Winter Bonita
Since we were spending a winter escape week in Orange County I decided to get in a day of fishing in San Diego Bay since I hadn’t made it down there last year when we were in the area. My expectations were a bit low compared to numerous trips in the past since it was January and there had been a lot of cold weather up until yesterday afternoon. I met Peter Piconi of the SoCal Fly Fishing at 8:00 at the Glorieta Bay launch and quickly got loaded up and off the dock.
Wild Skagit Steelhead
After last year’s not so hot year of fishing I decided to start out 2013 right and set up some trips. First plan of action was to get on the Skagit again as fishing had been good lately and some wild fish were showing up as early as December. I had originally scheduled the trip for last week in the deep freeze but happened to whack my head the day before and needed to rest and re-scheduled. That turned out to be a good thing as the artic air vanished and I got to fish on a warmer, cloudy day with drizzle turning to rain as the day went on.
Winter was the key word as I awoke to temps in the low 20’s the morning of the annual Bridle Trails Winter Running Festival. The forecast for the start wasn’t much better, maybe highs in the mid-30s by 3:00. I was just glad I opted for the 5 mile distance this year, I’ll get done before it gets dark and the temps start dropping like a rock again. The 50k runners were going to be in for a long, cold night.
Lunas v.s. Hokas
Sometime after our Arizona/Utah road trip last October I managed to inflame my peroneus brevis tendon attachment to the fifth metatarsal bone and this thnig has been dogging me ever since. I took an entire month off running and tried natural (Hammer Tissue Rejuvenator & Scott Jurek’s Starburst Anti-Inflamatory Smoothie) remedies as well as good old Vitamin-I with little success. X-Rays show no stress fracture and I really did not want to do the course of oral steroids that were prescribed so I just took it easy. After a month I was going crazy and began using a Precor Open Stride machine at the gym to keep up aerobic conditioning without impact. Then I began running again and I noticed that it really didn’t get any worse running or any better not running so I started working back up to an average 5 mile daily run.