 12 miles!

Above the Hawks

For those of you familiar with the Bay Area, the scene of the 2,200 foot climb was Rancho San Antonio.  There is a relatively new section of trail that has opened up that is worth an explore.  Follow the standard PG&E trail right up to the very top then, instead of completing the the loop as normal by descending back down the other leg of the valley, continue on straight.  The trail leads on for another couple of miles and heads steadily up hill until you get to the radio masts at the very top of Black Mountain.  The path is quite narrow and flanked both sides by some fairly thick brush but it does open up from time to time to afford some spectacular panoramic shots of the bay area from San Francisco right down to South County.  Well worth the outing.....

....statistics for the outing:   10.62 miles, 2200 feet, 3 snakes and one chipmunk  :-)

When I Were a Lad.....

Trying for a big walk today.  Well, not a long one, but one that comes highly recommended as being just nasty.  It's a 5 miles in, 5 miles back kind of walk so no big deal....but the vertical height gain is 2,200 feet.  That makes it pretty much fives miles straight up.  Should be fun. This will be one to log..

So excuse the geek moment but many many years ago, probably when I was about 10 years old, I saw a picture of a fighter cockpit with a moving map display.  Back then it was quite literally a roll of paper that scrolled around and it was inertial since the concept of GPS hadn't even been thought about, but I remember being totally awe struck on how cool that was.  Imagine if one day that could be in cars.  I've kept the picture ever since, and I've shared it here for fun. For me, turning the page in my "How it Works" encyclopedia and seeing that image was the defining moment in my subsequent love affair with GPS.

Anyway, fast forward a little.  The iPhone.  I turned mine on the other morning and went for a walk.  At the end of the walk it told me that I had done 5.01 miles burned xyz calories, gave me the complete Death Star technical read-out and gave me the picture below with map, elevation, pace etc (correct to within about 20 feet).  What changes we've seen.

Anyway, if the walk happens today, perhaps I'll log it and share.  Should be a good souvenir.

Got the T-Shirt......and the Lipstick!

So my "walker coach" thought it would be a good idea to do training walks in a breast cancer shirt and pass out business cards requesting donations if a conversation broke out. Fine I guess. A look at the online store revealed a depressing array of pink attire. One pink man's shirt that read "real men wear pink"...um....NO!....not starting that kind of conversation and handing out business cards! Finally selected a long sleeve grey with writing (albeit in pink). Ordered my man's cut medium size :-). It came today!! Yay!! With my free mini sampler of "totally kissable " red lipstick. PEOPLE!!! I'm trying to help here!! Lets not be that way ok!

School's In

Wow. This is unfortunate. I guess Spring break ended and we are back in routine again. My mornings are full of breakfasts and packed lunches and walking to school! Argh! No more early morning walks! Yesterday I managed an hour in the morning and an hour at lunch for a total of 8 miles. This morning I have stopped on my commute to do a little bit on the coyote bike trail.

The Coyote trail goes from Morgan Hill pretty much to the Bay about 40 miles North. It's pretty and I've cycled it many times. If I can stride out a few miles this morning I'll feel better about my miserable track record so far this week.

....oh and in the past I have seen numerous rattle snakes, bob cats, several coyote and one mountain lion on the trail so I'm going to stop thumb typing and look where I'm going :-)

And a quick update. Two more donations over the past couple of days have put us at $1020 of contributions. Big psychological point getting north of one thousand dollars. Woohoo! Thank you so much everyone!!

Going for the Ton!!

Yesterday was a really spectacular set of walks that raised the running total of miles walked to 88.25. I figure today I'm going to combine the two walks from yesterday and do the hill plus another two miles. That will push the miles walked total to over 100. Yay!

1000 Up and 13 Across

So given that the last 13 mile walk left me quite stiff, I figured I would look for something of lesser distance but with more of a workout to mix it up a bit.  Behind the house is the Anderson Dam and the hills around that go up to about 1000 feet.  Perfect candidates.  A check of the map revealed a 10 mile loop from the house, up to and over the Dam, into the hills and back down the other side with a walk back through town to the house.  Since it is half term for Andrew, I could leave him sleeping and get a really early start to complete the loop before work. Perfect.  Just for fun, a quick Facebook post to say what I was doing and ask for comments and whether the readers thought I should do the 1000’ hill or another 13 miles flat walk.  Two comments received, once vote for the hill and one vote for the 13 miles. Hmmmm, ok, perhaps I could do both.  The plan was set, a pre-dawn start up and over the hill, go to work and then in the evening, another short 3 miles (or more) walk to make it up to 13.

The morning was very dark indeed and it was only just getting light as I headed into the wilderness behind the dam.  Breaks in the trees revealed a Morgan Hill with all the street lights still on twinkling in the valley below.  A long walk across the ridge line and then a spectacular view as I dropped down the hairpin bends back into the town.  What a lovely way to start the morning.  Thanks for the hill vote Leanne!!!

....and and evening walk in just spectacular weather to make 15 miles

It's snake season again!!

Yay!! It's so much fun this time of year if you work up in Sunnyvale near the Baylands Park. I try to get out there at lunchtime for a walk anyway but lately of course am doubly motivated. Right around this time of year the snake population seems to wake up and for a month or so, everywhere you look there are snakes. I escaped early today for a quick 6 miler and nearly stepped on this little guy in the grass. Just for kicks I've also included one of my larger friends from last year. The mating rattle snakes was X Rated so I couldn't share :-)

6am on a Tuesday

Ok so 48 miles covered last week. Since its rainy and horrible this week I'm probably not going to beat that but lets expand the envelope a little. Up at 5 this morning to see if I can do 11 miles and beat the distance record of last week at least

Well there is something you don't see unless you are walking looking into people's yards. There's a guy with a complete desert island setup in his back yard complete with tropical cabanas and a huge sailing ship. Yes a sailing ship