Patagonia Fall Inventory Sale; A Little Bit of Panic

Before we get to today’s post, a quick announcement to help you grab some cool-weather apparel: from now through January 30, Patagonia is discounting its fall inventory to 30% off. They currently have plenty of options available – I picked up a nifty flannel shirt – and the timing is perfect to get some cozy goodies while it’s still chilly enough to put them to good use. So get going to the sale, then come back for my own little story that's been giving me chills.

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“How can you say you don’t want to know –
Don’t want to know the truth?”
- Sublime with Rome, “Panic” (video after post)


I don’t do this very often … but I’m actually going to make this post a lot shorter than I originally intended. (Usually, of course, it goes the other way.) Make no mistake, the subject is something of significance to me – but I’m just not sure I’m completely ready to talk about all the ramifications yet.

Have you ever been so excited about something that you’re hesitant to actually tell anybody about it, because doing so will trigger a whole lot of questions and discussions which make the whole thing that much more tangible, and you’re not quite sure you’re able to deal with those issues yet? If you’re a parent, think of that wonderfully head-spinning period in between the moment you found out you were expecting and the time when you finally announced the news to family and friends. It’s the time when you know the truth, but on some levels you don’t quite want to.

So I guess the best way to do this is to get straight to the point: a couple of weeks ago, I entered the Leadville Trail 100.

An old-school logo (courtesy of Wikipedia), but one of my favorites

And if you listen closely, that faint sound you hear through your computer screen would be me hyperventilating

The Race Across The Sky. The highest hundred in America.   The 100-miler that’s second in age and prestige only to Western States – and many would argue that the prestige ranking should be reversed. In other words, it’s kind of a big deal.

Hope Pass above 12,000'; photo from race website

And, um … I think that’s all I’m able to say right now. Obviously there will be a lot of discussion about Leadville around these parts – and seeing as how I’ve already made the comparison to childbirth, the analogies are likely to get even crazier from there - but honestly, my head is still kind of spinning at the prospect of what I’ll be attempting this August. I know the truth, but I’m not sure I quite want to address all of the considerations yet.

Those discussions will play out in the weeks and months to come; in the meantime, it’s time for me to do a whole lot of training. And probably a little bit of panicking as well.


Sublime with Rome, “Panic” (click to play):





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Granola Bar Bonanza! CLIF CRUNCH Bar, NOW Bar Review and Giveaway

In observance of the already-past and definitely overlooked occasion of National Granola Bar Day, today’s post is a celebration of granola bars. It also happens to be a celebration of two great companies who have each stepped up with cool giveaway offers for a few of my readers.

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The first company is no stranger to this website: I’m talking about CLIF Bar, whose products are longtime family favorites and whose business principles I admire tremendously. I’ve been fortunate to enjoy a partnership with them for a few years now, and every time I think they’ve run out of ways to impress me, they step up and toss another dose of healthy mojo my way.

This time, in honor of National Granola Bar Day, they’re providing four boxes of CLIF CRUNCH, the company’s crunchy granola bars that contain a full serving of organic whole grains in each bar. Their ingredient composition is 70% organic, and each bar contains 3 or 4 grams of protein depending on the flavor.

Last fall CLIF introduced two new flavors, blueberry crisp and chocolate peanut butter, making a total of six different varieties. My favorite is white chocolate macadamia, but one reader will get to sample four CRUNCH flavors and decide for him- or herself, because that’s the prize: four 10-bar boxes (there are 2 thin bars per pack) of CLIF CRUNCH, all for the cost of one lucky comment. I’ll pick the winner at random and announce the result this weekend.

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Today’s second company is a newcomer to my blog, and a relative newcomer to the sports nutrition game – and they’re the brainchild of a somewhat unexpected founder.

