Running in the Rain

Going off of the "Staying cool while training/working out" post I did earlier, another easy way to stay cool is to just run in the rain! The other morning, the raining was coming down in sheets and didn't really look like it was going to stop (sorry other states with droughts! Wish we could share the rain) so I decided I might as well get a good run in.

Running in the rain provides a different kind of exhilaration than normal. Not to say that a normal run isn't that uneventful and enjoyable, but the rain adds a different experience. The wetness provides a nice cooling factor that makes the temperature enjoyable to run in and adds a bonus "training weight" to my clothes and feet. However, the best part is probably running through the sheets of rain as if I were travelling much faster than normal and all the while having to avoid/running through huge puddles.

It's a fun experience and I recommend it for everyone!

And here's a picture from my office of Houston on a normal day:

Notice you can see downtown/horizon on this one... try and ignore the  obvious beauty (it's hard I know)

And a picture during the rainy day:

Can barely see a few hundred feet

The Fixie Bike Project

Awhile back, Kate and I adventured to this bicycle store in Houston. I was semi-looking for a commuter bike, but only if one popped out at me. While we at the store, one did exactly that.


After negotiating a deal and a time (shady right?) I went back to the store and picked up the bike for $35. It wasn't in very good shape and needed some work, but I was willing to put in the time.


Here were the issues with it:

1. No seat or seat post
2. Bent upper tube
3. Rear wheel's bearings loose and needed greasing
4. Tires would not inflate and needed replacing
5. No brakes*

Off I went to go work on getting the bike operational.

Two wheels, one frame, and one gear - perfect

Getting the bike grease, seat, and post were a piece of cake. There was a slight issue with the piece that held the bike seat up. Apparently my bike is a bit of an odd size and was also being stubborn and required going through about 4 different clips until finding the right one.

Seat post holder = black piece around bottom of seat post

Probably the most difficult task was getting the tires fixed up. I couldn't figure out why they weren't pumping, so I took out one of my tire levers to get the first tire off... SNAP! It broke like a twig. It was ok though, tire levers seem to come in packs of three so I had two more.

-Wrong!-

Both of them snapped just as easily as the first, with almost no progress on even seeing what's inside this tire. Next up... a metal spoon. That helped to reveal what was giving me so much trouble and why I had to resort to much more drastic measures- the bead of the tire had rusted itself onto the rim! So I attempted performing surgery....

After cutting the tire, I realized I'd need something heavy duty. I went over to my parents and, with the help of my dad, used a Dremmel tool to cut off the tire. It wasn't pretty, but got the job done. It also revealed someone had stuffed plastic bags inside the tire... makeshift tires I suppose?

Now that most of the bike was assembled, it was rideable. I've had some good rides on it so far even without brakes. It just requires extra force when attempting to stop.

Fully functional

But to make my life a little easier when biking with this bad boy... I installed brakes!

Rear Caliper

I wanted front brakes, but the pieces needed to attach the brake wouldn't fit over the front tire... so the rear I went.

Brake lever

And now I have a fixie with one semi-functional brake! How awesome :)

Thanks for reading.

Training with the Heat

With the summer already upon us, it's really starting to heat up. We've already had temperatures of over 100 *F for multiple days, with the heat index much higher. Just standing outside gets your shirt soaked.


Despite the heat, I must continue training as I have a race in less than a month, and then in August a few more. With that said, training in the heat is no fun. To try and battle the heat, I've been attempting a few different things to beat the heat.


Early Mornings
You would think in the mornings it would be nice and cool and perfect running weather, right? Well take a look at what the other day's temperature vs humidity looked like.

Click to enlarge - Temperature vs Humidty on June 28th in Houston

So in the early morning (around 5), the temperature is about 80* and the humidity is about 90%, and putting that in the handy-dandy heat index calculator, we get the heat index is about 87*. So running in the morning is still quite the workout with battling the heat! I'll usually come back from my run nice and sweaty and usually feeling kinda gross from the mugginess. But it's the best way to beat the high heat and out of the sun during the day.


