Hiking the Johnson Ranch Trail in SLO

I went and checked out the new Johnson Ranch Trail for the first time today with Heidi. It opened to the public last Friday, but Heidi is already a trail veteran… I think this was her 3rd or 4th time doing the loop. The trail is located where S. Higuera and Ontario road intersect. I’ve embedded a map at the bottom of this post so you can get directions.

The trail itself is about 2 miles long and shared by hikers and bikers. Most of the actual trail construction was done by volunteers from the Central Coast Concerned Mountain Bikers (CCCMB) and they’ve done an excellent job. Beyond just the dirt trail, there are a few well constructed bridges scattered throughout the trail to get you over some rougher terrain and the creek. I think the best part about the Johnson Ranch Trail is that it is challenging enough to be fun, but easy enough that just about anyone could do the loop on foot. I’m not a mountain biker, but it seems to me that if you’re on a bike the trail would be much more challenging.

While we were out we did see some wildlife running around. Mainly squirrels and lizards. I heard all kinds of stuff rustling in the grass and the bushes but I’m not sure what was in there. Earlier in the week Heidi saw a huge deer cruise over the trail while she was out. There also some cows out there… which leads me to the one thing you really need to look out for… cow poop. On the North side you need to watch your step a little bit.

Overall I think the Johnson Ranch Trail is an excellent addition to San Luis Obispo’s open space inventory and I’m glad they did such a good job making all this nature easily accessible. The views are excellent, the trail is fun, and it’s easy but not too easy.

I took some pictures while we were out…

 


Entrance to the Trail
 

 


King of the Mountain
 


Schmarmy 70′s esque nature portrait
 

 

 

 


Heidi and I taking a minute in the shade
 


View Larger Map

May 30, 2009 | 4 Comments »

The Beatles 4 x 100 Relay


Source

May 29, 2009 | No Comments »

Keeping Up

I did a group workout at lunch today, it went pretty well. I can feel myself getting better at keeping up during the workout. I don’t really have that internal clock that lets me know how fast I’m going on repeats so modulating my speed for descending sets are kind of a pipe dream at this point, but I can maintain the same general speed across a lot of repeats. Today we did a set of 12 x 100 and I was very stoked to keep up with the faster group the whole time and make all the repeats on time. Now I need to start speeding it up!

Here’s what I swam today:

Repeat x 3
100 kick
100 pull
3 x 100 free

6 x 50 fly drill down, swim back

12 x 100 free

3000 yards total

I’m feeling sore in a good way. I feel really energized and can’t wait to get out there and race again!

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USMS HQ Now Has a Home in Sarasota

Masters swimming is built on volunteerism and that’s probably a big part of what makes it such a great organization to be involved with. Through their hard work of the volunteer staff USMS has grown to upwards of 50,000 members, and to continue to grow and manage the organization USMS needed to cultivate some professional staff. A vital part of this transition is setting up a national headquarters to house the growing professional staff.

Way back in February USMS had picked Sarasota, FL from about 6 different potential cities as the future home of its headquarters. They have now found a building in Sarasota to operate out of and are in the process of transitioning from their temporary Charlotte office to the new Sarasota office.

They found a funky little pagoda style building that used to house the Sarasota welcome center and it is currently being renovated to accommodate up to 13 staff members. Here are a couple of pictures of the building:


It’s a little weird to set up shop in a pagoda, but hey why not? If you want to see more pictures you can see them here.

May 28, 2009 | No Comments »

Holy Quadriceps Batman

I worked out by myself in Pismo tonight and did a workout loosely based on what the kids in Santa Maria were supposed to do today. I trimmed off some yardage because I didn’t have enough time to do it all, and I kind of ignored things like intervals.

5 x 100 free
4 x 100 dolphin kick w/ fins alt w/ kickboard and on my back
3 x 100 free
2 x 100 kick w/ fins alt w/ kickboard and on my back
1 x 100 free fast

4 x 25 fly

200 pull (100 w/ paddles, 100 w/o)

3 x 100 free

100 cool down

2200 yards total

I was out there doing my best stereotypical triathlete impression tonight. I had fins, paddles, kickboard and a pool buoy. I was a wetsuit and a snorkel away from completing the look :) Up until this point I haven’t used anything other than a kickboard in the pool, but the workout group in Santa Maria does use equipment so I figured that I needed to get used to it. Tonight was my first time swimming with fins in probably a decade. It’s fun to go that fast, but man did I feel it in my quads! I only did about 100 yards with paddles and I’m not sure if I really want to use them. They stress my shoulder in a you’re-going-to-break-something way, not a this-is-making-you-stronger kind of way. Tomorrow I’m planning on doing a workout in Santa Maria, we’ll see how I keep up.

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Signed Up for Mission Viejo LCM in June

I just signed myself up for the LCM meet down in Mission Viejo on the 7th of June. Mission Viejo has a great facility and they did a great job hosting the SPMA SCY championships just recently in April. I’m looking forward to going down and getting in some good swims. Hopefully now that we are a little more removed from nationals the attendance at this meet will be more in line with what we usually see at SPMA meets. Although I do enjoy sweeping all the events in my age group when no one else shows up:)

I’m planning on swimming the 50 fly, 100 fly, and the 50 free… maybe a relay or two if I’m lucky. My coach at CSAM is pushing this meet to the team so hopefully we get a good crowd of them to make the trek down into Orange County.

Here is the schedule of events:

Event Schedule
Sunday, June 7, 2009

1500 warm-up at 8:00 a.m.
1500 starts at 8:30 a.m.

1. 1500 m Freestyle (check-in required)
Additional warm-up after 1500

Event #2 will start no earlier than 11:00 a.m.

