Skagit Steel, Islamorada ‘Gator’ Trout, Rattlesnake Traverse, Yakima Tenkara
Its that time of year again, time to look back over the past year and see how things stacked up against the initial goals. In 2012 I did pretty well with my 2011 goals but 2013 sure had other plans for me, mostly due to an injury I sustained running early in the year and caused us to change a lot of our activities for the year.
Running
The year started out with a bang. I ran the Bridle Trails Winter Running Festival and actually PR’ed on my 5-mile trail time in 42:05 on a butt cold afternoon. I then went on to do the last of the Snowshoe Runs in February followed the next week by the Ft. Ebey Half Marathon, one of the hardest halfs I’ve run. In early March I did the Redmond Watershed Half and again had a trail half PR with a time of 1:54:40. I had thought about doing the full marathon at that event but was moving so fast that I decided to just go for the fast half instead of bogging down at some point on the full. Looking back maybe I should have slowed down and done the full…
A week after the Watershed I was running with a small group at St. Edwards Park when I felt a bit of a cramp in my right hamstring. After stopping to meet up some other runners I couldn’t get moving again, this thing hurt. Four days and a lot of ice later I tried to run again – no go, it hurt too much. I rested it another couple of weeks but still could not run, heck I was limping and could barely sit for more than 30 minutes without pain. I finally ended up at the doctor and PT which made the condition worse and then found A.R.T. treatment which I started in on. After 6 weeks of treatment I started trying to run again and ramped up enough to do the Born to Run 5-mile in May but it hurt. I could not get above 5-6 miles without a lot of pain so I stopped running again.
Turns out I had torn my hamstring at the upper attachment point, thus the literal pain in the ass I was experiencing. After lots of research I found this is about the worst place to injure your hamstring and would have me, well, hamstrung for the year. No running, no long sitting, no hiking, not much of anything until this thing healed up which could take a long, long, long time. Road trips were cancelled and my plans changed pretty drastically for the year. I did however do the Sun Mountain 25K as a long hike with Catherine instead of as a run and stayed involved with the trail running community by doing a lot of registration and photography. The hamstring is slowly healing. By the late fall I was hiking for real again and even did several Rattlesnake traverses. I’ve been building up miles on an OpenStride machine and doing strength training plus doing some long fast walks with a tiny bit of light jogging interspersed. Even finished the year doing the 4.2 mile Solstice Run as part of the Northwest Trail Runs Winter Series. I have hopes that sometime in 2014 I’ll be back on the trails for real.
Travel
Only left the state once, to go to Miami and Islamorada to fish in January before the injury, after that nada. We are re-scheduling our Escalante trip for next year. The only trip we pulled off this year was our family trip to Mazama in late August.
Fishing
The bright side of being stuck to driving only 30 minutes without pain was that I really got to explore local waters this year. Very few trips to the Yakima River or the South Sound but a LOT of trips to the South Fork, the Middle Fork, the Cedar, the Tolt and the Raging. In a bit of good timing I discovered the Japanese fly fishing form of tenkara at the fly show in February and immediately got deep enough into it that I put away my regular trout rods and only fished tenkara this entire year when trout fishing (and sometimes like a fool, salmon fishing.) I found the on-line tenkara community to be great and started my own tenkara site – Northwest Tenkara – to share my experience and love of this unique form of fly fishing.
With no ability to run and the perfect summer I managed to fish quite a bit this year, 109 days to be exact. Unlike years past I spent 75% of this time trout fishing in these small and close to home rivers and only 20% in saltwater. The other 5% was steelhead fishing and I even got my winter steelhead! Managed a few new interesting species including a bluefish in downtown Miami which I had not expected and a five species day in San Diego Bay.
Painting
I started painting some last year when Teri Capp signed up for the 30-Day Art Challenge and was pumping out 8×10 acrylics daily. It got me motivated and I started doing a series of pastels from our Utah travels. During this year I did a few small oils and started a larger one that never got finished.
That just wasn’t quite enough so in the fall I was thinking of the challenge and began doing some small 8×10 pieces to get the feel of paint again. In October I made the plunge and signed up so the 30-Day Art Challenge started on Oct 17 and kept me very busy for a month. It was a fun experience and took some discipline to get up every morning and paint for 2-4 hours, blog about it and then figure out what the heck I was going to paint the next day. The show in December was fun though very cold so attendance was much lower than last year. It was good to have work in a show for the first time in a decade.
Work
I was sort of a bum this year when it came to work, or at least I seemed to gravitate towards work that didn’t actually pay. Early in the year I got an offer to write a chapter for the upcoming The Best 25 National Parks to Fly Fish, writing the chapter on the North Cascades. Funny thing is that I’ve probably fished more in the Everglades or Biscayne Bay than the North Cascades but I have fished a lot on the edges of the Park itself within the North Cascades Complex which I got to learn a lot about. The book will hopefully be available in 2014.
I spent time on my Northwest-Tenkara site, helped Catherine do a re-vamp of the DharmaTouch Massage & Yoga site, fended off Russian hackers from another site and did a few other odd web-jobs for people.
I did the Mac testing, code signing and setup for the InfiniteScuba game by Cascade Game Foundry.
As soon as iOS7 was announced I started playing with it and shipped v2.x of my Zenso Meditation Timer app with an updated iOS7 UI. At the end of the year I finished a tenkara app – Kebari – that was rejected by Apple as being too much a book and not an app. They suggested that I publish in iBookStore, instead I published on the Northwest Tenkara site. I’m also filing an appeal with the AppStore.
Whats up for 2014
Running
- Keep going in my new VeryPedestrian style at some events and build up miles and hopefully increase the running:walking ratio a bit.
- I want to do at least a 25-30k in the spring, even if it means walking. I know I can finish a 25k in the 50k cutoff time now even totally walking the course.
- With any luck be back to half marathon-25k distance running by the end of the year.
Travel
- We are trying to re-do the Utah trip that was canceled this year due to my leg. This would be through Escalante/Grand Staircase, Natural Bridges and Mesa Verde.
- I’d like to attend the Tenkara Summit in Boulder, CO in September.
Fishing
- Oregon Coast winter steelheading in February.
- More northwest tenkara! I can hardly wait for trout streams to become fishable again in the spring.
- Tenkara in Escalante/Grand Staircase.
- Tenkara Summit in Boulder in the fall and fishing in RMNP.
- Get somewhere in the salt again this year, I did not catch a bonefish last year.
Painting
- Want to continue my momentum with some larger oils.
- Maybe do the 30-Day Challenge 2014 but with a different theme.
Work
- Starting a new web project in January.
- I have a few other app ideas I’ve been kicking around that I may get going on.