Heart Rate Monitor, a step backward?

Okay, I'm starting to get into this running stuff a little too much I guess. Reading some different information, and checking my heart rate on some treadmills I've been using working out in hotels when I'm on the road made me decide to go out and get a heart rate monitor to help me make my running more effective. I was really surprised to find out the results.

According to all the charts at my age I should have a 177 max heart rate, but I've managed to get a 187 recorded after doing some sprints immediately following a 6 mile jog so I'm going with the 187 as my max heart rate. To keep it in the aerobic zone I need to be between 131 (70%) and 150 (80%). Anything over that is the anaerobic zone and if you want to build endurance you are supposed to only go there if you are doing interval training and stuff like that. Otherwise most of the stuff I've read said to focus almost all of your running in the aerobic zone.

I had built up to where I felt like a 10:00 pace was a cake walk. My last big run before the heart rate monitor I ran in and out of the canyon 8.38 miles at a 9:56 pace and felt great. I even ran a 6 mile run on flat ground in an 8:56 pace and felt good. Now that I have a heart rate monitor it is telling me that I can't run anything over about 11:10 pace on flat ground without getting my heart rate in the anerobic zone. I ran my first long run yesterday with the heart rate monitor and jogged/shuffled along at a snails pace to keep my heart rate under 150. Going up the hills I had to switch to a brisk walk because I couldn't run at all and keep my heart rate under 150. Ended up going 10.2 miles with an average heart rate of 147bpm, but my pace was a whopping 11:32 overall!

I was pretty surprised at how quickly my heart rate responded to different paces and especially elevation gains. Even just a slight rise could bring my heart rate up and running down the hills I should have run even faster than I did because my heart rate dropped really fast even though I picked up the pace to 10:30ish going down the hills.

What I'm really hoping is that this won't take very long before I can at least get back to a 10:00 pace with my heart rate under 150. Some stuff I'm reading says that you can shave time off pretty quickly and other stuff says it takes years. I'm a sucker for gizmos and think it is really neat, but was surprised to find that even at my snails pace back when I was running 10:00 miles I was working out too hard according to the heart rate zones.

I'm going to stick with the heart rate training for at least a month or two and hopefully I'll start seeing results and end up with a healthier heart too.

That's it for now.  Nathan

New well house, well kinda.

Well, (pun intended) our well house has been looking pretty sad for the last year or two and really had gotten to the point that it was going to have to be repaired soon so it didn't fall down and break something.  I have seen the fake rocks that people use to cover up items in their yard but hadn't ever seen one large enough that it would actually cover the well and pressure tank until on a recent flight looking over the skymall magazine.  Once I got home I did some looking and there were actually a couple different sizes that would cover everything up.  I decided to go with the one that would be large enough to cover up what it needed to without being way too large (the largest one I found was 5' tall and 6' square).

I was able to spend Saturday afternoon knocking down the old well house and swapping it out for the new hollow rock.

Here's the old well house.  You can see it was in pretty bad shape.

Here's the well house with the new rock sitting next to it.

Here's the well house after I've started knocking it down.  It came apart pretty easy, but getting the roof off without dropping it on the pressure tank or well was a little tricky.  You can see how tall the pressure tank was compared to the height of the wall of the well house and also how tall the post is that had the electrical connections.

All the walls knocked down and starting to get them loaded in the ranger.  In the last 2 pictures you can see the house in the background and see how odd it was to have a well house sitting out there so far from everything.

The rest of the debris loaded up on the ranger.  It squatted down a little bit under the load but it actually has the same payload capacity as a 1/2 ton pickup.

Here's a test to see if the rock is actually going to work.  I was for sure going to have to change up the way the electrical connections and cut the post down to get it to fit.

Electrical connections rearranged and the rock is ready to go.

Everything in place.  Again, you can see the house in the background.  The rock is actually held down by 3 stakes for now.  Hopefully they will hold up to the wind.  That was one consideration when getting the smaller rock, it should do better with less surface area to catch the wind.

One more look from a little distance.  The rock is still noticeable if you are looking for it, but nothing like the old well house was.  I haven't decided if I'm going to plant a few shrubs around it to help it blend in or just leave it as is.

I don't think anyone really cares other than me, but I really think the new rock looks a lot less out of place than the old well house did.