2. 400 m Individual Medley (check-in required)
3. 200 m Freestyle
4. 50 m Butterfly
5. 100 m Backstroke
6. 200 m Breaststroke
7. 200 m Medley Relay (men, women, or mixed)
8. 200 m Individual Medley
9. 200 m Butterfly
10. 50 m Breaststroke
11. 200 m Backstroke
12. 100 m Freestyle
13. 100 m Butterfly
14. 50 m Backstroke
15. 200 m Freestyle Relay (men, women, or mixed)
16. 100 m Breaststroke
17. 50 m Freestyle
18. 200 m Fun Fin Relay
19. 400 m Freestyle (check-in required)

You can get all the meet info here. Deck entries are available but you have until midnight on June 3, 2009 to register online. If you want to mail in your entry you have to get it postmarked by Saturday, May 30th. I say register online if you can, way easier for you and the meet host.

May 27, 2009 | No Comments »

Late for Lunch at the Pool

Not that I wanted to, but I took an unintentional break from the pool recently. I went from Wednesday evening until lunch today without doing any meaningful swimming. In all honesty my body probably needed a break after Nationals, Santa Clarita, and the nutty week I had. I was really antsy to get out there and get in some yardage today, and a little worried that I was going to get my ass handed to me in practice.

I ended up getting to the pool late, I got caught with something at the door as I was trying to leave the office. There were a whole bunch of people in the pool today. We had upwards of 3 per lane which I guess is pretty monstrous for this group. I hopped in with the 2 fastest swimmers because they were the only ones with any room left in their lane and held on as best I could! I really have a lot of catching up to do when it comes to swimming a workout with a group. It’s good for me to get pushed and to do sets I would never give myself, but it’s a completely different experience from working out by yourself. I generally never used intervals or did anything I didn’t want to, this makes sure I do all that kind of stuff.

Here’ what I swam today:

4 x 75 kick @ 1:30

200 IM

4 x 25 fly @ :45

4 x 75 fast choice – free @ 2:00
300 swim

4 x 50 fast choice – fly/free @ 1:30
200 swim

4 x 25 fast choice – fly @ 1:00
100 swim

8 x 100 free IM w/ :10 rest

2600 yards total

I really really really like mid day swims! I’ve negotiated 2 of them into my workweek, but I may need to push for an expansion of that the next time I have an opportunity.

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Masters Swimmer Laura Val in the SF Chronicle

I’m always excited to see masters swimmers in the news so I was pretty stoked to see an article this morning featuring USMS swimmer Laura Val in the San Francisco Chronicle. Laura is a force to be reckoned with in her age group (55-59)… well just about any age group really now that I think about it. I had the pleasure of losing to her at the 2009 USMS 1 mile open water championships at Lake Millerton by about 5 minutes, as a matter or fact she would have only missed 1st place in my age group (25-29) by 2 seconds! She had a really exciting finish to that race where she was coming in stroke for stroke with another swimmer. They hit the shore at almost the exact same time and she managed to out run her opponent to the gate.


A picture I took at the Millerton Mile of Laura’s dramatic super close finish

Here’s an excerpt from the interview:

Most annoying thing people assume about athletes in your sport: That you need to compete to be a Masters swimmer. In fact, less then 25 percent of Masters swimmers ever compete in a meet. It’s a great place to enjoy the company of like-minded friends, exercise and get a tan.

Advice you’d give a rookie: Take lessons to learn the proper way to swim the strokes so you’re not fighting the water. It does take time to get that “feel for the water,” but once you get it, we’ll never get you out of the pool.

You can read the entire San Francisco Chronicle article here.

May 26, 2009 | No Comments »

Planning for LCM Season

I’ve been ridiculously busy this week. I swam Santa Clarita’s LCM meet on Sunday, I spent the day at the Googleplex in Mountain View on Tuesday, I caught Nine Inch Nails and Jane’s Addiction in Santa Barbara on Thursday, my book on Adwords made it into the system at Amazon on Friday even though I don’t even have a copy from my publisher yet, and Saturday was Heidi’s graduation from LVN School. I’m not sure if I slept in the middle of all that excitement or not. Luckily it’s a long weekend and I have some time to catch up… and start looking forward to this summer.

So here’s what’s scheduled within reach of my place…

June

July

At a minimum I’m planning on hitting all the regular SPMA meets. There’s a relay only meet on July 5th in Mission Viejo, but I don’t know if that one is in the cards… depends on what the rest of my team is up to that day, I’m game if they are. Unfortunately the PMS LCM Champs are the same weekend as the Santa Barbara meet. I like to do an out of region meet since I’m right on the edge of my region, but this is the only LCM meet Pacific Masters is having. Depending on how I’m feeling I might be able to hit the last day of that meet, I’ve done more ridiculous things to go swimming. There’s also a meet in SD that could be fun but it is pretty close to the SPMA championships so I’m on the fence about it.

This year I think the SPMA LCM Championships in Thousand Oaks is going to kind of be like LCM Nationals West. I overheard a good number of out of state folks talking about making the trek to California instead of Indy for various reasons… distance, cost, weather, personal grudge matches, etc. If you’re on the other side of the country or have the dough to make the trek out the real LCM Nationals, they are in Indianapolis this year on August 6-10th. You can check out the main info page for 09 LCM Nationals here. As it stands right now I don’t think I’ll have the time to do Indy. I’ve got a trip to the midwest planned for September already. Hopefully I see a lot of you out at the pool this summer… now I just need to start actually doing all the work to be fast!

May 24, 2009 | No Comments »

Rachel Maddow Breaks Down the Suit Debacle

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

I don’t think she grips the whole situation, but it’s interesting to see a non-swimmer’s perspective on the whole thing.

May 21, 2009 | No Comments »
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