Bill’s Blog

The snow is not as good as it was last yar. I still haven´t broken my head, but I did leave an impression of my face in the ice when the fog rolled in while I was on a steep slope! Here´s a pic I took on top of one slope looking up at my favorite lift.

Here is where I head after a hard day riding to ease my tired muscles and to drink a cervaza.

I finally found a way to upload photos from Valle Nevado. I was trying to upload my photos via FTP (via my PALM wifi) to my webshare, but they evidently have FTP capability turned off here in their wifi. So, I am using their PC and a thumbdrive (that I stick my camera SD card into) to use the Google Picaso server-side application to upload them. I am going to resize a bunch of them tonight with one of my PALM applications and then upload them to Picaso tonight or early tomorrow morning. I will put the link here when I do so.

Adios.

Well I’m here once again. The snow is not as good as it was last year. I got here today about 2:30 PM and got on the slopes about 4. I haven’t broken my head yet, but I did make some really fast runs down icy black slopes.

This is a view outside of my hotel room at sunset.

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This is one tough marathon — probably the hardest I’ve run. I don’t believe there is one level spot; it’s all up and down. Prior to the race, I looked at the previous two years results and thought that if I could beat 3:40, that I might take 3rd place in my age group and win a ribbon.

At about mile 25, a guy about my age slowly pulled up beside me. We started to talk and I asked how old he was — yep, he was in my age group. This was one of the few marathons that I didn’t have a sprint left for the last 0.2 miles. I was out of gas; my newfound friend wasn’t. He came in 3rd; I came in 4th (in my age group). My official time was 3:40:51.

I was happy with my time, given the toughness of the course and relative heat — it was over 60F at the finish. This is one I want to run next year to compare against this benchmark.

Race Results

GPS Watch Results

Just a quick note between my shower and a short nap.

The last time I ran Boston was historic; it was the hottest Boston Marathon of recent times. The temperature was in the high 80’s that day in 2004 (although the lore seems to have grown among runners to push that temperature into the 90s). This marathon was shaping up to be historic in the opposite extreme. The day before the marathon, the prediction was that the start would be 34 to 37F, heavy rain, and 35 mph head winds. The picture was so bleak, that local news stations were reporting that officials were considering postponing the event until Tuesday — which would have been unprecedented in the 111 years of this even (actually, I should verify that fact ….).

But, it was not as bad as predicted. The worst part of the event was waiting 2.5 hours in pouring rain and trying to find a place to wait in a swampy, muddy, highschool campus. It was actually close to 50 degrees at the start and the winds, while strong at times and definitely a factor (the winning time was off by 7 minutes), they did not reach the velocity that was predicted.

How did I do? 3hr 42min 8sec. I was OK with this. I wanted to break my Boston 2003 record of 3Hr 40min, but given the strong winds, I was satisified. Boston is one tough course. The constant up and down of the hills really beats the legs. My old nemisis, leg cramps, kept trying to sabotage me. But, I deployed a new tactic this time: mind kung fu! Everytime I developed a cramp; I kept running, tried to enjoy the sensation of the cramp, and told it to take it’s time to fully cramp and to be satified. My strategy worked. Prior to this, I would run with cramps, but tighten up in dread and eventually end up temporarily crimpled. I would then go the curb to streatch (actually tear!) my muscles and then start the whole cyle over in another mile or so.
The last 3 or 4 miles of Boston was a killer. Unlike most marathons, general fatigue is not the biggest problem: legs feel like they have been through a meat grinder. It was great to see the finish line ahead at mile 26! Boston is like no other marathon. It’s a 26.2 mile-long parade; people are yelling for you almost the whole time. If you need a boost of energy, you high five some spectators or rally the crowd to cheer with arm gestures. Mile 13 has a special treat: 100’s of Wellesley college girls screaming as loud as they can. I’ll probably run Boston every year that I qualify for it.

Pictures? No, I was going to take my camera and take pictures at the starting area and maybe a few on the course, but with the bad conditions, I was struggling with the tactics of an extra pair of shoes, extra clothing, rain protection, etc. BUT, here is an excellent site chock full of stories and pictures. Check-out picture 8 of the “Loading the Buses” series (pic 8).

Results

My GPS Watch Results

I just finished the Mardi Gras Marathon (New Orleans) in 3:45:14. My goal was to have a good-enough finishing time to “qualify” for the Boston marathon in April of this year. Boston requires 3hr 45min max. for my age group, in a certified marathon. Luckily for me, Boston truncates a candidates seconds ….. so I qualified!!

I had given up at mile 23. I was wearing a GPS watch and was watching my pace. When I pulled over to a curb at mile 23 to stretch my cramp-seized calves, my overall race pace on my watch showed 8:38 min/mile; that was well beyond what I had previously calculated that I needed. But, I was pleasantly surprised at mile 25 to hear the time-caller yell out, “3 hours, 35 minutes and 12 seconds.” — this gave me almost 10 minutes to run the next 1.2 miles. I kicked it into high gear, passing about 20 runners — luckily, leg cramps held off until I finished.

Afterwards, I checked my GPS watch: it had only registered 25.4 miles, so it was .8 miles short. This explained why it registered a slower pace for me …… so much for my trust in technology!!

Here’s the official results.

Here’s my watch GPS results.

Friday afternoon I was about an hour south of Santiago — headed for wine country — and got a terrible headache. I decided I’d better head home, so I pointed my rental car the other dirction on highway 5. I had time to stop at the Santiago shopping district before I flew out Friday night.