If you watch The Amazing Race, you’re familiar with host Phil Keoghan, who is a globetrotter and adventure athlete in his own right. In addition to The Amazing Race, Keoghan hosts a show in his home country of New Zealand called No Opportunity Wasted, which gives contestants 72 hours and $3000 to fulfill a long-held dream. (Apparently one of Keoghan's own dreams is to take Oprah skydiving, but that's neither here nor there.)

NOW Bars borrow the acronym from Keoghan’s show, and they reflect his desire to have a great-tasting energy bar to sustain him for long days of filming, travel, or endurance exploits such as his bike ride across America in 2009. They come in two flavors, and feature a secret ingredient of sorts: manuka honey, a naturally occurring product of New Zealand honeybees that provides unique flavor and potent nutritional benefits, and is even thought to have some medicinal properties.

Manuka honey has increased anti-inflammatory properties and higher antibacterial potency compared to regular honey, and has even been shown to accelerate wound healing. It’s as effective as glucose for replacement of carbohydrates during endurance exercise, and can also accelerate post-workout recovery. From a taste and texture standpoint, it makes NOW bars sweet, moist and chewy, and makes them more resistant to temperature extremes (i.e., they don’t freeze or melt very easily).

NOW Bars come in two flavors: Peanut with Caramel, and Honeycomb with Chia and Raisins. I’m not a huge caramel fan, but I really love the honeycomb flavor, both because of its taste, and because it includes chia seeds, which are a nutritional powerhouse all their own. The bars are pretty good-sized – each one is 2.5-oz, compared to the 1.5-oz CLIF CRUNCH – with 11oz of protein to help keep your hunger at bay for a while. Both flavors have all-natural ingredients and are completely gluten-free.

NOW Bars are available for purchase from Amazon.com as well as other online vendors, but in conjunction with today’s review (and National Granola Bar Day!), the company will provide 2 winners with a 12-count box of each flavor. We’ll go with the same rules for this one as for the CLIF giveaway.

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So in case you’re losing track, allow me to recap: I’ll randomly select a total of three winners from the comment box below. One winner will receive four 10-bar boxes of CLIF CRUNCH, and the other two will receive a box of each flavor of NOW Bars. Winners will be announced this Saturday night. Thanks very much to CLIF and NOW for sponsoring this contest, and good luck to everybody!



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National Granola Bar Day; Help Will Harlan Support the Tarahumara; Random Shots of Beauty

It’s one of those wonderfully lazy days around Running and Rambling headquarters, so I’ll keep the posting brief in order to get back to doing nothing – because those opportunities seem fewer and farther inbetween all the time. So here we go …

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First, the winner of Ashish Mukharji’s barefoot running book: Jen Small, e-mail me your address – you’ve won! Thanks very much to all the ladies who entered, and remember that the book is currently available - to both men and women! – for $14 at Amazon.com.

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Were you aware that today is National Granola Bar Day? It’s true. Honestly, I wasn’t aware of it until just recently, but I’m hosting a belated celebration next week with not one, but two granola-bar related contests. And yes, the page I just linked to will be involved.

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In case you’re wondering why I’m in such a lazy mood, allow me to present this weekend’s Random Shot of Beauty:

The view across Carmel Valley from my deck after a morning rainfall, a harbinger of the first winter storms of the season in our area, bringing some long overdue precipitation to Monterey County. Sure, running in the rain is fun, but sleeping in and spending the day watching storms outside your window while doing puzzles, reading books, and taking catnaps is equally enticing. In fact, it’s probably the thing I like the best (from an admittedly short list) about winter.

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Finally, there’s this: Probably the coolest item I came across this week was a video from Chris McDougall’s website featuring Will Harlan and his experience with the Tarahumara, the indigenous people of Mexico’s Copper Canyons made famous by McDougall’s landmark Born to Run.

Upon watching the piece, I had had two immediate thoughts; 1) Will looks kind of odd when he runs, but 2) He is doing something absolutely inspiring.

