Intro

This blog as might be apparent from the title has to do with running, biking and basically other outdoor individualistic sports, sometimes extreme, such as rock climbing . But don't be surprised if you find articles on work, personal life, music and even philosophy, this blog is an exception in this aspect in the blogosphere of running blogs and I am trying to revamp the blog to make it more runner friendly. You might want to look at the sidebar titled 'categorised', which as is obvious, categorizes my posts into different areas of interest.
The other thing that might interest many people is a section on 'running videos' and 'general videos' on the side bar, which I keep updating now and then.
I plan to bring in more posts on running and biking, with some added colour, so as to make them 'complete'. That's about it for now.
As a post-note, I have run a half-marathon, but I am yet to attempt a marathon, which through some concerted effort and time should happen in the future, but that ofcourse is not the culmination of this blog, it would on the contrary be something to jumpstart this blog onto new vistas.




Saturday, July 12, 2008

Second trip to Mt. Si

Boy, what an adventure I had a week back. I usually take the metro bus on my hikes, and that gives me a lot of room for adventure (doing funny things so as to not miss the last bus for example).But bus adventures aside, hiking is always an adventure. This time I made it to the top (not the haystack) in 1hr 50 mins, which is pretty amazing, for me atleast. I paced myself steadily over the climb - a total of 4 miles. The first 3 miles were decent, the last 1 mile was a killer. 4miles and 4000ft, that's some climb.
After getting to the 4 mile mark from where you get a good view of mountains nearby, I decided to go to the top of haystack, a very steep monolith, from where a slip could mean death. The climb to the top was itself very steep and my heavy bag of supplies didn't help me. I decided to ditch the climb, when I was half-way through to the hay-stack...this gives me another opportunity to come back to Mount Si.
Over all it was 15 miles of hiking + climbing in around 6 hrs.. phew. And the last 20 minutes, I was running at a steady 8:00 minute/mile pace so as not to miss the MT 209 bus at 8:43pm from North Bend.. talk about adventures..this was one till the very end. This hike really gave me a feel for endurance hiking. I took a lot of supplies including cookies, fruit juice, and 1.5lts of water.
I will post one or two pics maybe. My next hike would probably be next weekend to Rattle snake lake, again a long hike of around 15 miles (round trip).
A video I took near the top:

Kennenisa Bekele with the WR

Robbie Mcewen and steve o'grady - The 'Nudge'