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Good bye 2010
Wishing you all a very happy and prosperous New Year. 2010 was by far a better year than 2009 for me. Last week was filled with celebrations including Sandy and my 19th wedding anniversary, Alia’s 16th birthday, and Christmas celebrations here and in Bayfield.
The picture here was taken on 12/27 as the sun rose over Madeline Island. Looking out the window I noticed this tall glowing spike over the island. I’m sure it’s just a jet plume, but it’s kind of weird how it is not even and just ends. This was really impressive a few minutes earlier as the sky was darker, and the spike was brighter against it. It changed quickly as the sky brightened, but the picture still turned out OK.
Running:
I was able to get enough runs in the last weeks of December to be able to reach my revised goal of 2100 miles for the year. Not a bad number considering I was again forced to take most of 8 weeks off from running in July and August. I ended up getting a new Garmin for Christmas. Santa brought me a new 305 with heart rate monitor. I will start using it in January. I have never trained regularly with a heart rate monitor so that will take some getting used to if I choose to do it. I also see there is some new software with it to keep track of my runs automatically. There also is a way to log manually if a run isn’t done using the Garmin. This is why I didn’t use the old Garmin log. Now I will have to decide if I want to change or keep using my .XLS spreadsheet for logging.
Some stats for 2010
27,271 miles on the Odometer as of 12/31
2105 running miles
279 running events
288 hours and 06 minutes of running
7.54 miles length of average run
1 hr 2 min time of average run
74 miles highest week
247 miles highest month
40.5 miles average week
175.5 miles average month
238 miles on the treadmill in 34 runs (7.0 mile average)
Miles by Month
Jan 243.5
Feb 241.5
Mar 204.5
Apr 228.5
May 247
Jun 174
Jul 117
Aug 113
Sep 187
Oct 117
Nov 98
Dec 134
Hunting:
I was not able to get out hunting now for well over a week. This is the first time since early October when that has happened. I did get out fishing last week with my brothers Todd and Scott, cousins Randy and Dusty, uncle Arthur, and Randy’s friend Brian. It was an awesome day. I bet we caught between all of us maybe 70 fish. Most were thrown back, but we took home 19 fish between all of us, all over 24 inches with the biggest probably about 30 inches. Todd, Scott and I took home 16 of the fish so we had lots of cleaning to do. The picture is of just the fish we took home. It was a great to catch so many fish and to spend time with all these guys.
I know a lot of people didn't have a very good hunting year again. For me this was one of my best ever. I spend 365 days a year thinking about, planning for, and actually going hunting. I may have spent fewer hours in the woods than normal, but that’s only because I was able to be successful early. My food plot layout and crops again turned out well, but I think I will plant one section with all clover since that seems to be what the deer like best. I was able to get 5 deer so far this year. Three with a bow and two with gun. The two nine pointers I got with my bow on back to back weekend was definitely the highlight. I also had chances at lots of other deer both bow and gun hunting so it was an exciting season. There are still ten days left in the season so there is still a chance for more if I can find the time to get out there.
Gardening:
It was a mixed year for the garden. The vegetable garden again turned out lots of produce this year. The interesting thing was I never had to water the garden once all season. The rain came down regularly and in the right amounts. This has never happened before and is not likely to occur gain. The apple, peach, and cherry crop were terrible this year. The hard freeze we got on Mother’s day weekend killed almost all the blossoms and ruined the crop. The watermelon and pumpkin crop were really good. I had all the watermelon we could eat and harvested over 100 large size pumpkins. Winter is the time to plan for next spring and go through all the catalogs again to order for next year. Last year I waited to long and some of the new variety of seeds I wanted to get were already sold out. Hopefully I can get my order in a bit earlier so this doesn’t happen again.
This will likely be my last post until after Christmas.
Merry Christmas to everyone.
May you find
some quiet
moments of gentle
joy to blanket
your Christmas
season with peace.