Ended up salvaging most of the timber and turning it into firewood.  My chainsaw got a workout and I did too when I ended up spliting a bunch of wood with an axe.  It's probably going to burn pretty quick being dry pine, but it should be easy to get it started.  Spliting wood was actually fun and I for sure got a workout doing it.

That's it for a Saturday afternoon project. 

Nathan

Eli is 5!

Can you believe that Eli turned 5 yesterday!!!  It is amazing how fast time flies!

We had a little party for him at Chucky Cheese before church last night.

He was really happy with his Mac truck that he got.

He actually smiled for a few of the pictures!

He was pretty excited to get to see everyone and with the presents he received.

Thanks everyone that was able to come!

Nathan

A few pictures from the Toys for Tots Race.

Here's a few pictures from the Toys for Tots race last Saturday.  The running club has a few volunteers who take pictures during the race and then they post them on their website so I copied the ones of Cathy and I and am posting them here. 

This first picture I actually took myself on my phone as we were getting ready for the race to start.  Nice dreary morning!

The remaining photos are courtesy Susan Caudle and the West Texas Running Club.

Here's the start of the race.  This is as close as Cathy or I got to the leaders.

Cathy making the turn onto the bridge for the first time.

Here's me coming over the bridge for the 2nd time.  Almost done with the first 2 mile loop.

Not 100% sure when this picture was taken.  I was focused on running!

This is at the finish.  I was actually ahead of some people and it almost looks like I am running instead of jogging!

Cathy at the finish.  She finished ahead of some people too!

That's pretty much it for the pictures.  Kind of nice to not have to worry about trying to take them on your own. 

 

I'm a bit surprised at how much I have enjoyed going over the race results and looking at the pictures and where I finished in my category and things like that.  I already signed us up to be members of the running club for 2012 and signed us up for the first race in January.  It's only 5 miles, but hopefully the weather won't be too bad!

 

That's it for now.  Nathan

Running....

Well, hunting season is over and I'm still trying to stay in shape.  My last day of active hunting was November 5th and I'm still getting out and running about 3 times a week.  I still don't think I actually would be able to say that I enjoy running, but I sure do like the results that it provides.  According to the runkeeper program I've burned over 67,000 calories this year jogging or hiking!  According to the stuff I've read, it takes 3,500 calories burned to lose a pound so if I hadn't been working out and ate the same amount of food I would be about 20 pounds heavier right now!

One thing that I'm going to start trying to do is run in some of the local running club races that they have each month.  I've run in a couple 5K races at LCU and one in Austin and one in downtown Lubbock over the last 10 or 15 years, but they were races that Cathy was running in already and she convinced me to go with her.  This was the first time I actually felt ready to run in a race and the first time I actually pressed the issue of going.  Cathy did mention it to me, but I lined up a baby sitter and decided that we were going.

It was just a 4 mile race, but it was a cross country race at Mae Simmons park and that is one place in Lubbock that actually has some hills.  Not much compared to most places, but for folks around here they are memorable.  I mentioned to a few of my co-workers that I was going to run at Mae Simmons and they groaned with memories from running it in high school.  I felt like 4 miles would be a cake walk, but they had me a little concerned about the course.

Okay, enough lead in!  We ran 4 miles and it was easy!  I ended up running it in a 9:15 pace and Cathy ran it in a 9:35 pace.  I didn't feel like I was pushing it very hard at all, I treated it as a training run and just tried to keep my pace.  It was a little different than running by myself or with Cathy as there were 125 other folks out there doing the same thing.  I ended up taking 62nd which was pretty much smack dab in the middle of the pack.  Cathy finished in 71st.

Here's a picture from runkeeper showing the route and my splits.

We did a 2 mile loop twice to get to the 4 miles.  The graph looks pretty consistent for each loop on the elevation.  It was actually a pretty decent elevation gain for around here anyway.

In retrospect I probably could have run quite a bit faster, but since it was my first race when I was actually in shape I just didn't know.  I ended up running another 6 miles yesterday and decided to push it a bit on the last mile just to see how I would do and was surprised that I was able to run the last mile in an 8:17 pace and actually broke an 8:00 pace for the last 1/4 mile or so.  That was after running 5 miles at a 9:30 pace.

