Blue Planet Journey

I've been running for the past decade, and one location for a number of my races is Antelope Island State Park, in the Great Salt Lake, Utah. The Park hosts the spring Buffalo Run (25K, 50K, 50 mile, 100 mile races), the fall Antelope Island Fall Classic 50K, and the fall Mountain View Trail Half Marathon (13.1 miles). Although an ultra is anything over marathon in length, Ultrasignup.org registers shorter distances. For the most part, they tend to be trail runs. That means you dodge around rocks and roots, and the trails are not straight. For a road marathon, there is probably an aid table every 2 miles, with a porta-potty as well. For the 50K, I think there were 4 aid stations in total, and no porta-potties.  In fact, on Antelope Island, trees are rare. A private potty break means finding a boulder, or a gully, or a small sagebrush. My ultra ranking, from Ultrasignup.org, currently is 73.61%, and my age rank is 94.35%. My fastest times were 1:44:03 (half marathon), 2:38;26 (25K)

Who hasn't heard of or been warned about "yo-yo dieting?"  Your weight goes up and down as does your dress or pant size, and your body is stressed because of it.  And remember those friends telling you about their fabulous, no-fail diet plan, like the South Beach Diet, the Zone Diet, the Atkins Diet, the Paleo Diet, and the Macrobiotic Diet?  Where are the champions of these diets today? I've never been on a weight loss diet (knock on wood).  I recognize that there are many, many people who have worked very hard to lose weight, sometimes resorting to medical or surgical options to get their weight down.  I applaud them for the focus on their health.  The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has this to say about the health consequences of obesity : People who are obese, compared to those with a normal or healthy weight, are at increased risk for many serious diseases and health conditions, including the following: •  All-causes of death (mortality

The global pandemic caused by the novel coronavirus has been with us for 2 years. We are learning to live with it, and the virus with its various mutations is still teaching. Everyone's life has been affected. We didn't have a vaccine for the first year, then the deadly Delta variant and the uber transmittable Omicron variant entered the scene. We've had the mask wars, the hydroxychloroquine and iver mectin (both antiparasite - not antiviral - medications) debacles, and vaccine fear-mongering. Today's tragic metrics: But life goes on for most of us. We adapt.  In this blog, I've chosen 1 photo from each month (well, not always), beginning in January 2020, to represent my journey through this pandemic. You'll get a sampling of what I've done, what I've learned, and what I believe, in these months. The purpose? The purpose is to demonstrate that, pandemic or not, life continues. We traveled, we volunteered, we visited with our children.