Running:
Running continues to just be on a maintenance path. I did manage 35.5 miles last week on 6 days running. As has been the case recently half my runs were on the treadmill and half outside. Everything is primarily in the 8 minute range. I did get outside on Sunday morning for 8.5 miles in 1:8:22. This was my longest run in over a month. It was quite cold, but calm and made for a nice run. The roads are as snow and ice covered as at any time since 2004 that I can recall. On Sunday morning things are pretty quiet so I can run right in the middle of the road for the most part. The other thing is that the cold temperatures actually make the snow less slippery. I’m closing in on 2100 YTD miles. I think I should be able to make it. That new GPS watch has made it to my Christmas list. Maybe Santa will be good to me. Through today:
WTD 16
MTD 101
YTD 2067
ODO 27,233
Hunting:
With the snow that has been around it’s real easy to see how hard the deer have been hitting on my food plot. Multiple deer have been coming in daily from all different directions. They have been pawing through the snow to get at the turnips and clover and continue to chew on the few remaining corn cobs that are left. This past weekend I just hunted in the back yard and only the last hour of each day. Saturday there was a few inches of fresh snow, but the deer didn’t come in. Sunday was a different story. The first half hour there was nothing. Soon two small deer came in and started to eat. I just sit and watched them. Pretty soon two large does came in to join them. I thought about taking one of them for a while, but decided to pass. I had the bow up and went through the motions for practice, but never let the arrow fly. The shooting time then quickly passed, but I was stuck in the stand. I didn’t want to get out and scare them away. I knew if I did that my chances of seeing them again would diminish. With the upcoming special “holiday hunt” where we can use a gun I hope we can get another chance. So I sat there. On most nights when I see them out there from the house they don’t hang around long. Not this night. Pretty soon the four deer got a little skittish and ran to the far corner. It was soon apparent why. The biggest buck I have seen so far this year made its appearance. Just a beautiful tall racked 8 to 10 pointer. It was all of 15 to 20 yards away from me at one point. The moon was up and almost full making the deer really easy to see against the white snow background. Pretty soon they were all out there again in the field together. It was so neat to just watch them, but I was starting to get cold and had to think about finding a way to get out of there. At about 5:45 someone let the dogs out to do their business and that was just what I needed. The dogs noticed the deer in the back and started barking at them. They didn’t run back there, but it was enough to scare the deer away. Normally this would not have made me very happy but it sure did this night. When the deer were all out of view I quickly scampered down and back to the house. Judging by the tracks the last few days I would say they didn’t get that scared. I recognize the buck track now and I definitely still see that he is coming in too. Should be an exciting last couple weeks.
Gardening:
So far I’ve held off on getting a snow blower. My driveway is quite long and wide near the house and certainly could warrant having one. I really don’t mind shoveling and in all the years at the current house have really only faced a couple snowfalls where I wish I wasn’t as stubborn. Maybe someday physically I will have to, but for now I’ll continue to hold out unless the right one at the right price falls into my lap. Despite not having one I take pride in knowing my driveway is cleaner than all of my neighbors that snow blow or have a service take care of it for them.
Running:
In previous years I’ve done whatever I could to avoid the treadmill. This year I’m having a little change of heart. I have decided at least when my runs are short I will treat the treadmill as my friend not something to be avoided. This will be true only until the roads clear and my runs increase in distance as training progresses. I’ve actually used the treadmill several times over the past few weeks. Sometimes for convenience, sometimes because of the weather, and lately because of the conditions of the road. None of my runs this month have been over 5 miles nor much over 40 minutes. The treadmill can be bearable for that short of a time period. Last week I ran all seven days for a total of 34 miles. This week through today I am up to 20 miles on 4 days of running. My outside runs continue to be watch less. On the treadmill I sometimes run steady 8 minute miles other times I run 8:30’s and a 6:00 last mile. I probably won’t start increasing my weekly mileage until the week of 1/10 when all of the hunting seasons are over with.
Totals through today:
WTD 20
MTD 69
YTD 2035
ODO 27201
Hunting:
December 9th through the 12th was an antlerless only season through the whole state of Wisconsin. In this neck of the woods you could use gun or bow. I didn’t get out much for any of it. The motivation to go out to only have a chance to get a doe put a damper on things. I wasn’t able to get out of work early enough to get out on Thursday or Friday. On Saturday I did get out in the afternoon in the back yard, but it was pretty nasty. A storm had started and the precipitation began as rain. It was raining pretty hard while I was out there and this continued through most of the night. The deer just were not moving. Overnight it got colder so by morning we got some snow. The snow continued a bit through the morning and into the afternoon. Sunday afternoon I got out again after shoveling out, but this time the wind had really picked up. There were gusts well over 40 MPH. Again the deer were not moving. Wouldn’t you know on Monday afternoon I got home a little early because of a dentist appointment and there were all kinds of deer out in the back as night fell. One was a buck that I could tell. Not sure if it was big enough that I would want to take it but it was fun to watch. I might get my decoy out during these last few weeks and see if that does anything to draw them in. I’ve had lots of fun using it in past years.
Gardening:
Despite the temperature going below freezing and staying there for a fairly long time the pond is doing OK so far. The biggest problem right now is when the water level drops because too much of the water is locked up as ice. When this happens I drag a hose from a basement hookup and melt some of it by running hot water until the level rises again. Cleaning the filters and some of the dead vegetation is a lot harder when you are sticking your hands in the freezing water.