Will clearly has a strong connection to the Tarahumara, and he has made it something of a mission to help support their way of life. In addition to being an immensely talented runner, he and his wife are certified organic farmers, and operate a nonprofit farm that provides fresh organic produce to low-income families in need. The farm also assists migrant workers in their home state of North Carolina as well as more remote areas like the Copper Canyons.

Barefoot Farm (great name, right?) is Will’s 501c3 which directly assists Tarahumara farmers by providing them with native maize seeds, basic tools, and assistance with water resources and land protection. He has spent many years with the Tarahumara, building relationships, learning their methods of farming, and assisting them with the necessities to continue their traditional subsistence.

Will is currently in Mexico dealing with what’s reportedly a significant drought situation, which is what triggered McDougall’s blog post. So watch the following video for your own dose of inspiration, then check out this link to assist Will in his remarkable humanitarian efforts.

"Copper Canyons Ultramarathon" from Being The Diablo (click to play):





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The Splitting Tree

With all the recent giveaways around here lately, it’s beginning to seem a little bit like Christmas in January. (And on that note, you ladies have one more day to enter my Run Barefoot, Run Healthy book contest.) The contest train keeps rolling next week – but in the meantime, I’ve been delinquent in writing about any actual running to go with all my rambling. The good news is that I finally have some semblance of a race calendar sketched out. It’s not super dense, but what it lacks in quantity, it makes up in quality. The bad news is that I’m going to hold off just a bit longer before going into the details.

In the meantime, I want to tell you about a tree. It’s a tree that I run past fairly often in one of my favorite parks, whose appearance is very distinctive for reasons that will become obvious shortly. Whenever I run past the tree, I feel like there’s a story waiting to be told … but I’m not sure what exactly that story might be. Perhaps it might be symbolic of something, or portray some larger meaning that’s applicable to our own lives; perhaps instead of a story, it could more rightly be called a parable.

Since I never know for certain, I tend to make up the parable in my head after I pass by the tree – and the version that follows is a decent representation of what I usually come up with. Let’s call it the Tale of the Splitting Tree.

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In the middle of a sunny valley there stood an oak tree. It was tall, strong, and majestic, and captured the attention of all who wandered past. The tree was so beautiful that it was a source of great pride among everything in nature that contributed to its development.

Two elements of nature, the earth and the sky, each wanted to claim the tree as its own, and often argued as to why they should be the rightful recipient of praise for the majestic oak.

“I protected this tree before it was even born,” said Earth. “I nurtured it in fertile ground, provided rich soil for its growth, and left plenty of space for its roots to anchor themselves. If not for me, this tree wouldn’t be nearly as tall, strong, or majestic as it is today.”

“I sustain this tree every day of its life,” replied Sky. “I give it fresh air to breathe, water to quench its thirst, and sunlight to remain healthy. If not for me, this tree wouldn’t be nearly as tall, strong, or majestic as it is today.”

Earth and Sky happened to be siblings, so one day when their argument turned nasty, they called upon their Mother Nature to determine who was more responsible for the tree’s beauty.

“True beauty isn’t to be possessed,” Mother Nature responded, “It is to be shared. You have each contributed to the majesty of the tree, so you should share your joy and pride with each other, along with all the other elements in nature.”

The siblings were dissatisfied with their mother’s answer, and insisted that she declare one of them more deserving of praise. “Your request is impossible,” said Mother Nature. “You have each played equal roles in the tree’s development, and with this knowledge you should be content.”

But Earth and Sky were far from content, and refused to accept the notion of sharing the tree equally. They continued to bicker and argue, and finally wore down their mother’s patience. Saddened that her children failed to see the error of their ways, Mother Nature lashed out in anger to demonstrate the folly of their greed and possessiveness:

Earth and Sky were shocked and saddened, but finally understood. From that point on, they recognized that beauty can't be possessed, and agreed to share their joy and pride for all of nature’s creations.