Just last week I ran a nice flat 6 mile route at the house and actually beat a 9:00 pace on it. 

My splits were really close on that run with my fastest mile at 8:48 and my slowest mile at 9:04.  It was a MUCH nicer day than yesterday though.

I've been tracking all of my running and hiking with the runkeeper program and it is showing that I'm up to 388 miles for the year.  229 of that is running and 153 of that is hiking with 6 miles on the elliptical thrown in too.  I really didn't get started on running to get in shape until May and I've actually averaged 31 miles of running over the last 6 months.  I'm hoping to get in 400 total miles by the end of the year and would like to get to 250 miles of running.

I'm still very slow compared to any real runners, but I'm closing the gap.  Looking back at my first 6 mile run this year back in June I have cut my pace by over 2 minutes per mile!  I the same route in an 11:18 pace and had to walk twice.  I was beat when I was done and don't think I got anything else done the entire day.    Last week I ran it in an 8:56 pace and felt great when I was done.  That's over 14 minutes faster over the same 6 miles in just over 6 months of working out!

I'm sure I'm going to get to the point of diminishing returns pretty soon, and when it all comes down to it I'm perfectly fine being the slow big guy out there plodding along, but it is nice to see some results anyway.  I'm setting a goal to run a 1/2 marathon in 2012 so I can't quit now.

Being in shape is really nice, I guess the time spent running is worth it.

That's it for now, Nathan

Mistaken Identity.

Well, I’m a little late getting this posted, but I was able to sneak down to my hunting property in Fisher county for a Friday night, Saturday morning hunt last week.

A guy on another hunting forum is working on a solar/lunar type forecasting calendar that also takes into account local weather conditions. Here’s a link to his website - http://ranulos.com You just put in the nearest zip code to where you will be hunting and it projects a graph for the next six days based on the long term weather forecast. Anyway, I plugged the zip code nearest my hunting property in there and it showed that Friday evening was going to be an excellent day for hunting. I needed to go down to check on things anyway so I figured I would try to get in a quick hunt while I was at it.

I took the afternoon off work and hitched up the travel trailer and hauled it down to the property, backed it into its spot and headed off to my big blind on top of the hill. It was a little windy and it was going to be a full moon, but a cold front was heading in and I was hoping to get in on some movement from that.

No such luck. In the 4 years I’ve owned the property I’ve only sat in that particular blind and completely struck out without seeing a single animal one other time, but I didn’t see a thing that evening even if the fancy ranulos software said it was an excellent evening for a hunt. It sounds like the guy is really working on a good program, but for now it doesn’t seem to fail proof.

The program showed that the next morning was not going to be a good day to hunt, but I was down there and wasn’t going to pass up a chance to hunt. I was in the blind an hour before sunrise and watched the world wake up from my hill top view. Always a great thing. The wind was blowing a bit and the sun came up and nothing was moving. I did see some quail, but I was chalking up my complete strike out of seeing anything else to the fire that burned my place up back in May. I had been keeping my protein feeder filled all summer and there were deer eating at it, but at 12:00am and 4:00am and never during the daylight. I figured they were bedding far away from my property where the fire wasn’t as bad and moving to and from my place to eat at night and I was going to be out of luck this year.

I was going to sit for another couple hours, but figured it was pointless then out of no where I spot a nice 3 ½ year old 9 point about 150 yards to the south of the blind. I was surprised I hadn’t seen him earlier as with the fire I had thought I would be able to see anything within 300 yards because the brush was basically all gone. He was a nice buck, but not a monster and for sure had a few years of growth before he would reach his full potential. I’d had pictures of him on my trail cameras for the last couple years and I decided I was going to pass on him. I watched him for 30 minutes as he made a complete semi-circle around me. For the anti-baiting folks, I watched him walk within 50 yards of my protein feeder then walk right by two different spin feeders that had spun out some corn earlier that morning without even slowing down. He was for sure more interested in looking for does than looking for corn laying on the ground.

He was gone for a few minutes and then I spotted another buck about 150 yards to the East. I watched him a little bit and reached for my rifle. I was pretty sure that it was “Stubby”, a mature buck that I passed on last year and regretted it the rest of the season. I watched him a little and then a doe showed up and he chased her a bit. One thing I noticed was that his tarsal glands were not dark at all and the 3 ½ year old buck I had watched earlier had extensive tarsal staining on his back legs to the point that they were nearly black. Looking at him he was much bigger than the doe he was chasing and his antlers looked very similar to Stubby from the year before so I decided to take him.