Running:
Now that the 9 day regular deer gun season is over my running has gotten back to normal for this time of year. Nothing spectacular. I’ve been running 5 miles 5 days a week the last couple weeks. Still taking the weekends off to hunt and complete other chores around the house. I’ve been running without the Garmin since I ran the Lakefront back in October. I had been using just a regular watch since I was running known routes. When the battery on my other watch went about 10 days ago I tried the Garmin again and it no longer works. Now to figure out if I want to get a newer version or get the old one fixed. My runs the last couple weeks have been untimed. But I would guess around 40 minutes give or take a minute for each one. I’m writing them down as 40 minutes in my log. On 12/09 I passed the 2000 mile YTD mark. This is the 5th time in 6 years to match or surpass this milestone. Last year I hit 1900 miles and in 2004 I hit 1800. My seven year total since I started training for my first marathon is over 15,000 miles. Through 12/09.
MTD 35
YTD 2001
ODO 27167
Hunting:
I was able to get out hunting both Saturday and Sunday last weekend. On Saturday afternoon I just decided to go out in the back yard. I didn’t even go out until a little after 4PM. I wasn’t there very long when I heard a deer munching on the ears of corn still standing in my food plot. Sticking my head out of the tree blind a bit I saw there were three deer. Two were bigger and one small. At one point I could have taken any of the three. The two bigger does then walked off out of range while the smaller deer continued to feed just below me. After watching for 10 minutes at least to see if a buck was going to come I decided to take the smaller deer before time ran out. I didn’t need more meat, but would be happy to earn another buck sticker. I took aim and fired. I could see the arrow made a complete pass through and could tell I made a pretty good hit. I waited a few minutes and then went to follow the trail. The deer went off my property through the neighbors. I followed it a couple hundred yards across a small field when it jumped up. I knew I had to wait then. In the morning I picked up the trail and found the deer right away. This was my 3rd deer with the bow and 5th this year. Pretty good so far. On Sunday I had the most exciting hour of hunting I’ve had in a long time. I went to hunt on my bow stand where I got the two nine pointers earlier this year. I hadn’t been there for several weeks. With the new snow, the first of the season here I was excited to see if the deer would be active. I watched the entire Packer game so I got out a little later than I had anticipated. I wasn’t there long when 4 does approached from the west. They walked single file within 10 yards of my stand passing over my tracks I made on the way in. Each deer stopped to sniff as they passed my trail. I could have taken any of them, but chose to pass. Not more than 5 minutes later I saw another deer approach on the tracks of the does. Turned out to be a nice 8 point about the same size as the two 9 pointers I got earlier from this same stand. Again I chose to pass and just watched the deer as he passed through. When it was off a ways I decided to test my grunt call just to see how/if the buck would react. I grunted a couple times, when right behind me a deer blew and ran off. I never saw or heard the buck larger than the eight pointer and his little pal 6 pointer approach from behind. Can’t believe I screwed up like that and amazed that I had 7 different deer within shooting range in less than an hour of hunting. One of those does must have been in heat or about to be, to attract that kind of following. Too bad this weekend is an antlerless only season with that kind of activity going on. I still might go out a bit just to scout if nothing else. With the snowfall last night and more forecast for Saturday I can get an idea where they are bedding and traveling for late season.
Gardening:I don’t know how many garden catalogs you all get, but I get dozens of them. Seems if you order from any place they must sell your name to others to get that many. I always order from the same two or three places, but I always keep a few that have unique plants, good ideas, or some new things to look at. Most just end up in the recycle bin. Used to be you didn’t get any until after the new year. Not any more, they keep coming earlier and earlier. Kind of like the Christmas music and decorations do.
Running:
It has been a while since my last blog post. Hunting season will do that to me. I’m finally getting caught up with things neglected since mid November. This update will take me through November and hunting season.
Not much has been happening in the running department since my last update 11/17. Over hunting season I ended up taking seven consecutive days off from running. Except when I have been injured this is as long as it gets between runs for me. For the month of November I ended up with only 98 miles. This is my only sub 100 mile month this year and is likely to be my only one. This week I’m back on track and have run every day. Through 11/30
MTD 98
YTD 1971
ODO 27137
Hunting:
Hunting season was interesting to say the least. Lots of stories, but no buck for me, at least that I shot. I got up north to Bayfield the day before the gun opener. Kylli and I left about 3 in the morning on the Friday before. We stopped on the way up and sighted in our guns in Ashland. We were actually in Bayfield before noon. We went out in the woods to check our stands and place some bait in a couple of them. When we walked down to my brothers stand we smelled something not right. Someone had sprayed perfume or similar substance all over his stand area. Stunk like crazy. Who would stoop to such a low level? All the work all year long preparing this area only to have someone trash it the day before season. We have our suspicions, but no firm proof as to who the culprit is.