As for the tree, it remained beautiful - in some ways, even more so than before.



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Run Barefoot, Run Healthy: Book Review and Giveaway

One indicator that the barefoot revolution has attained some significant critical mass over the past few years is that minor factions are beginning to develop. Like any grassroots movement, as this one grows and expands, there are bound to be some differences of opinion on the nuances and complexities of a full-fledged paradigm shift. (And if you don’t believe me, look at the Occupy movement, whose most outspoken proponents can’t seem to agree on much of anything.)

Today’s review and giveaway touches on a few of those issues; more specifically, I’ll point out some examples of areas where I have a difference of opinion with author Ashish Murharji. That’s not to say his book isn't worth reading – only that you should read it for yourself and come to your own conclusions.

The book in question is Run Barefoot Run Healthy: Less Pain More Gain For Runners Over 30, and it’s essentially a question-and-answer compilation on a variety of topics related to barefoot running. Murharji – who also goes by the moniker “Unshod Ashish” – is a longtime runner who dealt with chronic injuries over a twenty-year period before finally kicking off his shoes in frustration and realizing that virtually all of the problems he had ultimately disappeared. His experience is representative of a great many runners who have found that the first step toward wellness was to ditch their traditional footwear.

Ashish now runs up to 70 barefoot miles per week, and runs marathons on a regular basis without any of the injuries that used to hamper him. His book discusses the biomechanics that explain such a transformation, and it also draws heavily upon anecdotal reports from several other barefoot runners who have found success without shoes. The book references dozens of research papers, but also makes some assertions that are based as much on anecdotes as they are on scientific analysis. For example, he points out that elite runner Haile Gebrselassie grew up running barefoot, and implies that he only wears shoes today because he’s paid endorsement money to do so, and that his shoes were the cause of injuries Geb faced later in his career.

Another point of contention I have is Ashish’s position on minimalist footwear. In response to a question about Vibrams, he notes that his cousin and next door neighbor both suffered stress fractures in them, then cites an article which points out that shoes interfere with sensory feedback of the feet. He remains fairly absolute in his assertion that barefoot is always the best option for running, which for my own purposes I’ve found completely untrue. I’ll happily trade a little bit of sensory feedback for protection from the discomfort of gravel, burrs, dried oak leaves, thorny grass, lava rock, or countless other potential hazards I find on the trail, especially since the biomechanic advantages of minimal footwear are the same as going barefoot.

One more issue is that Ashish tends to play up the inevitability and severity of running-related injuries in shod runners while minimizing the very real and often extensive problems that new barefoot runners can encounter. At one point he even states that blistered toes don’t happen to barefoot runners, but later clarifies that to say blisters can happen if you’re practicing bad form. From my own experiences, both anecdotally and as a physical therapist, I’d reply that novice barefoot runners are equally likely to get injured as novice shod runners, and that people can enjoy many long and fruitful years of running in either traditional or minimalist footwear.

As you might have guessed, my overall impression of Ashish’s book is that it tends to be a little overzealous in its defense of purely barefoot running above all else, but that’s the nice thing about where the barefoot movement is today: we don’t all have to agree on everything to learn and benefit from each other’s point of view. There’s a lot of good instructive material in Run Barefoot, Run Healthy, and it would be especially helpful if you happen to be bothered by chronic injuries from regular shoes and are just starting to consider going barefoot.

Run Barefoot, Run Healthy is available for purchase from Amazon.com, but Ashish has agreed to provide one signed copy to a reader selected randomly from the comments below.  However, I’m adding one new wrinkle to the ground rules on this contest for a couple of reasons …

1) There’s a perception in the barefoot community that females are significantly underrepresented in comparison to men (I’m not sure whether this is actually true, but the notion is out there), and …

2) I had two contests last week that featured prizes only for men.

