LECHTANSKI.NET

500 miles since April. 500 miles, baby.

You might remember how much I dig my Nike+ system with my Nano. It’s helped me track my mileage, pace, calories and such. Well, I’ve hit a pretty good milestone by hitting 500 miles. I was about the 11,700th 500miler on nikeplus.com.

The bad part is now that I’ve reached that goal, I’m getting a little lazy.

So for now, since treadmills suck and I don’t like running in the dark, I’ll be scaling back my weekly mileage.

For the love of winter sports, could we get some snow already?

I have lots of skiing trips to plan!

Even for Bellingham standards, we had a pretty bad summer. If I remember correctly,  Summer was about a week and a half in early July, with a brief Indian Summer for a couple of days in mid August.

Ok. Fine. It happens. But if we’re not going to get a Summer, bring on the friggin’ Winter already! Let’s skip Fall. I want some snow. Mt Baker is a 90-minute drive. Whistler Blackcomb is exactly three hours away. These have to be two of the greatest skiing locations on the planet, and I’m ready.

I’ve got some sweet DynaStar skis (Thanks, Dad), some shock-absorbing Allsop poles and I just picked up a helmet at Costco. I want to put all of this stuff to use.

Last year my first trip up to Baker was the Sunday after Thanksgiving. It was a huge snow day, but the ski area had already been open for a couple of weeks. I made it to Whistler, finally, in February.

Simon and I are planning on a trip to Stevens Pass on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, but it’s still unclear if it’ll even be open.

The way I see it, we have got two primary seasons (Summer and Winter) and two secondary seasons (Spring and Fall). I’ll accept getting jacked on one of the primary seasons, but I expect a little consideration in the other.

I’m looking at you, Mother Nature.

This is the coolest story I’ve heard in a while.

I typically dig the songs from iPod commercials. Except for maybe that Eminem one. And I thought the new iPod Touch commercial followed along nicely with picking something catchy and safe. So, I clicked over to Google to see who the song was by.

What I found surprised me.

Sometime in September, an 18-year-old kid named Nick Haley put together his own iPod Touch commercial using video footage from Apple.com. He found a song he thought was perfect (it is), from Cansei de Ser Sexy named Music is my Hot, Hot Sex. He posted his project on YouTube.

Rather than send this kid a cease and desist letter, Apple emailed him to say they wanted it for their own. They re-cut it, got permission from the band and now you are seeing it five times a day.

His original cut commercial is a little rougher and doesn’t include the Foo Fighters. Check out the final cut.

Here’s what I love about this. This student has an awesome story that will get him laid for a couple of years. But also, this little known Brazilian band, CSS, now has their song featured on national TV, and is currently number 30 on the iTunes top 100 list. I think it is great that an English student has the power to help break an obscure band.

This is all, of course, hinging on whether or not this story is real. I hate being so cynical.

Daylight savings time change has come and gone. A weekend an hour longer. Nice. So, now I come home in the dark. Here’s the problem. My usual running routine puts me on the trails between five and six. This is right around the time it has turned from dusk to pitch black. And my stomping grounds, Bellingham’s trails, are a little creepy in the dark of night.

As a result, yesterday was my first outing back at the Bellingham Athletic Club on a treadmill. Man, do treadmills suck.

The last two weekends I ran 13 and 10 miles respectively. My daily outings otherwise are around five miles.

So I figured a quick five miles at the gym last night would be no problem. I hated it. I’ve been trying to figure out why and here’s what I’ve come up with:

• I ran in place on a treadmill for 42 minutes. No wind. Even just the headwind I get from running 7mph. I never realized my calves sweat so much. I didn’t realize I sweat so much anywhere else. I sweat a lot!
• When I run on the paths around my house, I have the return trip as motivation. However far I run from my house, I know I have to make it back. I can’t stop running. How else am I going to get home? On a treadmill, all I need to do to get back to where I started is stop running. That’s too easy. If I have any lazy fits, I can just stop. And I thought about that very thing for about 41 minutes last night.
• I really, really hate that first few minutes right after I step off the machine. I get this feeling like I’m turbo walking. Like for the last 42 minutes, my brain has adjusted to running while going nowhere. So when I start walking on the ground, my brain has to readjust and make up for the distance I wasn’t going.

While my weekend runs will still be outside around town, my weekday runs are up in the air. I’m not a fan of the gym right now, but maybe I just need to get over it. Or maybe I need to run around the sidewalks and avoid the dark-ass trails.

Either way, I’m in Bellingham, so I’ll need to wear some waterproof shorts.

For whatever it’s worth, I’m updating my Technorati profile to include this updated location for my blog.

Technorati Profile

So, there you go.