That's Houston for you. Can't complain too much because if you're looking at the chart, you'll realize that it got up 93 before the thunderstorms really let loose! (Thunderstorms happen in the spike in humidity and drop in temperature, around 3pm).


During the Day/Afternoon
Not too much of a surprise, but I have a hard time waking up early every morning (I like sleep). Every now and then I'll get a workout during lunch, which means a little shorter of a workout but typically I'll go inside on a treadmill where it's a bit cooler (A/C!) and I have quicker access to a shower.


If it's after work, my favorite spot is memorial park. Why you ask? Well not only is it a great running trail, but they also have some off-road trails that offer a significant amount of shade along with some trail running thrills. Despite the heat, I really enjoy doing runs on the trails. There's something about whizzing past trees and making sharp cuts left and right that's so much more enjoyable than watching more flatness come into your unobstructed view while running on a regular running trail.






The issue with the high heat, whether it's in the 80* mornings or 95-100* evenings, is keeping the body cool. If I'm running at a rate that's making my body work pretty hard (say around 7'/mile), the body begins to produce a lot of heat (basic physics and common sense). However, when the temperature is hot enough, my body begins doing more work to keep itself cool then to keep up the pace, thus making it more difficult to run fast and preventing me from overheating immediately. And nobody really likes being a victim of heat exhaustion or heat stroke.


So what can you learn from me rambling about all this? Well different symptoms set in for different levels of what level your body temperature is at.


Body Temperature                                           Symptoms

  101-104 *F                                                    Muscle Weakness, Fatigue


  104-105                                                         Disorientation, Severe muscle weakness, loss of balance


  Above 105                                                     Diminished sweating, loss of consciousness






So don't be afraid to take breaks if you're feeling pretty hot and drink water!


Good luck.. and just because I happened to pull this data up, here is the month of June:

Canon AE-1 SLR

A while back, I was at my grandparents house and happened to just be perusing their an old bookshelf that happened to have a camera on it. I looked at it, and it seemed to still work, but it was old and I wasn't entirely sure how it worked. It was an old camera of my grandpa's that he no longer used, and decided to give it to me as a gift.

Turns out it was a real workhorse back in its day... a Canon AE-1. Really solid camera. I thought I knew a bit about cameras... but turns out I didn't really, and still learning a lot.

I got the chance to use my first roll of film in it when I went to Sequoia National Park. I happened to have a little bit of a mishap when unloading it as it was the first time I had ever completed a roll of film on an SLR. Some pictures turned out really well, but out of the 32 I shot, only about 10 turned out. Note to self: roll the film up BEFORE opening the back! (kinda obvious right?)

In the event someone runs across this camera and is in a similar predicament that I am, hopefully they won't overexpose their film as I did. I'm still working with the camera to get better at taking faster and better quality shots, but I'm a bit sluggish with the steps. Here is a very minimal step-by-step approach.

1) Load film and wind once

2) Set shutter speed according to how much light is around

3) Determine aperture (aka F-stop) setting based on light and shutter speed (I use the handy dandy light meter inside the viewfinder, but I presume if one is good with the camera, they know what the aperture should be)

4) Focus

5) Now focus the camera (<-- see what I did there?)

6) Shoot!

Here are some shots that did and didn't turn out well!

First picture I took

Hondo!

 Finally on the way out to San Francisco and probably one of the best photos that turned out.

Seemed to have gotten everything right on this one.

Overlooking a lake in Cali

I started playing with slower shutter speeds to see if I could get the water to be blurred together.

Shutter speed  1/125 I think.

And for comparison... the same shot, but different shutter speed.

Shutter speed 1/250

I hope you enjoyed. Thanks for reading!

