Takatoriyama Park

Takatoriyama Park had been on my local bucket list for a while. It’s a short 30-minute drive from where we lived in Maborikaigan to the parking area. For our family of three kids (2, 4 and 7) it was the perfect distance (800 m one-way as a normal person walks, or about 1 km one-way as our kids walks) and difficulty (paved walkway to the picnic area, then well maintained trails) with good views of the area and a big stone Buddha.

Driving & Parking

The parking takes a bit of figuring. A lot of directions online will tell to how to get to this park from one of several train or bus stations. This is a great option if you want to ditch the stress of driving but it does make for a longer walk. With our situation of young kids we opted for parking close and taking the shorter walk.

The parking takes a bit of figuring. A lot of directions online will tell to how to get to this park from one of several train or bus stations. This is a great option if you want to ditch the stress of driving but it does make for a longer walk. With our situation of young kids we opted for parking close and taking the shorter walk.

If you just Google “Takatoriyama Park” you we get an accurate point in the middle of the park area, but not one that is very helpful for getting you near a trailhead. After some helpful posts in some Facebook groups we found that there is decent and free parking near the trailhead. You can try and park right near the trailhead but there are really one two spots there. About 200 m away on the other side of the tennis courts and baseball field there is a nice park that has street side spaces for a good half-dozen cars. You can Google “Takatori Yama Climbing / Parking” to get right there.

Maps

I found the official map to be confusing - it’s not oriented north and it takes a lot of studying to match the features to where you are or a map.

Official Map

Map in the picnic area

So I made my own map on Google Maps. I put the trails and sites that we walked and saw in blue. I also tried to suss out trailheads and other trials using Strava heatmaps.

Short Hike

We started from the park / tennis courts. There's a vending machine and rest room nearby and a nice big sign. This path is paved and while a climb, it was easy enough for our young kids to do.

Vending machines and signage at the start of the hike

You go by one cutoff trail that gives more direct access to the climbing area but also has some paintings that are worth stopping for.

Cool paintings along the way

The paved path goes by one set of stairs that goes up to the observation tower. We saved that for later and went to the picnic area.

Stairs up to the observation tower from the paved path

Picnic Area

The central area of the park and kinda the hub on the wheel. You can also find restrooms and a vending machine here to go with some stellar picnic table views.

Central picnic area with great views of the bay

Vending machines and bathrooms

Big Stone Buddha

From what I could tell online this stone Buddha was carved in the mid 1950s. While not as old as the Kamakura Buddha, it’s still an impressive statue in a beautiful location. From the parking, it was only about 750 m. The path to the Buddha has some great views as well.

Path from the picnic area to the Buddha

Trygve surrenders the views

Advantage of hiking in January: no hornets!

There is a path that continues on past the Buddha down to the intersection near the elementary school.

Observation Tower & Climbing Area

From the Buddha we went back to the hub / picnic area and over to the observation tower. The tower has great views of Fuji, Kannonzaki Point and the whole area.

View to the southwest - west. Fuji is behind the power poles.

View to the northeast

View to the southeast

We thought about eating at the picnic area but our kids were more interested in watching the rock climbers.

Some older locals enjoying a pitch

There are so many other places we want to check out that I don’t know that we’ll get back here, but this is definitely one we’ll recommend to folks.

Running and Traveling

I often have to travel for work and I love exploring an area by running when work allows. The pace of running and the ability to explore small paths is a nice middle ground between walking and driving for getting the feel of a place.

I give a lot of weight to proximity. If running in the morning during a work trip I almost always have somewhere I have to be at a hard time. If running after work I have limited energy and time left to run, eat and close up work. The more time spent traveling the less time spent running. To this end in particular, a little research ahead of time can really make running while traveling a lot more rewarding given limited time.

Bringing on the Heat

The first place I go nowadays when researching running routes for travel is Strava's heat maps. For a while I thought this was a premium feature (only available to paying members) . . .

Well, nuts. . .

Then my friend showed me how to access this cool feature for free. . . you first:

1. Got to My Routes

2. Select "Create New Route"

3. Click on the Settings wheel and 

4. turn on Global Heatmaps

Voila! You instantly have the collective feedback of where hundreds of other runners most often go. Big popular routes show up nice and bold.