Here's a picture of "Stubby" from last year:

He was right at 100 yards and it was an easy shot. I squeezed the trigger and he jumped and kicked out his back legs and I knew it was a good hit. He ran off about 100 yards and then slowed down and looked back. The doe was still around and she started walking off and he started following her. I decided I better shoot again and as soon as he stopped I shot again and hit him in the front right leg but it was low. The doe took off and he followed right behind her again. They actually came closer to me so evidently they had no clue where the shots were coming from. He stopped about 150 yards broadside and I decided I needed to keep shooting. I shot again and he went down. Somewhere in there I shot 1 more time and remember him jumping and kicking again but I can’t remember exactly where it fits in the sequence of events. At some point I thought I must just be missing, but it sure sounded and looked like I hit him with each shot.

I was pretty shocked to have 4 shots at a whitetail with my 7mm Mag with all shots taken at a stationary deer under 200 yards away. I waited a bit and got my stuff together and then walked over to where he was at and was surprised to see that the deer laying on the ground wasn’t Stubby. At first I thought he must be a 2 ½ year old buck based on how small his antlers were, but based on his body size, tooth wear, and the mass of the antlers I’m pretty sure he was a 3 ½ year old now. Either way it was clearly a case of mistaken identity, this was not Stubby, but probably one of his sons.

Here's a picture of me with the buck I shot.

The buck I had passed on earlier in the morning had much larger antlers, but I had passed on him because he was too young and then turned around and shot another buck that was probably the same age but had smaller antlers! Oh well, in theory I guess I could look at him as a management buck because he really had limited potential to grow much bigger antlers and the buck I passed on earlier in the morning should be a really nice buck next year.

Examining him as I skinned and quartered him I could see where I had hit him 3 times. The one that was low on the front leg wasn’t fatal but both of the other shots were. Then when I boned him out I found another hole in the front shoulder blade that I think might have been the 4th shot. I may have hit him each time, he just didn’t think it was time to go down.

I was lazy and took him to get butchered again and ended up with 59.3lbs of boneless meat off of him. If you do that math that would mean that he weighed somewhere around 180lbs on the hoof, so he was a decent sized deer for around here from a body size perspective, just not from an antler perspective.

So my hunting season is over it looks like. Not sure I’ll get a chance to do any trapping or anything else. I could shoot a doe, but I’m going to let my friend Ben hunt on my place if he wants and let him shoot whatever he wants, doe, big buck, little buck, whatever.

That's it for now.  Nathan

2011 New Mexico Mule Deer

Well, as forthcoming as I was about the exact location of where I hunted elk this year in New Mexico, I'm going to be the exact opposite in talking about where I hunted for mule deer.  Unlike my elk hunt, there is still a chance I might be able to draw a tag for deer hunting in the same place next year and I don't want to reduce those odds of drawing any more than they already are going to be with the change in the New Mexico hunting laws next year.

After my New Mexico elk hunt went down to the last day, I didn't know if I was going to be able to spend as much time as I was planning on for my mule deer hunt.  I had told myself that with the changes in the law and my drawing odds for this hunt going from about 40% to probably down to as low as 10% in future years that I needed to hunt the entire week and hold out for a monster, but I saw this guy and thought he looked big enough and decided that both the family and I would be better served with me tagged out and home instead of spending the next 5 days hunting.

I woke up at 5:30 and left out in the dark at 6:00 heading to where I shot my buck last year.  I thought they had a good spot where I had jumped several deer everytime I had been there and expected the same this year.  I got there right at shooting light and was surprised to only see 3 does hanging out in the sagebrush tucked in out of the wind.  They are very hard to see and without scanning carefully with binoculars I would have never picked them out.  I had jumped 5 deer just before shooting light on my way in but they were all does and a small forkhorn.  The big groups of deer I had seen in this spot last year were somewhere else this year.