Great Sequoia National Park

A few weeks back (Memorial Day weekend to be exact) I took a trip out to San Jose, CA to visit my little brother. The voyage was to not only see what his life has been like at school (Santa Clara University), but to also take a trek off to some of the great California parks... namely Great Sequoia National Park.


The trip started with the most idle-rific/dawdle-ful departure ever...and for the trip planning was kept to a minimum (including, but not limited to, forgetting utensils and containers to drink from). So off my brothers' friends and I went... We made it to the park late at night and witnessed the grandeur of the park through headlights and extremely winding roads. We showed up at our campsite to find that it was covered in snow!


Remember me saying, "...planning kept to a minimum." I really had no clothes or shoes that would keep me too warm past 40 *F. Unfortunately it was about 25 out, and I was very ill prepared.... and I will likely not be making a similar mistake again in the future.


Our first full day there, we were able to get a hike in and see another part of the world (or so it seemed). We hiked through Kings Canyon National Park and went to see Misty Falls. Lots of rocks and interesting formations.

King's Canyon

Some more pictures of the hike

A bit of the canyon. Picture taken with Canon AE-1 (see previous post regarding issues with that camera).

That evening I got the opportunity to test out and sleep in an awesome hammock that Kate got me for my birthday. Now you may have asked yourself where I slept the night before. Well remember when I had said planning was kept to a minimum? The night before, I had attempted sleeping in the hammock , but got snowed on and consequently joined my brother and his 3 friends to make a 3-4 person tent extra cozy with a 5th person.

The hammock with my sleeping bag

During my brief attempt at the hammock the night before, I learned that I was going to need a rain fly for overhead protection, and an air mattress to try and keep my butt from freezing.

View from inside the bag with a makeshift rainfly

 Even with a cozy sleeping bag and air mattress, it was still quite chilly.

More gadgetry of mine - Note temperature was cooler than the watch shows

The picture of the watch obviously shows the altitude and temperature. But to get the temperature, I set the watch on the ground and it read 26, but by the time I had it on my wrist and then thought to grab my camera, my wrist had heated up the watch temperature gauge a bit.


The next day, our group visited Sequoia NP and got to see some awesome trees. The trees are really quite fascinating:

• they require fires to reproduce
  
• when a sequoia dies, it allows more sunlight through the canopy thus allowing younger trees to grow
  
• the roots of a sequoia aren't very deep, so they blow over easily
  
• the bark of sequoias are a natural flame retardant
  

Base of a giant sequoia

And I got a chance to be right next to one

Size comparison

 We also got a chance to see some bears up pretty close!

Really awesome creatures, worthy of some respect too.

So that was most of the trip. A lot of fun. I also got to hang out with Cisco and see his campus and play super smash bros, which was also great.


With that, I leave you with some more pictures.

View of some valley in California

Picture of lake in California - similar picture taken by me with filmed camera in other post

__________________________________

*The pictures with the nice shots were taken by my little brother and his camera. The three of the hammock and watch are from my phone, while the B&W unclear shot is from the Canon SLR.

Big Bend National Park

I realized that I never got a chance to post about my trip to Big Bend National Park! I went back in February with Kate and some of our friends and we had a great adventure!


Kate and I flew into El Paso and then road tripped out to Big Bend. Who knew that it would've been almost the same commute if we drove to Big Bend (BBNP) as flying. Driving is about 10 hours, while flying there takes about 2.5 hours plus a 5 hour drive... and that doesn't include the 2 hour pre-flight shenanigans and all that.

Well on our way out there, we got a chance to see some really cool things along the way. First off, we met up with one of our friends in El Paso so that it was a 3-person road trip. Then we drove into the night to stay at Fort Davis. There we met a very odd yet cool man that was in charge of the campgrounds we stayed at. He encouraged us to go see the Marfa Lights despite it being a 30-45 minute drive and it being 11:30 at night.

Construction Ahead

I'm currently working a little bit to try and spice up the blog a bit more. I'll be making some changes here and there, but if you have any comments let me know what you think works or doesn't.

Thanks!