Safety

The fewer road crossings the better and I hate finding myself needing to connect a loop along a busy highway with a 55 mph speedlimit and a 1-ft shoulder. If I'm going to try to connect a loop that does not show some traffic on a heat map I like to check Google Earth to help me feel that I can safely run along the side.

For example, recently I wanted to take a run from my hotel. Strava shows some nice popular routes pretty close by but a worryingly less popular stretch in between.

Google Earth reveled that indeed this was not an overy pretty stetch

The Wisdom of Crowds

The next thing I like to check when traveling is searching for running groups. Often I do not have time for group runs before or after work, but when I do I find it really rewarding to run with other folks.

Other Resources

Map My Run and similar sites

If you just Google "Running routes in (some location)" you often get a lot of good websites that will suggest some routes. For general running routes of trails and roads I like Map My Run. The advantage it has over other popular sites (such as USATF routes and Runkeeper) is that you can easily search the routes on a map. Since I'm looking for runs based on where I'm staying or going to be this is more useful than a list of popular routes.

Map My Run also has the nice feature of being able to download routes and GPS or KML files.

The main caveat I have with these website is that they don't always give you a full pictures of all of the great options that are out there. They show a small percentage of a few uncurated routes that can give you some ideas. When I look at my local stomping grounds a lot of really good loops are just not there.

Trail Running

For trail running my favorite source of inspiration is REI's Trail Run Project. The nearby trails show up nice (and it seems to focus more on the dirt and single track trails) along with good filtering options.

Planning a Route

After getting inspiration from Strava and other sites I may still sometimes cobble together a route that fits my particular hotel or parking location. While Strava has a Route Planner I have found that it's adherence to roads and trails sometimes just does not match the physical reality of what I know I can do on the ground. In these cases I like to turn to Plot a Route. This site has the nice features of letting you turn tracking off or set it to roads or foot.

You can then save the route or (as I often like) export it as a GPX or KML file.

The Map is Not the Ground

After I first noticed the green space on Google Maps I looked up trail maps for Patapsco State Park online. The maps were great for getting the overall structure of the trail system and doing some basic route planning. But the disadvantages quickly became apparent when I started running. The maps only showed park roads and not rather convenient features like local roads and streams. The maps also did not all newer trails.

Without Will Surles showing me this trail I never would have found this cool loop

Google Maps shows many trails but I have found Strava to have the most complete trail maps (although still not perfect). Below shows a fun connecting trail that I took after discovering it on Strava that did not show up on Google Maps.

Strava

Google Maps

Arctic running

Annual training for my Army Reserve unit was at Eielson AFB and Ft. Wainwright up near Fairbanks, AK this year. Even though my wife was born in Alaska (and even went to school at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks) I had not yet made it up and was excited for the chance to see a new place.

Unfortunately this is just a running blog post and not a fishing blog post as we went in April. It’s a slightly sad time of year where there’s not enough snow to go skiing or snowmobiling (or snow-machining as they say in Alaska) but too much snow to hike or fish (and the salmon aren’t yet running).

Eielson running

In spite of being an Army unit, we were staying on the air force base. The inn on base had a rather nice welcome packet that suggested a 1-mile, 5k and 10k routes.

This was a pretty good place to start although I found the 10k route to be closer to 5.2 than 6.2 miles. All routes were on roads with good shoulders or sidewalk and reasonable traffic.

For longer runs I found that running out past the power plant on base brought you to a nice open road that goes past the fuel farms, to the covered range where you come to a Y (64.655706°, -147.002964°). If you go right you get to the ski hill (Iceman Falls), a sheet range and a nice set of cross country trails (64.649480°, -146.979207°). These trails were a bit muddy for the time of year when I was there so I did not run any of them.

The base also had a nice indoor and outdoor track as well as an obstacle course / trail.

Beach Bum 5k

We were there over one weekend which happened to have the University of Fairbanks hosting a race. In traditional fashion I wanted to get there an hour early to get parking and have ample time to warm up. I need not have worried as there was about 50 people at the race.

Starting area of the race

The course made most of its 170 ft of elevation gain in the first mile. Once it leveled out on the north side of campus we got some great view of Denali before heading back through the center of campus to the start. It was a perfect low-key race to break up the annual training.

Charles and I at the finish

Hoodoo Brewery Run

The other running highlight of my time in the area was the weekly 5k fun runs from Hoodoo Brewing. The run was organized by Running ClubNorth. About 75 – 100 runners did an out-and-back course from the Brewery. Both times we went down to the Chena River but one week we went east the other week we went west.

