Watermelon time

Running:
This past week turned out to be bigger than I anticipated. To recap last week. Monday 8/23 started off as usual with an off day. I took the day completely off and got a few errands done during lunch.  Almost every day last week was awesome as far as the weather. A little cooler and brilliant sunshine. Tuesday I decided to try my 7.5 mile lunch time run. I hadn’t run this in a couple months. I completed the run in a nice and easy 1:03:11. Wednesday I did the same run a little faster in 1:01:22. Thursday I again did the same route in an even faster 59:13. I wore my “fast shoes” Asics Speedstars for this run to try them out. My hope is to wear them for the Lakefront marathon in October. The shoes felt great and light and no hot spots or other issues. Friday I backed off a little and only ran 6 miles with no hills. I did this run in 49:54. On Saturday I only had a short time to run since I had to be in Watertown early to watch my daughter run her first XC meet of the year. I only put in 5 miles in 38:54. Sunday I got out a little earlier since the forecast called for near 90 degrees. The weather was great early although it did get warm near the end of the run. I managed 16.5 miles in 2:17:16. This gave me 50 miles for the week. A total I haven’t seen since early July. I have had no issues at all with the leg/quad muscle. The only thing now is fatigue since I’m building the volume back fairly rapidly. At this point I’m leaning toward taking somewhat of a cut back week and running in the Lake Country half marathon this coming weekend. The cutback coincides with what would be a taper week anyway. If for some reason I decide not to sign up I can catch up on my miles with the holiday weekend. One thing I don’t like is that I received an e-mail that because of construction they changed the course for this race yet again. I don’t think there has been a year when Oconomowoc hasn’t had some construction going on that affects this race in some way. Right now the weather looks good in that a cool down is supposed to happen in a couple days and stick around through the weekend. I really don’t even anticipate anything close to a PR or even to make last year’s time of 1:35. I’m just very interested to see what my fitness level might be right now.
WTD 50
MTD 113
YTD 1559
ODO 26,725


Hunting:
The mosquito population has finally been dialed back a bit. I think I can now get out to practice shooting the bow at least once a day. I’ll be trying to take at least 10 or so shots either in the morning or afternoon. Bow season opener is on September 18th so less than three weeks away. Usually I’ve been shooting regularly for 2 or 3 weeks already.

I asked and again received permission to hunt on the property just west of my house where I’ve taken 2 large deer over the past few years. You can never take for granted the privilege it is to obtain such a right. I’ll be heading out to hang stands and cut some brush in the next week or so. I may not hunt there until closer to October when it is cooler.

Gardening:

Harvested a few meals of sweet corn. I really had to fight the raccoons to get any. The cobs were a little on the small side this year, but were as good as ever. The latest thing to be harvested is watermelon. This is the biggest crop I have ever had. I planted 3 kinds, but so far have only noticed 2 varieties. There is a small personal size yellow watermelon that is very tasty, but has lots of seeds. I have another larger red seedless variety that is also very good. I also planted an orange flesh variety, but as of yet not found one. In previous years I always waited until the stem of the watermelon started to dry or turn brown before harvesting. I found some tips on the internet about how to tell a melon is ripe and they have been right on so far. There are squiggly growths called a “tendril” that grow along the vine. These tendrils help the vine attach to things to secure them. When the tendril closest to the melon has turned brown and dried up and if the melons “belly” is yellow the melon is ripe enough to pick.  This has worked on every one I've eaten so far.

Tow of shame

Running:
It feels so good to be back to running regularly. I’m still easing back into it, but there have been no setbacks to this point. My runs have mostly been in the 4 to 6 mile range.   Two weeks ago I ran 24 miles on 5 runs. Last week I did 32 on 5 runs. This week should be up near 40. My run Sunday was 12 miles in 1:39:38. First time I wore my watch since starting back. This was a little slow, but I was happy to get my first run over 1 hour since July 11th under my belt.  This run put me over 1500 miles YTD. 

At this point the Lakefront marathon on 10/3 at least looks possible again. I’m doubting I have enough time left to get in the proper training to do well. At this point I am settling on doing enough to just do reasonably well and by that I mean a minimum qualifying BQ time.  I'm counting on the YTD miles to help me out.

