Stony Valley

I went for a bike ride today.  I'm not entirely sure why it's taken so long, but this was my first outdoor ride of the season.  I know my race schedule definitely had a role in the delay, but I think I just need to put some more "cross training" on my schedule.

The ride was on a short western section of the Stony Valley Railroad Grade north of the state capital of Harrisburg.  Being such a hot afternoon (in the mid 90's), I only saw 3 other humans out on the trail: 2 bikers and one backpacker, the backpacker heading up to the AT.  The bugs however, were in full force!  As long as I kept riding, I was bite free.

Along the ride I ended up finding both stages of a two-stage multi cache called "Marco"..."Polo", which didn't disappoint.  Both stages were along stony creek, providing the opportunity to dip in the cool water on this very hot day.  Near the final stage was also a nice display of rhododendrons:

And a "ferny forest":

On a side note, I tried out an app called Strava on the ride and the interface worked well for my application of riding and geocaching, allowing me to pause and resume easily.  The only drawback I've noticed for the app so far is that you need to have an internet connection to get started, and upload when complete.  This is potentially a huge problem for me, given the trail running and mountain biking that I enjoy.  Strava does accept workouts (GPX files) from your Garmin device, so the option of being off the grid is viable, but I think I'll just stick with Runkeeper.

New Golite Gear

With Golite's business model updated, and the subsequent slashing of prices by half, I felt the urge to check out some of their gear for my running and hiking needs.  I ended up splurging on a little over 200 bucks worth of gear, and everything was shipped for free and made it to my doorstep in 4 business days.

I managed to take a peek at everything upon receipt, including a few pairs of their running shorts with mesh lining, but really had my eyes on the Rush 20 pack with 3 liter hydration bladder included.  Having an easy 5 mile run with some strides scheduled for the afternoon gave me the opportunity to give the new pack a spin.  I'm not sure if I did a poor job in tightening the straps, or ordered the wrong size (or maybe I just run funny!), but over the course of the run, the right shoulder strap slowly crept up my collar and rubbed my neck pretty good...hotspot good, not quite a blister.  The next time I take it out I'll have to try a few different load configurations as well as start from scratch from a strap-tightening standpoint, but overall I'm quite happy with my 55 dollar purchase, especially given that I now have a good quality bladder that can be transferred to almost every one of my packs - so it's almost worth the money for that alone.

Later that night I wanted to see if the pack would be suitable for a lightweight backpacking weekend bag, and although I had my doubts, I'm pretty sure it'll work!  I'm pretty excited about this since I've been tossing around the idea of doing some big miles on the AT over weekend trips using some sort of Ultralight set up.  We'll see how it goes...it'll be 2-3 weeks before I can get out on the trail for a weekend.

Welcome!

I'm just a guy from PA who loves to get out and explore.  This blog is a way for me to document and share my adventures, giving me the opportunity to be as verbose or succinct as I care to be at that moment.  Disclaimer: I'm not a writer and don't claim to be a writer, period.

I began running in 2010, doing a few shorter races: from the 5k distance to an 8 mile trail run.  I ran my first half marathon in Hershey, PA in October 2010 with a time of 2:15:38 then went on to run my first marathon in Pittsburgh on May 15, 2011 with a time of 4:53:48.  Since then, I've decided that I enjoy the gentler training regimen for the half distance rather than the full and have been concentrating on improving my time over 13.1 miles, one race at a time.  I hope to run an ultra at some point because I really enjoy trail running, but the distance is a bit daunting.

I've been hiking and geocaching since about 2008, and have really been delighted with the places I've visited as a result.  I started backpacking in the spring of 2012, basically with the intention of "enjoying hiking for a longer period of time".  I hope to complete the entire Appalachian Trail in sections someday.  On geocaching.com I go by the handle of "sql_geek" and love virtual, webcam and challenge caches.