While it was a fun run there was an advantage to getting back earlier as the beer line quickly got long.

Post Run Brews

Hopefully I get to go back and explore Alaska in the summer when there are more trails and salmon. Until next time.

States that I've raced in

My Deep Work Experiment

Background

The idea of restricting my email checking and focusing more long periods on “deep work” had been brewing in my head for a while.  One of my favorite blogs, Barking Up the Wrong Tree by Erik Barker, talked about skipping email first thing in themorning. Another one of my favorite blogs, Study Hacks by Cal Newport, talks about restricting email (or as he suggests eliminate it entirely). One of the overarching themes of his blog is that we need to deliberately carve out more time to do the deep work that is both 1) what knowledge workers in our economy really get paid for and 2) what we find most meaningful. The issue when reading anything intriguing like this is to figure out how to apply this to my work. 

I decided I would try the following experiment for organizing my day and see how well they worked.

·        From 9 am – 11:30 I would pick 1 – 2 tasks to dive into (i.e., do deep focused work) on for 1 – 1.5 hours from

·        I would limit checking emails to before lunch (11:30 - noon) and leaving (16:00 – 16:30)

·        Immediately after lunch I would set aside another 1.5 hour block to focus on deep work

·        I would do shorter tasks (that could be completed in less an hour from 2 pm – 4:30 

·        Spend the first hour on Monday mapping out the week

Obviously externally scheduled meeting and meeting that I set up with other people could occasionally cut into these deep work times, but I wanted to be deliberate about scheduling shorter tasks.

Working Offline

One issue that I quickly learned in that I could not simply “not check” my email  - i.e., it was not just a matter of will power (although that was part of the problem). Even assuming I had the self-control to not flip to my inbox, I would often find that I need to go there to reference an email that someone else had sent me. Even as I quickly typed in my search for the needed email, I would inevitably scan the subject lines and often get diverted to answers one or two seemingly urgent and “quick” emails. Even if I somehow managed to avoid scanning the subject lines, the boldened emails in my inbox would weigh on my attention.

Either the building number of emails or one of the subject lines would taunt me and derail my concentration. The solution I found was the “Work Offline” feature.

How to reference your emails without checking them

This feature meant that nothing came in or went out (emails and schedule invites). I could still look at my calendar and search old emails. Emails that I composed when working offline sat in the Outbox queue awaiting their reunion with the interweb to go on their merry way.

Built in Pause 

Working offline gave me the chance to refine emails. Before I would dash off an email with some issue that came to mind. When I started working offline I started going back to these emails that were in the Outbox (i.e., queued up to send, but not yet sent) and adding to them as I came up with additional question or refining my questions to be more specific.

Occasionally, I would remove stuff from emails as I learned additional information from talking to folks. Sometimes I even deleted emails when I solved the issue brought I brought my emails back online.

The most selfish benefit was this this prevented me from looking foolish when I did NOT sent an email for a question that I just needed to do more legwork on. More altruistically, it reduced the number of emails clogging other peoples’ inboxes. Finally, in cases where I refined and edited emails, it got me better responses or at least reduced the number of emails that I needed to send (no more of: “oh, one more question related to this topic. . .”).

But you’re always busy. . .

Then I stumbled into an Outlook specific issue: by scheduling out my day it made it difficult for other people in my office to set up meetings with me. Outlook lets us look at other people’s schedules and see where open spots are. But by scheduling my days it made it look like I was busy and thus I was an impediment to these necessary huddles.

The solution here was another little feature of Outlook that makes me think I’m not the first person to try these things: you can set any block of time to show as free or busy to other people. So while I was trying to be deliberate with how I used my time, I also realized that in my office’s culture I needed to compromise and be selective on what blocks of time I labeled as scheduled.

Forcing better writing

Only checking email periodically also forced me to write better. Sometimes my work required input from someone else that was best done via email. In the past I might have fired off an email in the morning and worked on short tasks until they responded. Now I either had to send this email out the day before; wait until the next email check; or, if it was really important, call or talk to the person. While this initially seemed to be an imposition, it actually makes your email better. Consider the example email chain:

Me: We should discuss this.

Client: Yes, agreed.

Me: When should we discussed this?

Client: How about tomorrow at 1?

