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Posts from the ‘Night’ Category

Feb 9

This week

If I ever thought I’d have more time to myself after trading full-time employment for freelancing and a part-time job, I was crazy. This week has proved that I will likely not have any more free time, especially during my student’s production weeks.

My newspaper staff has nearly double this semester. I’m having to create spreadsheets and sign ups for lab and one-on-ones. It’s amazing and a little overwhelming. We held three stories this issue because we sold out on ads weeks before. Sold out. On ads. As in, we can’t take anymore because we have too much content.

That’s a great problem for a college newspaper. That’s a great problem for any newspaper.

So between freelancing and my students this week, I probably worked 50 hours. Meaning little time for running.

Here’s a look at what I’ve been doing:

SUNDAY

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Mega Super Bowl party day. With lots of food.

I’m not a fan of any specific football team. I appreciate a good game for a good game. So I was kind of bored the first half. But then, when it got interesting, I was invested. I love games that go down to the wire.

But really, I go to the party for the food.

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Oh hey pansit, where is your homeboy adobo? Oh, right next to you? Don’t mind if I do?

Wait… what’s that?

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Pulled pork! This photo doesn’t do it justice. My friend’s husband is a culinary genius with the pulled pork. But really, the potato salad up top was the amazing part. I didn’t know she made such a great potato salad. (I’m a bit of a potato salad aficionado, really.) I took home a ton of it too. And ate it for two days. I’m not even going to lie.

And I bet your Super Bowl party didn’t feature animals.

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Our friends live in the country. Sorry about the blur, Joleen the goat didn’t like the paparazzi.

WEDNESDAY

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We were still thinking of names for this little pup. Last night, we finally agreed on one: Cassiopeia.

We’re calling her Cassie for short. And her name fits our theme. We name our dogs after songs. Our oldest female is Sky Midnight Blue after Peter Gabriel’s Sky Blue. Our male is Hey Beau Diddley after the song Hey Bo Diddley.

Cassiopeia’s full name will be Winter Star Cassiopeia. If you love Third Eye Blind as much as I do, you know the line comes from the original version of Campfire, a song that made it to Ursa Major with a lot of tweaking. It was retitled Bonfire.

It’s appropriate, for many reasons.

These lines:

And there’s all these winter stars still flying

Cassiopeia

Everything’s changing now

And:

Into one thousand pieces

I had broke into over you

Nightshade will soon be gone

But I keep burning on and on and on

I’m a bigger fan of 3EB’s less popular tracks than the band’s big hits, including God of Wine. But this song seems appropriate as nearly everything in my life is changing now. And I really feel a connection to the “burning on and on and on” line right now. And lately? Into a thousand pieces I broke into over journalism. Very fitting.

I’m not sure what it says about me that my love for a band transcends all the years it’s been out of the mainstream. I’ve seen them three times in concert, most recently at a day-long music festival where I swear I was the only one singing every word to every song. The song I most wanted to hear that night? Campfire.

We toyed with Page, for Mumford and Son’s White Blank Page. I also offered up Storm for Mumford’s After the Storm.

I think my husband agreed on Cassiopeia because he didn’t want me to name any of our future children that. No kidding.

THURSDAY

I spent my morning clearing pages for my student’s first issue of the semester.

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It included a spread, the first ever since I’ve been adviser, on gun control. The stories were well reported. The editors did a fine job on this. It looks even better in person. I’m really proud of the work they did on this issue.

But Tuesday, it’s on to the next one. Always on to the next one.

FRIDAY

I had my worker’s compensation evaluation that I’d been dreading for months in the morning. I took my mom. I think if I hadn’t, I would have fallen into all those pieces all over again. She, at least, made me feel more comfortable as my heart sped up and I was forced to remember everything that led me to where I am right now.

The appointment lasted so long that my mom went with me to a dress fitting for my December bridesmaid duties.

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This was the first dress I tried on. They were all cute, but I think the bride now knows which one we’ll all be purchasing pretty soon here. On the list of things I didn’t know: Bridesmaid dresses take 10-12 weeks to get.

I knew wedding dresses took a long time, but wow.

Confession: I bought my wedding dresses at a bridal discount store in Roseville. To be fair, my sister bought it for me. I didn’t have a credit card that would charge the $500, so my mom put it on hers and my sister paid her back.

My whole wedding was planned on a similar modus operandi. It cost $15,000 at the end, but was paid for over three years of engagement. To be fair, I was only 24. All my savings were pumped into my wedding. I came out of it with a husband and no money left in a savings account that one had $8,000.

Would I do it differently now? Definitely. I’d go to Las Vegas. Just saying.

