a Taj MuttHall Dog Diary: Keep Moving Those Legs

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Keep Moving Those Legs

SUMMARY: Dogs might not be climbing Glacier Point, but dangit if I'm moving my butt, they are, too!

We are all ensuring that we're in excellent shape for the 9-mile (14.5 km) round trip, 3000-feet (914 m) elevation gain Glacier Point Trail hike--11 days (11 d) to go! Even if the dogs aren't going, you KNOW that they want to support my effort in every way possible.

Yesterday's conditioning hike: Tried to get to Postal Annex--a mile away--and back again in under half an hour. The mission: Mail my Bay Team USDAA Regional entry, with check. The reasons: (a) Not supposed to leave envelopes with checks in your own personal mailbox (hence to PA). (b) Need to keep putting those daily miles in for GP**. (c) Sister & Bro-in-law coming to take me away for dinner (hence, half hour).

**For you other USDAA-heads: NOT Grand Prix; Glacier Point!

Uphill? Suurrre! The condos near the shopping center have rolling 4-foot lawn berms, at least half a dozen. So we got at least cumulative 48 feet (15m) elevation gain! We rock!

Photos? None! Were you paying attention? Hurrying!

Discovery: With dogs, even jogging across all the streets and not letting them check every newsworthy tree, cannot do it in under half an hour. Hard to believe. I mean, we hustled! Closer to 40 minutes.

Today's conditioning hike: Dogs came with. 1.5-mile circuit around Oakridge Mall because I needed to get my monthly supply of healthy, nutritious Diet Coke at the famed French department store, Target (pron: tar-ZHAY). (One prior such urban hike, with map, here.)

Uphill? You betcha! 77 steps up the parking garage at the Sears end (and back down); 79 steps up the parking garage at the Tarzhay end (and back down). Must be at least 100 feet cumulative elevation gain!

Photos? None! Camera safely ensconced on my desk! Where it can't accidentally be used to, say, take photos!

Discovery: Squirrels who live in holes in perimeter berms make an incredible shriek-ping racket when dangerous canine types come into view.

Tonight it's dinner with other chunks of the family. Tomorrow night the Wed. Night Sierra Club group is off to Pulgas Ridge, which not only allows dogs, but has an actual (smallish) off-leashey hikey area! It's just...it's about a 50-minute drive there. Or should I just hit Santa Teresa Park again on my own, on-leash? (Dogs, I mean.)

Tune in next time for the exciting next episode of TMH, in which we are probably STILL not taking advantage of our 6 weeks off from competition to hone our keen agility knife [note to self: metaphor falls apart here] and instead are doing other undoubtedly worthwhile things.

13 comments:

  1. OMG you are so totally going to leave me in the dust. I'm in phys therapy for my hip and am taking it easy and not exercising hard.

    I will do some inclined treadmill sessions but that's probably about it besides dog walks.

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  2. You've got to be kidding--you're blithely tossing off ideas about driving up to 8000 feet, hiking up another 4 or 5000 feet and back down the same day, and you think *I'M* going to leave *YOU* in the dust?

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  3. You can still use "hone" in a metaphore. Try honing the cylinders of your powerful agility engine. :-)

    Problem is, there's not a whole lot of air at 12,000 ft to fill the cylinders of your powerful agility engine.

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  4. Wouldn't that be "stoking," not "honing"? I think I just need a new metaphor entirely. Preferably something involving sugar and fat.

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  5. Hello? The valley is at 4000'
    Glacier Point is at 7274'.
    Lots of air there.
    Sentinel Dome is just starting to get up there at 8122'.

    The other hike I was suggesting was the eastern entrance gate at 10,000' up to Mt Dana at a light headed 13,061'

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  6. That's EXACTLY what I was talking about. Glacier Point's a trivial pursuit in comparison.

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  7. Never mind the hiking, all that driving sounds exhausting.

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  8. She won't have to drive much unless she wants to. Though agility people are experts at distance driving. We're not Ice Road Truckers, but we do ok.

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  9. Elayne, don't you often drive that much in a day for agiity? Oh, wll, maybe just one way in one day. I get the impression that CO agility events are more greatly disbursed than here.

    Yeah, it's a LOT of driving for one day. For me, the saving factor is usually having someone to talk to. Which I won't have the last hour on the way home.

    Well, it's an adventure. Last time I did a 1-day Yosemite trip was probably in the '80s. And we didn't do much hiking at all, as it was winter and everything was snowed in. Threw snowballs, looked at the scenery, ate at the Ahwahnee, went home.

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  10. Typically the longest I'll drive for an agility show is 2 1/4 hours and I'll go to maybe 2-3 of the 5 that are that distance. Mayyybe once a year I'll go out of state for a 6-9 hour drive but if I do that I try to make it into a mini-vacation. Sure there are hardcore people that travel 7-9 hours several times a year to do USDAA but not me. Most trials I do range from 20 minutes to 1 hour drive. And if I did AKC I could probably trial several times a month and drive 40-70 minutes.

    Even when I go biking/hiking in the mountains the most I'll go one way in a day is 2 1/4 hours or so. Anything longer is an overnight stay because I'm too tired to drive home.

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  11. For Yosemite it's worth it to me.
    Though my limit is somewhere around 4 one way. For agility, I usually limit it to 2 hour day trips and that's if I'm only doing one day of the weekend, because psychologically agility seems much more involved that just driving somewhere gorgeous and hiking or skiing up and down something.

    The cool thing about doing slightly outrageous day trips is that you get to lovely places a lot more often, instead of saying "someday ..."

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  12. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  13. Well, the other side of this is that I'm horribly spoiled. Plenty of beautiful hiking, biking and skiing trails are just 40-60 minutes drive so 2 hours for me seems like an ordeal.

    And yeah, agility is definitely more tiring/draining than hiking. Funny how that works. Darn dogs.

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