Client: I already have a meeting scheduled then, how about 2 pm?

Me: I'm busy then. Can you send me a few times that work for you?

Client: I'm free at times x, y and z

Me: Okay, time y works.

Client: Great

Under my new system, this exchange would take over a day. So instead I hadto think about how to craft an email to create less back-and-forth. So instead of the example six email exchange a new email might look like this:

Me: If you would like to meet to discuss this, send me two or three times that work for you and I will send out a meeting invite.

Client Yes, let’s discuss. I’m free tomorrow from 1 – 3 or the day after from 10 = 11:30.

Me: Outlook meeting invite for tomorrow at 2 pm

Drawbacks

There were humorous and not that bad: folks occasionally bring goodies into the break area and send out an office-wide email.  In particular, I remember one day where I missed out on someone’s going-away cake.

I also occasionally miss out on last-minute generic group invites to go grab a snack or attend a quick meeting.

Closing thoughts, for now

As I expected, no one noticed or has been that bothered. The challenges have been there but no one has been left in the lurch. I did not need to change the whole office culture of email to reap the personal benefits.

It has been a process of weaning myself off of continuous email checking. I found that when I was trying to dive into a long block on a focused task I would take time to get my mind into what I was doing. I would often absentmindedly flip to the inbox for some “hit” that would distract me from the daunting task I was getting into. It was a habit – I was often in the inbox before my thoughts caught up.

The benefits of stress reduction and focused work were obvious from the first day. I still have a ways to go when it comes to planning for focused work and actually focusing on a task for an hour and a half or more but nearly a year in, this experiment has been successful beyond any productivity tip that I have tried so far.

Hobby sabbaticals

This past month I brewed my 50^th batch of homebrew and called it a good run.

Once more, into the brew

It was not the first time I let go of a hobby. When I was deployed to Iraq and then Afghanistan I took up fly tying. 

First Iraqi Fly

Just as it was satisfying to drink a beer I had brewed it was fun to catch a fish on a fly that I tied. While both were fun at some level I realized that there are some good lessons in letting go of hobbies.

Testing it

Sweet carp success

You Only Save Money If You Enjoy the Time

It’s possible to save money by tying your own flies or brewing your own beer – but only if you make that your focus. It’s tempting to do some easy math and think that you save money on beer. For example, even with doing partial extract brewing where I buy a lot of liquid malt extract (the most expensive ingredient) I can brew 5 gallons of beer for around $56.

An 5-gallon keg of decent craft beers are averaging $70 so for a while I convinced myself that I was at least making money. However, I soon realized that this calculus neglected the 4 - 5 hours to brew and 1 - 2 hours it was taking me to bottle the beers.

And once I had kids time for hobbies came at a premium. While homebrewing was fun, I realized I would often rather be running or catching up with the kids and house projects.

Keep Fun Time Fun

It also started to feel like a chore to bottle the beer. I could have bought a kegging set-up and gear. But this felt like throwing more money after something that I was questioning. For some people brewing is a creative outlet to try really weird flavor or to make really world-class beer. I was brewing good beer but beer that I could buy in a store and that seemed questionable.

Decluttering

Finally, it takes mental space to maintain gear for brewing. Since I was down to brewing once or twice a year I would often find that some key piece of gear had broken the previous time and I hadn't replaced it. Or the kids had walked off with it. Our house had not missed the gear yet.

So long and thanks for the beer.

We'll Call It a Sabbatical

There was still a part of me that held on for a year or so after I thought about retiring. I feel the sunk cost of the equipment and time getting my experience. But at 50 batches of beer I can at least say I gave it a good run.

At the moment, I am phrasing it as a sabbatical from brewing. I still enjoyed it and might someday return to it when the kids are older or gone. Just like I might one day tie my own flies again. But for now I will focus on other priorities.

Someone's ready to brew.

Army 10-Miler

My opportunity

I was at my annual training in June this year and I saw a flyer to try out for the Ft. Hunter-Liggett Army 10-Miler team. I called the point-of-contact who told me to show up at 6 am in a few days. Ft. Hunter-Liggett did a rolling try-out. Over the course of two months if Ivan, the MWR guy running the show, had time you could run or submit a time. At the end of July he would pick the fastest times an notify folks.

I ran the course with LT Wade Phillips. The Ft. Hunter-Liggett time trial course had a slight uphill on the way out which made for a nice negative split on the way back. I ran a 63:07 and felt pretty good about my chances.