On the way home to Puyallup from SeaTac I stopped at Ski Bonkers, at Southcenter, to look for a new snowboarding helmet ……

I got up this morning to put chains on my rental and to check out and found it to be a stunning day — 4 inches of fresh fluffy powder and crystal blue clear skies! I’m tempted to stay here and ride all day; but after my head injury, I’d better not chance it.

My vision cleared last night, my headache is not severe, and the internal fog has lifted. So, I’m going to hit the road to explore Chilie!

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I have been so busy that I haven’t posted in awhile. Sunday, Monday and Tueday were fantastically beautiful days: crystal clear skis, no wind, and temperatures in the upper 20s — although it felt much warmer with the strong sun. Yesterday took a turn though. I had crossed over to another of the three vallesys: La Parva — which is another ski resort in an adjacent valley. To cross over, you have to take one of the highest lifts and then traversse (some walking for a snowboarder) for about 1/2 mile before you reach the downhill slopes. As I was traversing, I noticed that clouds were building far below. After I spent about an hour at the base of La Parva, the clouds really rolled in. I quickly took the 3 other lifts required to get back to La Parva. By the time I got back to the lodge, you could barely see 10 feet in front of you. This was a bit of a harrowing experience, but a fun adventure non-the-less!

To get to some of the more remote spots here — including crossing over to the other valleys, you have to take … basically a rope pull. For a skier, this seems to be little problem. Attached to the ropes (actually cables) are short cables with a tiny round seat on the end. The skiier puts this behind his derrire and away he goes. For a snowboarder, it´s quit a bit tricker. My first time took me three tries before I got it. I heard later that some snowboarders, who ride down into areas where the only way out is via these rope pulls, have had to have a Cat come haul them out — so I guess I don´t feel so bad about taking three tries to get it down!

Today I´m not riding; I had a mishap yesterday afternoon after my adventure above. All of the blackdiamond routes that I´ve taken over the past week only left me with a few harmless bounces off the but. After the fog cleared a bit, I went out again and was at the base of the moutain, I was going at a moderate speed on a tame slope and BAM I hit the ground hard — I believe that the tip of my board must have hit a soft spot — which catupultated me face down into the snow. I got up very fuzy minded — took me a few minutes to remember where I was and where I was headed — thankfully I only had one small lift to get me back-up to the lodge. As soon as I got to my feet, I noticed that the entire top of my helmet was sheared off.

After my senses cleared, I seemed OK except for a bad headache. About an hour later, though, I was sitting in the pool talking to a couple who just happened to be from Edmonds, WA (investment bankers). When I noticed that I was starting to see each of them twice, I knew that I had a bit of a problem. I spent the rest of the evening in the bathroom ducking my head in cold water to reduce brain swelling. This afternoon as I type this (24 hours later) my vision is starting to clear — the upper 95 to 100 degrees of my vision is clear, the lower part still is double. I´m hopeful that it will be completely clear tomorrow — in which case I´ll check out of Valle Nevado, head down the moutain, and south of Santiago on highway 5 to see the wine country. If it´s not clear, I´ll head to the airport and fly home early.

Later,
Bill

Well, I just typed up a long very well written and humorous post - but somehow I’ve lost it. I’ve paid for 60 minutes of hotel computing time, but only have 5 minutes left, so I’ll be very brief.

I’m having an excellent time here. I’m on the slopes from 9 am until 5 pm everyday — then it’s on to the exercise room and dinner. I’m always worn-out by the time that I get to bed. I’ll post again tomorrow night; I have stories to tell and am meeting a lot of intersting people.

Hasta manana!

Well it feels like it anyway. I’m at the top of the Andes world. I’m at about 10,000 ft. in my hotel room as I type this.

I just got here this afternoon and didn’t get checked into my room until about 3 PM. I did manage to get a few runs in, though, before the lifts closed — just long enough to smoke a couple of locals down an advanced slope (made me feel good that they called in “advanced,” but there’s no way that we’d call it a black diamond!).

It was a long trip up here. I think Santiago is probably at about 2500 to 3000 ft. — so it’s a pretty good climb up a long winding, 1.5 lane road. I have some good pictures of the road that hopefully I’ll be able to post later.

My favorite picture was of a horse. He was standing at an overlook just off the road intently and stoically watching the two cars in front of me. When he shifted his gaze to me, I yelled, “hey horsy” — he immediately brayed (do horses bray?) at me. When I rounded the corner and was at his altitude level, I pulled over — he sauntered over to me and started whimpering to me. We talked for awhile: my first friend in Santiago!

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Sorry, but no pictures while I’m at this resort for the next 7 days. I spent the last two hours trying to connect my wireless PDA via FTP to my website to upload some pictures. I finally did connect via FTP only to find that I cannot upload pictures because they have a firewall block — guess they are fightened that too many uploads will stress their system. Oh well, I can still blog without pictures — although I had some dandys! I do have a very strong wi-fi signal though.

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Tomorrow I fly out for my big adventure — well it’s not all that big an adventure because I’ll be staying at a luxury resort just outside of Santiago, Chile.

Here’s my snowboard sitting on a shelf - all waxed, tuned, and ready to go. It’s the one on the lower shelf. The best board is the pink one, but my granddaughter won’t let me use it.

Tomorrow — while traveling — I’ll try to write about the technology tools that I’m using — and no, I’m not using a laptop!

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