You can see where this is headed then: I’m making this giveaway contest open only to the ladies. Obviously, the more women we get onboard this movement, the better it will be for all of us. So if you have double X-chromosomes, leave a comment below to enter, and I’ll announce the winner this Saturday, January 21.

Thanks very much to Ashish Mukharji for providing this book for review, and good luck to everybody!



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Merrell Barefoot Road Glove Winner; RUEZ Underwear Winner; Random Shots of Beauty (and Mojo)

Before getting down to business this weekend, let me say this: my readers are awesome.

Not only did you provide an overwhelmingly favorable response to Merrell’s Road Glove review and giveaway contest, but when I enlisted your help to come up with an outlandish number of male euphemisms to help me prove a ridiculous point, you managed to surpass the number I threw out there (100) and completely crack me up in the process. The RUEZ contest had so much crazy momentum that the owner of the company actually logged in a couple of times to join the festivities.  Now that's a contest.

So hey, that was fun - we should do it again sometime. Maybe one of these days we can come up with a list of nicknames for women’s breasts. Until then, let’s get to the items at hand.

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First we’ll announce the winner the aforementioned RUEZ contest. 51 Feet Under, e-mail me your contact info – you’ve won a pair of boxers and briefs from RUEZ. In case you’re curious, the winning comment (randomly selected, of course) from 51 Feet Under was “tallywacker”. Have I mentioned how amusing that contest was?

Now for the grand prize for the week: a pair of Merrell Barefoot Road Gloves. Jeff Gallup – you’re the winner! E-mail me your contact info so I can pass it on to the Merrell rep. For everyone else, you’ve got another chance to win a pair of Road Gloves here on the Maple Grove Barefoot Guy’s website – but you may have to write a poem or something, so, you know … good luck with that.  I'll also post an update and sale link on this website when the shoe is officially available to the public.

Obviously, I owe a huge thanks to the companies who sponsored these contests, and another big thanks to everyone who entered. This was one of those weeks that makes it fun to be a blogger. The festivities will continue next week with more giveaways, so stay tuned. Until then, a couple more items to keep you occupied on this long weekend …

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… starting, of course, with our customary Random Shot of Beauty. Like our previous installment, this one comes from the Big Sur coastline:

A view looking north from a region called Garrapata, as seen during a family geocaching outing this morning on another delightfully warm January day in Monterey County.

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Also, since I’m finally starting to get a handle on my running plans for the year (separate post coming soon), here’s a bonus item I stumbled across that got my adrenaline pumping for some outdoor adventures in the weeks and months to come: a trailer for the upcoming Sheffield Adventure Film Festival.

There’s obviously no chance that I’ll make it to Sheffield to see any of these films, and I don’t even do the vast majority of the activities depicted here, but just knowing there are people out there doing things like this helps me get my own mojo cranked up an extra notch or two – which will definitely come in handy as I get into training mode again.

“Sheffield Adventure Film Festival Trailer 2012” (click to play):





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RUEZ Performance Underwear Review and Giveaway (And a Fun Little Name Game)

A couple of administrative notes before today’s post …

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Thanks for the great response to the Merrell Road Glove review and giveaway. You’ve still got a couple of days to enter, so if you haven’t done so already, go over there and throw your name in the hat.

While you’re there, scroll through a few of the comments; when I mentioned that you could leave any fool comment you like, quite a few people took me literally – which is awesome. A few of the comments made me laugh - which is always a good thing – and the notion of creative commenting gives me an idea for today’s post, which also happens to be another contest.

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Today’s offering is another “males only” product, which makes two giveaways in a row where the women have been left out. Fear not, ladies – I’ll make it up to you. I have a review and giveaway for Merrell’s female-specific road shoe scheduled in the next month or so, and I’ll rig another contest next week so that only females are eligible. So there – are we still friends?

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As I mentioned above, today’s contest is for the boys: in the literal sense, since it’s a product designed just for men, but also in the figurative sense, because, well … it’s made to protect your boys.

