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Week 4&5 – Denver Training June 16-30

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    After a few weeks of running while traveling, it was nice to be back in Denver for a bit. I’m slowly making progress on ramping up the weekly miles. Having battled many a training injury in the past, I know the wisdom of taking things slow. But I must admit, there is some slight frustration. Although I can feel the progress, I can’t help but feel I’m not where I should be in terms of conditioning. This feeling is based on a decade of past training for marathons. Traditionally, I kept to a daily and weekly mileage regimen and in my mind, I should be running 20-30 miles a week with long-runs of 8-10 miles on the weekend. I’m not there yet because as I’m easing my way back into marathon fitness, I’ve decided to train using my Garmin Forerunner 255. I’ve been following the training recommendation of this running watch and for these two weeks I’ve been averaging around 16 miles/week on limited long-runs. Despite this, I’m pretty surprised by how positive the analyt
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Week 3 - Running in Toronto, June 9 - 15

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I’m in Markham Canada for the Mycological Society of America meetings this week.   I arrived on Sunday and immediately set out for a shake-out run around the vicinity of the Hilton Conference Center.   What I intend to be a simple 2-mile jaunt turned into a 4 mile tour after getting lost and missing a turn in the suburban environment of Marham/Unionville. Despite the detour, I felt good. Much nicer experience to go from 5k to 6k ft atmosphere down to relatively terrestrial 600 ft elevation. However, I still tried to push myself to stay on top of the relative challenge of running at Denver’s elevation. What was good about this week was the relative consistency in my runs and ease of recovery. I had a great time at the conference. There were some longtime friends and colleagues that I hadn’t seen in a while. The research, educational, and collaborative projects I’ve been involved with had a great presence at the meeting.   I was also able to make new acquaintances and establish new p
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Week 2 - Running Yuba Pass, May 30-June7th

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  The second week of training for the Chicago Marathon begins in earnest in the California Sierra Nevada. The first week of June is typically my annual pilgrimage to the Spring Fungi course at the Sierra Nevada Field Campus near Yuba pass.   My parents have a little summer place in the small town of Calpine. My first run was in the hills above Calpine. I covered nearly three miles, but it was slow.   The hills are steep and my training watch suggests I covered 590 feet of ascent and over 600 feet of descent. All between 4900 and 5500 feet in elevation. The second run was at Yuba Pass for a six mile long run.   I thought it would be ideal since there is a forest service road from the pass up Weber Lake Road.   I’ve traveled it enough times by car to have a feel for the road, or so I thought. My memory tricked me into thinking is was long and flat. It was not. In running three miles up the road I again covered over 550 feet in ascent. However, this occurred between
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Location: JG86+C4 Sattley, CA, USA
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Making my comeback! A return to the Chicago Marathon.

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 It's been nearly five years since I ran the Chicago Marathon in 2019. Two months after that race, I ran my last marathon in Sacramento for the California International Marathon. That experience of back-to-back marathons burned me out. That led to my decision to take a 'brief' break. Then the world shut down in 2020. Well, it's been long enough. I could see my body changing with age, and I continued to reminisce about the good times when I could run for hours and was at least 20 pounds lighter. So this year I'm getting back to Chicago. And what better way to return than to express my appreciation for the group that held my hand and supported me through a decade of Chicago Marathons. For this I am running to support the Chicago Area Runners Association. For this return I need to raise $1750.00. As I progress on this adventure I will gradually be updating this blog to share my progress. Please check back regularly and consider supporting my marathon efforts here: http
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Indonesia and Malaysia 3.1 - Back to Bogor ... and the blog.

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So after many years (8+ !!!!! Yikes!), I learned that my Google account gives me access to to my long neglected travel blog. Good timing too cause after many years I made a return trip to Indonesia (19 years) and Malaysia (12 years) a little over a month ago. The next few posts are the account of these trips in "Indonesia and Malaysia 3.1" to "3.2". I'll valiantly attempt to get them all out in short order while I still have something resembling a fresh memory of the trip. ---- I left Denver on July 13th, 2019, for Bogor, Indonesia to take part in the, Workshop to Enhance Collaboration Between US and Indonesia in Biodiversity and Conservation Research (unfortunately the link is hijacked or something. It redirects to a weird page). The goal is to bring together researchers from both countries in an effort form new and lasting collaborations around biodiversity research. The project involves people from numerous institutions in Indonesia. Specifically, IPB Unive
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Tibet 1.10 - Epilogue - Feeling the need to stop being selfish with the memories.

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On June 11th, 2009, I left Chicago for China and my wonderful trip to Tibet. A trip that was chronicled here on my travelblog. Now, some two years later, I'm feeling the need to wrap up my telling of the adventures of this trip so I can begin to use this blog for its intended purpose. There are many stories from Tibet that never made it onto my blog, but only one that is currently prepared, and I would be remiss if I failed to share it with the rest of the world. Anyway, before I begin this story, I must say that the last two years have flown by and I have missed many opportunities to share blog-worthy events. Completing my first marathon, a trip to Edinburgh Scotland for IMC9, another trip to Edinburgh (but this time in Texas) for my first job interview. Instead of having these events scream by as if they were images I glimpsed from a moving train, never to be viewed again, I am feeling the need to blog again, if just to keep a snapshot of the moment for posterity. But I
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