My husband, though, a couple months ago said our wedding day was one of the best of his life. That makes it all worth it, since he’s not a man of many sweet words.

This is the first time I’ve ever been a bridesmaid, so I’m learning a ton of stuff. (Jenn, if you are reading this, I promise not to mess this up.) Yesterday, the woman at the bridal store mentioned fabric swatches and making sure dye colors matched. I’m like: “Whoa, slow down.” And I know the decisions are even harder for the bride.

Planning a wedding is hard business. I’m extremely fortunate that my bride friend is a really down-to-earth woman with a great sense of humor and a love for life. She doesn’t even mind me sending her a ton of photos of me with awkward faces in dresses (Some of the colors were crazy!).

I treated my mom to lunch after at a sandwich place I love. So a not-so-great day actually turned out better. When I got home another friend came over and ate pizza and junk food with me.

TODAY

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After weeks of feeling as if my legs were going to fall off, I realized I should maybe switch out my shoes, especially with a half marathon next weekend.

I’ve had this pair of LunarEclipes in my closet for about four months. I bought them on deep sale for about $80, marked down from $140.

I ran five miles this morning in them.

And you know what? I needed new shoes.

I had little pain. My feet felt more supported. It was like running on cushions.

Anyone who tells you that you can run 400+ miles in a pair of shoes is an idiot. Seriously. I ran 600+ on my oldest pair of shoes. They sit next to the treadmill. Now I know they are only good for walking and housework. I should have known.

But I’m been trying to preserve my shoes for a bit longer and longer each time, if just to keep down the costs.

In January, Nike launched the LunarEclipse +3. It’s the same shoe, with new upper design. Now the +2’s are on sale for $79.16 at Road Runner Sports. I’m considering buying two pairs, which should get me through the year before I have to buy the more expensive +3s.

The best part of all of this is that I’m excited for my 10-mile run tomorrow morning. I haven’t said that in awhile. At five miles, I wanted to keep going, but I didn’t.

I’ve been avoiding the treadmill all week (I did run six outside this week), because of the pain my legs have been in.

So, if anything, take away this tidbit for the week: If you’re in pain, it’s likely your shoes. Change the shoes.

Nov 7

Cheetahs in the dark and other night running perils

I make no apologies for running at night. It’s often the only time I can carve out a chunk of time to go on a run. It’s soothing in many ways, with the hum of wind coming over the Altamont hills near my home. It’s cooler than during the day.

But I’ll be the first to admit, it’s kind of scary.

Especially when you see a cheetah.

Well. Not really. That cheetah comes from Wikimedia Commons. Not Mountain House.

A couple months ago someone reported seeing a Mountain Lion where I run. Turned out to be a house cat. Yes, a house cat.

But the problem with running at night is that the mind can play tricks on your eyes. Even with a headlamp.

That happened to me and my running buddy Jennie recently. We’re already hyper focused on our surroundings. We literally turn around when we think we hear something behind us. We speed up in areas we’ve seen dogs jumping up to eye level at six-foot brick fences (seriously, a huge jumping dog).

We run through areas of darkness quickly, just to get to a brighter area.

And sometimes, we see things.

Once, on an early morning 20-mile run Jennie and I saw a fox. It was before there were houses in a specific area out in Mountain House. Instead, there were just frames. We hid, temporarily, in the world’s worst smelling portable toilets. That’s saying a lot about the smell too. I’ve experienced some pretty bad ones in my time as a runner.

The fox passed.

On the recent cheetah encounter run, we had joked about seeing wolves now that it’s darker when we run. On the backside of the community, there’s a farm where we often hear wildlife noises. So a wolf? Possible.

More possible? Seeing a feral cat.

So on that specific run, we were already psyching ourselves out a little when I turned a corner and saw bright eyes.

Crap.

What the hell is that?

Jennie, about 50-feet behind me, is coming closer.

“Cheetah!” I yell out, half kidding.

The look on her face was priceless. She was petrified.

She laughed it off after I told her it was just a cat. A cat that ran and hid behind a bush as soon as we came around a corner. (Don’t ask me why I didn’t try to save it. I have dogs. And ducks. I’m not a big fan of cats in general. I would completely ignore all cats if I could.)

A cat like the one above can turn into a monster on a night run. I’m not even kidding. That specific cat above belongs to my student Haley. Haley recently had her world turned upside down with more than her share of loses, including her faithful companion Peaches, a cat that was like a sister to her.

I’m glad Haley got a new cat today. I’m more glad that, I believe, she adopted a stray. She was really excited about it. And it made me realized I needed to write this blog post. (Rest in peace, Peaches.)