I watched for a while to see if anything else was moving, but everything seemed bedded down already and I decided to start moving.  In the sandhills my hunting style is to try to get to a vantage point and see things moving at sunrise and sunset and then just keep moving the rest of the day and see if I can catch some deer bedded down out of the wind.  The wind was picking up with gusts up to 30mph so it wasn't looking like a super pleasant day to be out walking the hills.  As I was heading out I found a nice shed antler that was still in pretty good shape for this late in the year.  It was pretty respectable, although the back tine wasn't forked where it should have been, but that is fairly common in this area.

I spotted another group of 4 does and they moved on off to the East so I followed them but tried to angle around where I would have the wind in my favor.  The wind was pretty steady out of the southwest so I was trying to walk diagonally into the wind instead of having it blowing behind me.

I was up to about 6 miles on the boots by this time and trudging through some sand going to another area with a bunch of shinnery oak that looked like it might be promising.  The area I was in didn't have any hills to speak of, but just a bunch of ups and downs maybe 10 to 15 feet of elevation.  As I was trudging along I spotted a medium sized buck looking at me from about 50 yards away.  He wasn't anything I wanted to shoot on opening morning so I didn't really try to be sneaky and pulled up my binoculars to get a really good look at him.  About that time another buck stood up beside him and then another beside him and both of them were pretty good bucks and by the time I was able to pull the rifle off my shoulder and get it pointed in their direction there was about 25 deer making a bee line directly away from me.  There were 2 nice bucks in the group and I couldn't figure out which was the better buck, but I was thinking either of them were probably shooters.

The group never offered a decent shot opportunity, but they weren't terribly spooked since I didn't go running after them or shoot at them so I decided to just try to keep going after them.  A group of 5 does got split off from the main group and I was able to somewhat keep them in sight every 10 or 15 minutes while following them.

A mile or so later I was getting into the shinnery oak and just happen to catch a glimpse of a buck making his way to bed down in the shinnery.  I put the sneak on him and got to within 25 yards before the game was up.  He really didn't have a clue I was there, but I sat up a bit and let him see me while I tried to snap a couple pictures with my little point and shoot camera. 

Not the best picture, but considering I was using a $100 point and shoot camera I thought it turned out pretty well and gives you a pretty good feel for how close I got to him before he decided to leave.  Was a pretty fun little stalk.

I watched him go over the hill and then followed after him.  I was trying to figure out if he was part of the larger group that just got separated, or just happened to be out there by himself.  I then saw the group of 5 does again and thought they might be just the stragglers.  I moved around some, saw the smaller buck again and then kept on walking the general direction I'd been headed the last several miles.  I pulled my shooting sticks out of my backpack and was ready for some action.  Just a little farther and I saw a large group of does.  I didn't see the bucks with them, but this had to be the same group I had been chasing.  Not sure if they saw me, but they were headed out to the south about 200 yards in front of me.  The group got spread out and I saw the bucks coming down a hill a little farther away.  This was the same group with the 2 large bucks in it. 

I got sat down and put my rifle on my shooting sticks and got ready.  They were all bunched up and there wasn't a chance for a shot and they were still moving.  Last year I had carried my cow elk call with me and I had made some cow calls and gotten the deer to stop for me, but I had forgotten it this morning.  I don't remember what I said, but I just screamed out a "hey", or something like that and the entire herd slowed to a stop and started looking at me.  I have my rifle zeroed at 275 yards and I felt like they were pushing 300 yards away and still bunched up but I got a quick opening at the buck that I decided I wanted held right on him and pulled the trigger.  Whack!  It was a hit.  The deer started running again, but the buck was struggling and getting left behind.  He didn't go down so I chambered another round and aimed and fired again.  The 2nd shot was a clean miss behind him.  I hadn't compensated for the strong wind and missed him completely.  I chambered another round and prepared to shoot again and he spun around and went down before I pulled the trigger.  The other deer were still making their way over the next hill but he was down for the count.

I got my gear together and started over to where I saw him go down.  I probably should have waited a while, but I had my rifle ready just in case he tried to get up.  I got over to where he was and after looking for a minute or so I found him in some brush.  He was still breathing, but I really didn't have a clean shot in the brush so I debated on what to do.  He didn't seem to be suffering, but I didn't know where I had hit him so I decided I needed to put him down for good with a heart shot.  I was less than 10 yards from him and had been watching him for a couple minutes and even saw him blink a few times, but as I moved around to get in front of him he saw me and jumped to his feet, turned around and started running directly away from me all in one quick movement.  I pulled my rifle up to shoot him, but I had left my scope on maximum power and couldn't get him located quickly.  He was obviously shot very far back as his left hind leg was broken.  I hadn't compensated for the wind on the first shot either and it had pushed the bullet much farther back than where I was aiming.

