Saturday - Midnight Mud Run

Run: 4.8 miles

Swim: ~ 300 meters

Terrain: Typical Hay Bay Trail and mucky swim

Time: ~65 Mins

Pre-Run BG: 135 mg/dl

Post-Run BG: 74 mg/dl

Intake: 6 PB Crackers (prior to start), 4 oz. Hammer Gel

Run/Swim Pump Status: I took the pump off for this one

    First, let me say that this was not a race. It was fun, but also a good reminder to me of some past experience and the need for training. I am not, by nature, a swimmer. In fact, not even a runner by nature. Though with much training I've become some what of a runner and with more training I may even become somewhat of a swimmer. However for now....let's just say when I was 300 ft off shore and working way too hard on the swim bec. I haven't done open H2O in years, with shoes that weighed like 5 lbs each (I'm not kidding), I had a nasty little flash-back of being pulled out with the tide in Peru with low sugar and not fully comprehending what was happening. That little Peruvian experience scared the shittaki out of me, but has me a wiser person. So, I swam back to shore and took the smarter route for myself. I did attempt a short one and then completed one of the shorter swims, but it's time to hit the open water for some practice before I attempt that again. My CG had ended earlier this day, so I opted to leave it off and to DC from my pump also..as the pump is not H2O proof. This event really was fun. Especially at midnight with a full moon and we owned the trail to ourselves. I'll do it again when the chance provides itself. It was more sweat and water than mud as this pic shows. I'll bet the folks in house boats were a little shocked to see swimmers with glow sticks and headlamps coming toward them at around midnight!

Wednesday Night - Group Run

Run: ~11 Miles
Terrain: Everything from Mildly Steep Grades to Flat
Time: 02:09:34

Pre-Run BG: 197 mg/dl
Post-Run BG: 132 mg/dl
Intake: 4 oz Hammer Gel
Run Pump Status: 40 % of normal Basal

    OK, as others have noted, today was "National Running Day" and I guess my regular Wed. night group run just happened to fulfill this. I bit off more than I wanted to chew tonight, but I just myself to buck-up and just do it. I needed to be pushing myself and this fit the bill. I haven't run anything close to 11 miles in quite a while. It was a beautiful trail run though. I'd run out there in the woods with nothing but nature around me...anyday. It's far better than running the roads. I kept the BG in pretty good control tonight. Started with a great level and ended very well too. My sugar started up a little bit at by mile 4. At this point I didn't want to experience the lovely feeling of acidic build-up in my leg muscles, as I have a few times before with high sugar during a good workout, so I took 1u of Novolog and kept plugging away. At about mile 8 I started seeing a downward trend on the meter so I had the Hammer Gel. Worked perfectly. Maybe next time I'll leave the basal rate at like 60% and go from there.

May Vacation

So, every once in a while I am allowed to get away from the daily grind and take a vacation. Though not as far traveling and glamorous (as the 3 weeker last year), this vacation was much enjoyed and photo evident as well. It began with seeing things like this that I just had to get photos of.

Need to buy any "Wud"?

When we got to the place we were going to stay at for the week we were a little disappointed. That fixed we were pleasantly pleased to find this view just outside our backdoor.

The bottom one was of Little River on the way back to the room one night. Nice little haze hanging over the river and I'd never tried to capture that on film before.

The rest of these I'm just going to throw out there. We've been to Cades Cove, I don't know like 6-7 times and have never seen more than a few deer and a squirrel. Our luck did a 360 this time as seen in the pics. We rode through the cove on two different days and were treated to mama bear and cubs each time. It's the coolest thing to see your first black bear cub and photo it. Altogether we saw probably 13 bear from those two trips. Not bad. If you went back right now one would probably be treated to the same. Bumper crop of cubs this year from what the rangers have stated.

This is a little of what was at Cable Mill at the back of Cades Cove.

The ranger informed all those watching and photographing this one that it's very rare to actually see a mother black bear nursing in the open like this. Sweet. Lucky us.

Of course these cubs were still learning how to climb. Man they're so small it was great to just watch.

The above pic was our last bear siting and this mama bear had three slightly larger cubs. I snuck around the field through a glad of trees and snapped this from the edge of the field and mama bear looked right up at me. Hmmm, not too bad for like 800 feet away.

If you couldn't tell yet, I'm very much enjoying the Olympus SP 570 UZ I got last year.

Monday - "Suck it up" Run

Run: 3.3 Miles
Terrain: Very Hilly Neighborhood
Time: 0:29:03

Pre-Run BG: 213 mg/dl
Post-Run BG: 138 mg/dl
Intake: 12 oz Choc. Silk (Recovery Drink)
Run Pump Status: Regular Basal

    I was itching to get out for a run. It's been like a week and a half since my last run and I hadn't gotten my lazy arse out while in the Smokies for a week. Oh well, the vacation was much needed and so was the physical break. I didn't pay enough attention to the weather until I hit the road tonight, but the air was wicked thick and hot. I reminded myself that this was the reason why I was running at 4 AM a few years ago. By about 1.5 miles in I hating the fact that I knew better then to go any further for tonight. I knew I'd run much further this Wednesday night, so for now play it safe and use this as a christening for the week. Anyway, this one goes in the books as the sweatiest freaken run for the year so far. No BG problems. The only thing I noticed was that I was struggling to get enough O2, and that just wasn't cool. Of course the city has us labeled today for air-quality as an "orange alert" so that definitely didn't help. You can almost feel your lungs sucking in all of the crap in the air as you're chugging along. Oh well, you only live life once and you do your best right?