So a cat as innocent looking as Haley’s becomes a crazy beast ready to chase us. Except it isn’t.

Once you see something like that, you let your guard down a little bit. Whew. That passed. Right.

Jennie and I laughed it off and rounded a corner heading into our last mile. About 20-feet after the little store we sometimes stop at we again saw eyes. Bigger eyes. On a bigger animal.

And we freaked out. In an unexpected way.

Because it was dark.

Kind of like that.

Jennie and I did a quick back peddle and ran back toward the store. Jennie ran faster than I’d ever seen her run on any training run. We looked back when we got to a safe place, in front of the store, and realized the dog, large as it was, actually  was with a person. On a leash.

But for 10 seconds, that dog was scary to us. And neither or us saw the owner, even with two headlamps.

I know not to run from dogs. I have Chow Chows, often considered violent animals (I call my dog Cuddles sometimes even though his name is Beau, that should say something). I was raised around dogs.

That doesn’t make it any less scary when you see an animal, staring you down on a sidewalk in the dark. A dog can become a monster. And a cat that’s likely more afraid of you, becomes a cheetah.

Or maybe I’m the only one this happens to in the dark.

 

Nov 4

iPhone saves a night run

When I decided to finally get rid of my amazing BlackBerry Curve a couple years ago, I switched to an Android X phone. I loved it, specifically because it shot high definition video. I loved that phone until a software upgrade basically rendered me unable to make phone calls.

Then it became slow. I took it in for a look at the Verizon store. An associate reversed the software update.

Two months later, the stupid phone stopped taking a charge. Everything I did to make it charge wouldn’t work. I was bummed for several reasons. The first was that I spent a ridiculous amount of money on the phone. The second was that it didn’t last as long as I needed it to.

So I went to the “dark side.” I bought an iPhone 4S earlier this year.

I kind of had a tough transition to the phone. I wasn’t sure what to think of it. I wasn’t sure how to make it work.(Doesn’t that always happen when you get a new phone?) I basically was a fish out of water. It helped that I had an iPad 2 as well.

But I adjusted and eventually started to love it.You can see one of my screens to the right. Ignore the fact I haven’t updated any of my apps for awhile. And ignore my AP mobile alert. I’ve been trying to avoid news as much as possible lately.

In any case, if you’ve read this blog long enough, you also know that I run with a Garmin 405CX and I have an awesome headlamp.

On a recent run, I didn’t have both.

My Garmin is somewhere between my home in Tracy and Kansas. For the second time in two years, the battery life went wonky. It was out of warranty, but Garmin offered to fix it because it was the same problem as last time. (Model problem, maybe?) Fixing it for Garmin basically means replacing it. That’s lame. And it takes forever.

I’m talking about two to three weeks to send it and then get one back.

So I’ve been doing my outdoor runs without it. A couple weeks ago, when the battery died in the middle of a 15-mile run, I finished off my run with my Nike+ app on my iPhone.

I’ve been using that since.

It’s surprisingly accurate and doesn’t drain my battery life like I thought it would.

Yes, I’m slow sometimes when I run at night. Blame fatigue.

In any case, I was thankful my iPhone saved that run. I was more thankful when a couple weeks ago, I realized as I made my way to Mountain House to run that my headlamp had dead batteries.

It was dark. Really, incredibly dark.

So I pulled out my iPhone and started doing some searching. I remember that I had a flashlight app on the phone. Since I already run with it in my hand to see the Nike+ app, I kept alternating between turning on the flashlight and checking how far we were in our run.

The light was really nice when we hit parts of the sidewalk that are considerably more dark than others.

So, overall, my iPhone essentially has two running tools in it that I didn’t really appreciate until that run. Had we not have had the Nike+ app, we probably wouldn’t have finished that epic 15-miler.

Had we not had a flashlight, we wouldn’t be able to see the sidewalk. I was very grateful for both.

The Flashlight app was free. A nice price. It uses the flash light on the iPhone 4S, which does eat some battery life, but for a shorter run, isn’t too bad. Plus, I charge my phone in my car when I drive usually, so I don’t really have a problem with battery life.

The Nike+ app is also free now (I remember paying for it, but maybe I’m mistaken). It uses the phone’s GPS to track the run with distance and pace.

It seems to come up incrementally short of my Garmin, but we usually overrun our six-mile run anyway.

I’m not converting to the Nike+ app. And I’m not considering running with my iPhone flashlight on every run either.

But these apps give me options when I in a pinch. And both saved our run the other night, which, when it’s dark outside, is really important.