He wasn't moving very fast and I didn't want to shoot him from behind again so I let him go.  I looked where he had been laying down and was surprised to see very little blood.  He ran about 100 yards up to a fenceline and laid back down.  I snuck over to him again and this time was ready.  I had my scope backed off to it's lowest setting and I got up on my knees about 25 yards away from him and when he stood up I shot him just behind the shoulder and he went down hard.  I watched him and he was really struggling to breath.  He was having a hard time holding his head up, but he just didn't want to die.  I went ahead and chambered another round and shot him again, this time a little closer to the shoulder and a heart shot instead of a lung shot.  He died right away on that shot.

That was the first time in a long time that the animal didn't die right away before I got close to them and it was pretty tough watching him from that close as he struggled to live.  I'm not sure what I should have done differently, probably the big thing would have been to put my scope on the lowest power as I walked closer right at the start.  Also I should have compensated for the wind better, it was a fairly long shot and the wind was blowing pretty hard, I didn't even think of it as I pulled the trigger and that resulted in a poorly placed shot right from the start.

Anyway, he was down and recovered and I was happy with the end result.  As I started looking him over I realized that his left antler was a very close match to the shed that I had found earlier in the day.  I put it up next to his antler and the resemblance was very strong.  I would put about 95% odds that it was his shed antler from the year before.  The first decent shed in 3 years that I found in the sandhills and it turns out to more than likely to be a match for the deer I end up shooting.  Pretty cool.

Here's a few of the best pictures.  It's always tough taking timed pictures off your backpack, but the wind had actually picked up and was now gusting over 40 mph.  It actually blew the camera off the backpack several times before it was all said and done.  I think the pictures still turned out decent though.

Here's a couple more pictures.

I scored him out and he looks a lot better than he actually scores.  He lost a couple inches because his inside spread was more than his main beam, and loses 6 or 7 inches because he is missing his G3. Oh well, he looked good so I shot him. He was running with a buck that was shorter and narrower, but he had all his tines and would have probably scored better but I'm a sucker for the big tall frames. His G2's were both over 15".

The wind was miserable getting him cut up and ready to pack out.  I hadn't done a good job sharpening my knifes after the elk hunt so that wasn't helping things either.  The sand started blowing and it ended up close to a full blown sand storm before it was all said and done.  Sand was blowing in my eyes, small sand dunes started building up around where I had set my pack, and worst of all it was blowing onto the meat while I was getting the deer quartered up.  There was sand everywhere and sand burrs too.  Ended up taking me a full hour to get him quartered up and I didn't end up saving the cape because I was just ready to get it done and get out of there. 

According to the GPS it was 4 miles back to the truck but only 2 miles to a county road farther east so I talked my friend who was letting me park my trailer at their farm into driving over to pick me up.  The only drawback was that what would have been a 6 mile walk was about a 20 mile drive so it didn't save a lot of time but it was going to save me 4 miles carrying out the deer.  I loaded 1/2 the meat in my pack along with everything I already had in there and headed out to the road.  My friend met me and we went back to get ice and the coolers out of my truck and walk back to get the last load.

Here's a picture of me carrying out the last load.  It was half the meat plus the head.  I really like my Eberlestock pack, it has now hauled out parts of 4 elk and 2 full deer in the last 2 years and done a great job.

When it was all said and done I ended up with 13 miles on the boots for the day according to the GPS.  Kind of surprising was that it said I had 1,800' of elevation gain for the day as well.  The graph looked like a heart monitor with constant the up down, up down, up down, of the sandhills.  It seemed like a pretty easy day compared with most of the days that we were elk hunting though.

I think that about covers it.  Not sure when or if I'll be able to spend much time hunting whitetails down on my property in Fisher county, but I'm hoping to get a couple days in at least.  Season goes through the first week of January so maybe I'll get a few chances at it.

That's it for now.  Nathan