I still have my sights on running the Lake Country half marathon on 9/4. I will decide the night before based on the weather forecast and how the training is going. I will have to see if I think a couple days off and a race will give me more benefit than a longer training run and less time off.

Hunting:
Antlerless tags went on sale this past weekend for available units. I was able to get one tag for area 3 which is near Bayfield. You were allowed 1 per day and only 300 were available. I noticed the next day they were sold out or I would have purchased a second one.


On the weekend of the 14th/15th I was up north for an extended weekend. One of the days my brother Todd and I spent a few hours building a new ground blind for hunting season. We brought in the chain saw and cut up the already downed trees to build a real good base. We actually lashed several of the logs to trees to give support for the structure and provide for correct gapping for the sight windows. We have a little finishing work to do, but I think a real good blind in what looks like a highly traveled area.

The other exciting part of this trip was our fishing adventure. We knew the boat had been used, but didn’t fill up with gas before we left. This was kind of on purpose rather than have a lot of gas go bad since no one had plans to use it for a while. We went early in the morning as the forecast called for increasing winds throughout the day. By afternoon there was potential for 7 to 10 foot waves in the open waters just beyond the islands. We first tried the spot we had been the previous week out near Outer Island. We caught one fish, but it was kind of slow so decided to move after a few hours. After trying to get out farther we just decided to head closer to Bayfield and fish for a while at Oak Island out of the wind. We caught another fish, but again it was pretty slow and we decided to call it a day around 12:30. Heading back in towards Bayfield the motor started running rough and finally just died. It’ a real good thing it conked out when it did because had it been earlier we would have been drifting out into the open lake. The way it was we threw out two anchors, but they weren’t holding us. We were being pushed by the increasing winds ever closer to the rocky shore of the Island. Finally after getting within 20 feet or so of shore the anchors caught. We ended up having to call the Coast Guard and had to be towed back to Bayfield by a boat like the one in the picture. Over 40 years of fishing the big lake and never had anything like that happen before. Turns out that even though the gas gauge registered ½ tank it was actually bone dry. How embarrassing to experience the "tow of shame"! I guess we learned a few lessons the biggest being to always fill up with gas before heading out on the lake no matter what.

Gardening:
Really amazing that I still haven’t had to set up my sprinkler system on the garden this year. I think at this point I’m not even going to worry about it. All plants are mature enough that they should make it fine for a week or two with no rain. Before this year I couldn’t even imagine such a thing. Each week in previous years I spent hours watering. Everything other than the Brussel Sprouts and the winter squash are either done or able to be harvested now. The pears are really plentiful and large this year.

This past weekend we had our annual summer harvest meal get together with several friends. Everything we eat comes from the garden. The meat on the menu was venison tenderloin that I saved for this occasion. The dessert was fresh “no bake” berry pies. We had blueberry, blackberry, and black and blue (combo of each) all of which I picked myself.  I think blackberries are my favorite fruit.  Quite a treat.  We had a great time and the food was excellent as usual.

Back in the Saddle

Running:
I am finally back to running a little bit. It feels good to be back in the saddle again. About three weeks to the day between runs outside. I still need to take it easy and can’t rush things. Here is an example of how I’ve progressed the last several days. On Wed 8/4 I did my first running. I only run/walked 1 mile on the treadmill holding on to the side most of the way to keep weight off the legs. On Thursday I ran the whole mile holding on to the sides. On Friday I ran the whole mile not holding on. On Saturday I ran 2 miles on the treadmill sometimes holding the sides sometime not. On Sunday I ran 2.5 miles mostly not holding on. Yesterday Monday I ran 4 miles outside during my lunch break. No watch, just took it easy and completed the entire run in the almost 90 degree heat. I’ll gradually be increasing the length of my runs with a similar type progression. I’ll likely need 1 or 2 days rest the next couple weeks despite the low mileage. I wish I had some idea of the root cause of this injury. Without knowing and not correcting anything I could just face it again. I sure hope not.