Army 10-Milers Past

This would not be my first trip to DC to run the Army 10-Miler. In Iraq I was fortunate to have met up with some other runners in my brigade who were in contact with the major in the division who was running the Ft. Campbell tryouts. Every Sunday they would transport runners from our brigade to the other side of Camp Victory to run around Saddam’s palaces and lakes. I made the team and shortly after we got back we all drove from Ft. Campbell to DC.

Camp Stryker Running Crew. 2 BCT / 101st Airborne Division\

I had a good enough time that the next year when I went to Ft. Leonard-Wood for the Engineer Captain’s Career Course I called up the MWR and get in contact with LTC Jackie Chan (yes, that was really her name) and trained with that team. We placed third in the Active Army mixed team category.

2007 Ft. Leonard-Wood Army 10-Miler Team

Every deployed post that I was at in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kuwait put on some version of the race. It was free and always fun challenge over the usual 5k runs.

2014 Army 10-Miler in Camp Arifjan Kuwait

Transportation and Lodging

Army teams typically stay in the Crystal Gateway Marriott. It is stunningly convenient to get to the start. You could take the metro in the basement of the hotel but I got the impression that some years the Metro had not supported the race by opening early and that the years that it was open it was rather crowded. It is easier just to walk north along S Eads St. – it’s pleasant and a nice way to stretch out the legs prior to the race.

Getting to the start of a race with 25,000 doesn't get much easier

The other advantage of the Crystal Marriot or similarly located hotel, is that you are right next to the MountVernon Trail. This trails goes for miles and is free of road crossings. If you go north you are even blessed with nice views of the mall and its monuments.

Traveling into Reagan National Airport is the most convenient way to do the Army 10-Miler. There is an easy Metro that takes you one stop down to Crystal City (or into the city and other Metro lines). Dulles has public transit options but they involve a bus and transfers. There is enough to do in DC that there is no good reason to get a car.

Metro with the airport, hotel and race start. Doesn't get much more convenient

Expo

If you are active duty packet pick-up opens at 8:30. For the general public it opens at 10. While it might be tempting to sleep in, the line into the Armory explodes if you wait. At 9:30 we walked right into the building and had our packet and shirt in less than 10 minutes. When we left the line wrapped around the block and almost reached the metro stop.

Packet pick-up line around 11 am

The expo itself was nice enough and I found a good deal on some running shorts that I felt I was running low on (my wife throws away pairs long before my cutoff of being unable to tell which holes are for the legs).

Ft. Hunter-Liggett team at the Expo

 Race Day

We got to the race about an hour before the start. There were ample toilets (at least at more than a half-hour to the start). There was a nice section of the course that was closed to traffic but not part of the first mile that made for a good warm-up area.

I started near the middle of my wave. As with the New York City Marathon I should probably have muscled my way closer to the front. But the first split was still a little below my goal pace of six-minute miles (3:45 kilometers). I kept up a good shown until the halfway point when the rain, wind and temperatures began to get the best of me. I was somewhat relieved to learn later that it was not just me. After around 10 am the Army made the call to shorten the course andcall the event a fun run.

Pace at each kilometer

However, I did seem to weather the weather reasonably well. I passed a lot of folks in the second half of the race and even put in a strong split on kilometer 15. I crossed the finish in 1:01:47.

I waited around for LT Phillips (who I had run the time trial with many weeks ago). Our ringer, CPT Foster (who ran for a few of the All Army teams) had finished long before both of us. We found Ivan (aka coach) and my family who had come out. 

CPT Foster, Wade and I did a rather nice cool-down on the Mount Vernon Trail which was easily accessible from the northeast corner of the parking lot. We crossed a bridge and found ourselves on nice secluded section of the trail - a nice chance of pace from the crowded racing and warm-up.

We were fortunate to bring home the Army Reserve Mixed Team trophy (top four times with at least one male and female time)

Coach with our sweet trophy

Being a Tourist

I have been grateful each time for the opportunity to stay the afternoon after the race. There is so much to see around DC within an easy metro ride. The capital tour was a little challenging with two small kids but the mall was perfect.

Kid approved Washington DC tourism

I was grateful to the Army Reserves for the chance to run in DC again. My only regret was not getting to see more of my friends from the Kuwait Running Mafia. I’ll pick them up next time.