4 min read 0

2025 Is Shaping Up

We are ten days into 2025 and my schedule is starting to take shape.

1/17 Edit: I'm DNSing the Cap Peak race. I have a weird achilles pain that isn't subsiding quick enough. I'd rather not go into 2025 with a chronic tendon issue. I think, but I'm not positive, this is caused by the latest Lone Peak shoes that I bought 2 weeks ago. I've also had right groin muscle pain and my right knee isn't 100%. All of which I think are connected to the latest Lone Peaks that I bought. Altra has been cost cutting. They have switched to different materials in some parts of their shoes. I think the different foam/rubber they're using for the tread of the shoe is what's causing this. The latest Lone Peaks also tend to slip off the heel of my foot on steep ascents which made me tie my laces quite a bit tighter than I normally do on climbs. On social media I've noticed some of their long time sponsored athletes have left their crew. I think, but can't confirm, that their cost cutting might be why. Looks like I'll be finding new shoes. Hey Speedland, wanna help a brotha out?

Next week, Jan 18th, I have the always fun Cap Peak Mega Fatass 50k. This is a 50k that goes up to the top of Capitol Peak near Tacoma, Washington. Well, it's supposed to go to the top of Cap peak. A few years ago a gal busted her femur and had to be airlifted off the mountain. They've been rerouting the course if the weather is bad. I hope we get to go to the top this year. I really enjoy this course for whatever reason. I exclusively listen to the podcast Twilight Histories while I run this one. I can't exactly explain why but there's something about that course and podcast that go so well together.  I don't have much planned for February or March but in April I'll be down in Arizona for the inaugural Arizona Monster. I couldn't be more excited about this event. First year races are always a bit of a boondoggle as things get figured out. This course is wild and will present a few challenges. I trust the professional badasses I'll be working with. May 11th is the Tillamook Burn 50k which I plan on sweeping. Last year Haley and I showed up to sweep that race only to find out there were three other sweeps, so five in total. Her and I wound up just running the course for fun. May 31st I'll be sweeping the Cape Mountain 50k over on the Oregon Coast. I haven't swept this one before, I don't think? I'm excited. June 13th - 17th I'll hopefully be down at the Tahoe 200. I say hopefully because I'm not sure if I really have the time to do this one. We'll see. I really love this course. Really I enjoy Tahoe in general. It's a breathtaking area in terms of beauty. Every mile of this course is just stunning. Soon after Tahoe, June 25th to 29th, I'll be either running or volunteering at the inaugural Copper Kings 100 out in Butte, Montana. I miss Butte very much. I'm very very excited to get back there. I'll be at the Bird cafe for sure. I've never been to a town quite like Butte. I'm including the good and bad in this description. It has such an interesting history full of ridiculousness. The Covelite International Film fest takes place there in April. Tap 'er light. July 26th I'll be sweeping almost 50 miles overnight at the Hood Hundo. I believe this is going to be Haley's first hundred so that'll be fun. Good luck Haley! August 8th - 12th is the best race of all time, the Bigfoot 200. What's there to say besides this race changes lives. Whether you run it, volunteer or crew this race it changes who you are. In October I'll be using my 4-week sabbatical to head off to SE Asia for a backpacking trip. The main goal here is to hit at least 2 Jay Festivals. The Jay Festival, or Vegetarian Festival or Nine Emporer Gods Festival, is a celebration that takes place in several SE Asian countries. It's to honor some gods. It's also a VEGAN FOOD FESTIVAL which includes self mutilation and other fun activities. My friend Joules is going with me. This should be an extremely fun time. I'm so excited to eat all the foods I can find.
5 min read 0

Offline GPS

Whenever you're out and about in nature you should have a set of maps with you. Depending on the circumstances, offline GPS on your phone is usually your best bet. Getting maps offline isn't difficult, at least not the way I've figured out how to do it. If you're going to be out for more than a few days I'd recommend bringing paper maps with you. I will not be getting into how to use paper maps. You should take a class or watch a lot of youtube videos on how to do orienteering. I use an app called Backcountry Navigator. It's developed by a person in Camas, Washington, which I like. I don't really like apps like Onx because of a few reasons. The main one is that Onx has basically stolen a ton of information from public data sets and presented it as their own while charging subscription fees. That violates the open source/community value that a lot of GIS(mapping) operates on. Gaia is a great alternative. One thing to know and remember is that these apps are just front ends for data. You should never be forced to use a specific app or program to access GIS datasets. When I say dataset I mean maps, overlays/information, land ownership, etc. Traditionally, these are not tied to any one app or program. What you do instead is you find a front end app/program that you like to use and then you purchase access to your data/map sets. You can change your front end and keep your access to these data sets. This is important. If you're familiar with code repositories or anything like that this should make sense. TLDR: Your app just downloads data and determines how you interact with the data. The data is the same between apps. In this example I will be exporting the Run The Rock 50k GPX track from caltopo.com and then importing that information into BackCountry Navigator. Once I do that I'll be downloading the maps that I need for this race. The GPX is optional if you're just out and about exploring with no destination or set path. A GPX file is NOT required for this. If you don't need to see a route or track then you can skip a large amount of this. Let's go get our GPX. I do this by visiting Alpine Running's page for the race, then going over to the caltopo that the race directors Trevor/Janessa provide for the runners. https://caltopo.com/m/78QL3 is our course.   As you can see in the image below, we have a track(the red line) and markers(start/finish/aid stations). We can export all of this via GPX. We do that by clicking on the folder button the left which I've circled in green.     Once we click on that it opens up a new menu with options. The important thing about exporting is your type. The two most common are JSON format and GPX format. We'll use GPX for this.   Select the data you want to export. In this instance we want everything but some race directors go wild with their information so you may occasionally need to unselect a lot of stuff. It varies, you learn what you like. When you are ready click "Export" on the top of the Map Items window.     I have to confirm the download.     So now we go back to our front end app, which is BackCountry Navigator for me. I've already placed my map on Smith Rock. As you can see there are no tracks or markers. Let's change that.     In the map screen for BCN there is a hamburger menu in the top left. I click that which opens this menu. I select Trip Database.   Now we select Import because we're importing the GPX that we exported from Caltopo. I didn't include screenshots of selecting the .gpx file. This will vary depending on device and it's simple enough to figure out.       Now on the map screen we have our track and markers! This tells us what we need to download. On the top of this map screen is the Map Layers menu, represented by stacks of paper/maps.   Inside the Map Layers menu there is a "Select Areas for Download" option. That's what we want.     I select what I want to download and that's shown to me with the blue squares. There is one thing to remember when downloading from GIS sources: everything is downloaded by tiles. A tile is one square of the GIS grid. Everything is organized because of this grid. You can't download parts of tiles, generally. When downloading more is not always better. You'll see in the next step.     Now we can jump back to our map screen. As you can see the map looks a bit different. This is because I'm in offline mode and it isn't showing data it doesn't have. But do you also see how it downloaded more than the blue squares? This is because of tiles. This means my blue download markers included partial tiles. Since we can't download partial tiles we have extra data. This usually doesn't make a huge difference, but it can, so be aware of it. And that's basically it. Every front end app is a bit different, so play around with it. Use your app for a lil while before relying on it. Never go out into nature without testing.