Hunting:
I started to clear some shooting lanes by cutting down some of the scrub trees (mostly buckthorn) and brush in the back yard. I’ve been wanting to do this for a couple years. Now that I have a working chainsaw the job will go easier and faster. Last year I set up a stand in the middle of the property. The one problem with this stand was I could hear deer at the back edge of the property as they moved through but could never see them unless they came right in front of me or out into the field. The lanes I am clearing will allow me to see all the way to my bow stand to the left, as well as the back of the property straight ahead in addition to the field on the right.


Gardening:
Garden harvest of most things continues. That is when I can stand fighting the mosquitoes.  I have never in my life seen them as thick as they are this year.  Absolutely unpleasant being in the garden for any amount of time right now.  I’ve dug up about 10 gallons of potatoes so far. They are really nice size this year and so far not all chewed up by grubs. It looks like some sweet potatoes will also be ready in the next couple weeks. You can tell because they get so big the soil starts splitting where the large tubers are growing. Also pretty close to being able to harvest some pears and the first sweet corn. I’ve tried a hot pepper wax product on the beets and it seems to be keeping the mice away. I’ll also be putting this on the sweet corn to see if it discourages the raccoons.   I noticed this morning that some of the baby fish I mentioned a few weeks back have started to turn colors.  They look like they are baby Koi not Comet's.  Still not sure how many there might be.

Stubborn injury

Running: 
This quad injury is really proving to be stubborn. I can tell just by trying to jog to the mailbox that there is still an issue. Until there is no pain I can’t even try to do any distance. As of now it has only impacted a couple of 5k races I would have done. Next weekend I had hoped to run the Paavo Nurmi marathon in Hurley. Those plans will also now need to be scratched. Any longer than another week and other fall race plans will have to be altered. I’m guessing I could get ready in about a month with a one week taper period if I needed to for a marathon. That’s based on the number of miles I’ve already put in this year to draw back on. No pain doing anything else other than running. Being on vacation last week helped by being a distraction from not being able to run. My workouts have been about an hour a day on the elliptical, rowing machine and/or bike. The last two days I ran 1 mile on the treadmill holding onto the sides so my full weight isn’t on the leg. I might continue to do this as long as it seems to not make things worse. All the yard work in this heat has also helped to keep some of the weight off during this time. I suppose I might even have to start watching what I eat. Oh no!



Hunting:

While on vacation I was able to get out fishing one day with my brother Todd. We really wanted to get out to Outer Island to my favorite spot. The wind and waves the day we tried kept that from happening. We got most of the way there, but when we reached the farther Islands there were remnants of an overnight storm that still had the lake riled up. We chose to try a new place that was half way between Cat and Outer Islands. We happened to see an old map of Dad’s that had this spot circled. Neither of us remember fishing this spot of hearing dad talk about it. It turned out to be a good choice. We ended up catching a salmon before we even had the first line in the water completely. We ended up catching our limit of lake trout in addition to the salmon. We even had to throw one back and had several other fish on. So it ended up a pretty good day. Here are some more fish pictures.

Todd and I also went to check our deer stands one afternoon. The deer sign around my spot seems to be significant. They really hammered the mineral lick I have created and built up over the past several years. Lots of activity and trails from all directions coming in.

These are pictures looking out from the new tree blind in my back yard. The first is looking left over the corn and the second straight ahead and right over the brassica’s and clover.

Gardening:

The vine crops (pumpkins, squash, cucumbers, and watermelon) seem to be doing quite well. There seem to be a few less pumpkins than past years, but the ones that are there are doing quite well. There is still time to generate lots more as long as the vines hold up from disease and pests. We have had so much rain this year that other than the first week the garden was in I haven’t had to water at all. This has saved lots of hours of work over past years. Unfortunately it makes the weeds grow better too so more time needs to be spent keeping them under control. The first sweet corn from my garden is only about a week away I would guess. If I don’t get it first the raccoons will let me know when it is ripe to pick.

I have one peach tree left that is big enough to bear fruit. I picked probably about 100 or so peaches from this one tree this week. This tree isn’t in as much sun as I would like, so most of the peaches are on the smallish side, but they sure are good. Who says you can’t grow peaches in Wisconsin.