RUEZ underwear ... on a model that's NOT me.  I've mentioned it's my off-season, right?

Yes, that’s a euphemism for male private parts, and if you’re wondering where I got the idea, look no further than the e-mail I received from a marketer representing RUEZ performance underwear. These are actual excerpts from her description of the product:

The company’s founder created RUEZ to address one very specific problem: package chafing.

He’s designed RUEZ with two layers on the front panel. The one closest to the skin (which is made from a wicking compression material) holds the family jewels in place.

A strategically positioned hole separates and protects your joystick.

The founder is a serious innovator with a HUGE … sense of humor.

You get the idea. And all this is without even mentioning the name of the company, which could apparently be pronounced “Are you easy?” (although according to the website it isn’t) while addressing all the benefits in store for your package.

So clearly, the company and its founder, Chris Varney, have a clever sense of humor. It was enough for me to give RUEZ a test drive and see how they compared to other performance underwear I’ve used.

RUEZ briefs feel something like a thin swimsuit instead of cottony underwear, using a neoprene-like 85% polyester fabric instead of the more cottony material of other wicking underwear. It also has 15% elastic for some slight compression that does indeed keep things in place, and both the interior and outer surfaces are silky smooth, which, um … feels nice.

The main feature of RUEZ is the performance pouch, an extra layer of wicking fabric in front of the briefs, which could potentially be used as a storage area if there’s something you wanted to stash there. While stuffing the front of my shorts might me look a little more impressive from a distance, the notion of actually carrying anything down there that I’d be touching with my fingers later was a bit more than I cared to try.

Actual size of your banana may vary

The interior layer also has a notch cut out of it, in case you want to separate your banana from your berries. This might be beneficial in the summer when the weather gets warm, but for me, the main benefit of the pouch is that there’s an additional layer of insulation and protection from cold winter air. In the summertime, I’ll just use the regular lining of my running shorts, but for cold-weather situations RUEZ definitely provides improved insulation compared to other brands I own.

RUEZ come in boxer or brief versions, both of which feature the performance pouch. They’re available for purchase on the RUEZ website – the briefs retail for $28, and the boxers are $30.

Another dude who's not me ... and I suspect he might have a stuffed pouch.

Of course, we’re doing a giveaway contest here, so one person will receive a pair of boxers and another pair of briefs for himself when this review is all said and done. However, in keeping with the creativity of the previous comment thread and the humor of the RUEZ company, I’m adding a twist to this giveaway – and before I explain it, I have to describe a conversation that took place between my wife, son, and me about a year or two ago.

We were having one of those “coming of age” talks and discussing some of the language he was starting to hear at school when the topic turned to slang terms for the male sex organ. I started rattling a dozen or so off the top of my head - some of which my wife hadn’t heard before – and when I continued on, we had the following exchange:

Wife: How many slang terms do you think there are for that?

Me: At least a hundred. Probably more.

Wife: You’ve got to be kidding.

I wasn’t kidding – and here’s your chance to prove my case. To enter the contest for two free pairs of RUEZ underwear, leave a comment below this post with a slang term for that piece of anatomy. Consider it a game of Name That Junk. Here’s the catch: you can’t use a term that’s already been used by a previous commenter – or for that matter, in this post.  If your term is already on the list, you're disqualified.  So “package” is out, as are boys, family jewels, joystick, banana, berries, junk … and come to think of it, let's take “performance pouch” off the list as well.  Obviously the earlier your enter, the easier the task is, but I can't imagine there's going to be a shortage of options out there.

Here’s your chance to crack me up, fellas. Ladies, feel free to play along as well – maybe you can win your man a nice little reward. The winner will be announced this Saturday night. Thanks very much to RUEZ for sponsoring this contest, and good luck to all the boys out there!

*Product provided by RUEZ.
**See other product reviews on sidebar at right. If you have a product you’d like reviewed, contact me at info@runningandrambling.com.



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