When is a hill a hill?

That seems like an odd question to many but when running the question comes up. There are real definitions to what defines a hill in a race based on length and incline. When I train I always determine what a hill is by how hard it is to get up it :-) or how many times I can go up and down it.

Well when I am home I have a couple of routes with "hills". I know these are not big hills but one never really knows for sure until one runs big hills. My normal hills I run at home look like the picture below:

Now you can ignore the little spikes - I was not doing hurdles - seems every now and then my Garmin throws in one of these. So if you look closely you see an 80 ft climb over a distance of a little less than .4 miles. It is an ok incline.

So this past weekend I spent 3 days running in San Francisco where the hill profile is a little bit different.

The spikes are again the Garmin but as you can see here - two little hills and the big ones. And I do mean big - 250ft of climbing over 2/3 of a mile. The last less than a tenth of a mile climbs 75 of those feet.

Now I know what real hill training means. I cannot wait to go back to San Francisco :-)

A great few days in the city by the bay

The only thing that could have made my last four days in San Francisco better would have been to have had Laura join me. Do not get me wrong - I had a great few days and I know she enjoyed a quiet and relaxing house. I got to do an evening boat cruise on the bay and sail under the Golden Gate bridge, around Alcatraz and down by the other beautiful parts of the bay.


I also got to do some serious running on hills, especially since I was in a hotel on top of Nob Hill. I enjoyed great food - revisiting one of my favourite diners and a great Italian restaurant that I had been to a few years back (and I enjoyed this visit almost as much as last).


Of course it would have been even better to share it with someone special. Hopefully next time.

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Location:International Terminal Departures,San Francisco,United States

Happy Valentines Day

I just wanted to wish my wonderful wife a very public Happy Valentines Day.




I love you

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Kitchen and Christmas

Growing up I always liked to cook. People that know me well know I like to cook and I like to eat as well (a good thing I also like to run). Since I have known Laura we have always found kitchen things under our tree at Christmas. It may be a beautiful knife or it may be gift cards to Crate & Barrel or Williams-Sonoma which we then use to buy more wonderful things for our kitchen but it is always wonderful and always appreciated.

Our mortar & pestle

This year was no exception - and trust me when I say we are not complaining - as I mentioned I love to cook and I did not mention it but Laura loves it when I cook. So this year Leslie, Andrew and the kids sent us a beautiful bowl that looks wooden but is actually ceramic and is ideal for warming bread or, when it is cool, for storing fruit. They also send a beautiful olive wood salt keeper. Well we really like the salt keeper. I liked it so much I had bought one for Laura last year so we did the debate - two salt keepers? Two kinds of salt on the table? Something else that we could use? Well one day I was in Williams-Sonoma (aka Wood- a funny Sam story) and I saw something that I had thought about before but was not quite sure how much I would use it. This version however was GORGEOUS. When I got home I chatted with La about it and we decided it was something we had talked about before and it would literally be a direct exchange. So the next time we were at W-S we picked it up - a beautiful mortar and pestle. From the picture you can see some of the other things we have gotten from our gift cards - the acacia chopping board and the rug in the background and on the board is the beautiful Shun Ken Onion knife that Laura got for me.

So the big question was how useful this mortar and pestle would be - well so far I have made pastes with it and two different home-made dressing, one blueberry based and the other strawberry based. It is a wonderfully useful tool to have in the kitchen and in this case beautiful as well.

Now I want to cook :-)

Running Update

Today seemed to be a good day to do a running update ... an almost 50 degree morning run is not a bad way to start a day. Check out my running page on the right for the update :-)

Sad News this week

Robbie as one of "The Virginians"

Monday evening we received a call from Laura's Step-brother Mark. Laura's step-mom, Mark's mother, Robbie Williams had just passed away. She had suffered from Alzheimer's disease for almost 20 years and after Laura's Dad passed away two years ago Mark had been making sure she was well looked after.

The news was very hard on Laura as it also brought back a lot of memories of not just Robbie but also her father. She stayed on the phone with Mark a good long time Monday night and they spoke again for a long time again yesterday. Some of the memories made Laura smile and others made her cry. As they say you do not get to choose your family and the stories cover a long and sometimes challenging history.

But I also wanted to make sure to give a highlight of who Robbie was. She was born in Maine and like Laura's mother was involved in the music industry. Robbie was first married to Ervin "Wee Willie" Williams whom she met when they were in High School where they had formed a band called The Northern Lights. Willie and Robbie moved to Portsmouth, Virginia where they continued their performing careers with Dave Dalton as the Virginians and DJ'd for a local radio station. It was at this radio station where they first met Gene Vincent. While living in Virginia Robbie and Willie expanded their family with the birth of their daughter Robin. Some time in Richmond after Willie left Gene Vincent's Bluecaps was followed by time in Syracuse New York where Robbie's son Mark was born. Robbie and Willie divorced in the early 80s, after which she met Laura's Dad.

Robbie stayed active, involved with yoga and even teaching classes on cruises. Her challenges with Alzheimer's did make things difficult and as the years went by and it developed into the latter stages of the disease Mark made sure that she was well taken care of. Mark was also very helpful to Laura and her sisters when Laura's Dad had passed away two years ago making sure that things were taken care of properly and for this and his taking care of Robbie so well I know Laura will always be grateful. I also know that Robbie will always be in Laura's memories.

In Memory of Roberta "Robbie" Williams (nee Merrill)

A Diverse Weekend ....

This was one of those weekends that was .... interesting. It was not exceedingly busy but time seemed to fly. Work has been crazy for both Laura and myself so a weekend to rejuvenate was needed for both of us. This weekend we both caught up on reading, Laura even more than me finishing her 4th book on her kindle, and then some time for us and also with the girls.

So Saturday evening we went to an art class. It was a unique kind of class ... a combination of painting and wine called Art by the Glazz. It is a small local company started by a very interesting artist Lisa Jones. She now has classes in 3 or 4 locations and has just started up a version for kids. The idea is for a group of people to get together and paint, chat and share some wine. It was a lot of fun and it turns out that my beautiful wife is also an artist. Of the pictures her painting is on the right. When the girls saw them they all agreed that Laura is definitely the painter in the family ... well outside of Tika of course.


On Sunday myself and the girls headed out for a bit of Chinese New Year
lunch at Mui Kee in Fairfax. The food was really good and had lots of diversity including the standard American-Chinese fare but also things like ducks tongue, fish stomach soup and many other dishes that I could not convince the girls to eat. They did enjoy the meal even if service was a bit slow.

The Girls at Mui Kee

It was a fun weekend even with the coating of snow-ice-rain-sleet that we suffered starting in Friday and all through this morning.


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