Working, Traveling, Training, Exploring, and ADJUSTING to life in Baltimore Maryland

What I've been up!?  

The short version - Working, Traveling, Training, Exploring, and ADJUSTING to life in Baltimore Maryland. I'll explain in more detail in just a bit.. Firstly I want to begin this LONG OVERDUE update with some pictures:

TRAVELING FOR WORK PICS

Toronto - CN Tower, hard to miss when walking around the City at night.

Toronto - Railway and Downtown apartments buildings.  Architecture and green design are at the forefront in Toronto.

Passing through Niagara Falls on my way to Canada in the dead of winter. 

The ice covered falls in its glory.  Almost too cold here to enjoy it.

I'll be travelling to Portland for a week of conference and meeting the first of August.  I'll be spending some additional vacation time out there in Oregon to enjoy. Expecting to take some amazing photos on that trip!

NEW YORK 4TH OF JULY WEEKEND VACATION PICS

Celebrating 4th of July in NYC.  Fireworks were moved so we didn't get the view we thought we would get but it was still pretty good.

View from Roosevelt Island FDR memorial NYC

View of Long Island City from Roosevelt Island. 

Spent the day hanging out in Williamsburg Brooklyn and biking around the City. Getting a drink at a rooftop bar here.

View of the Manhattan from Long Island City. Surely a City that never sleeps.

No surprise here my place to be is here on the Beach. We biked out to Fort Tilden from Astoria. 

Evening view of the NYC on the 4th of July.

14 mile hike up at Minnewaska State Park.

At the top of the hike taking it in.

Cant do a hike without a little waterfall action.  After a long day of hiking this was just what was needed.

So I am now back on the East Coast.. for better of for worse

Besides the traveling and vacation I don't have the amazing photos like I used to have when I lived out west unfortunately. The Westcoast has so much more to offer to me and I miss it ;(  But living in Baltimore is going well.  It is by no means Portland Oregon, which I miss daily ;( but Baltimore is a very livable City and Maryland provides me what I need.  Baltimore has potential to be a pretty great City due to its location to the water, row houses (sustainable), shops/bars and tourist attractions.  People always say Baltimore has "potential". But between the lack of parks, trees, bike routes, running paths, coffee shops, the poor planning by the City level, a general dis-concern for trash on the streets and the abandoned buildings and what most people know Baltimore for - The drugs, crime and violence - it has a very long way to go!

I currently live in a nice big old row house in a quiet neighborhood about a half mile from the Inner Harbor and super close to just about everything. I can walk or bike anywhere.  Most of my time, however, is not spent at home. Time is spent either at work or in the parks, pools, and open roads running, swimming, and biking.  Luckily, the location I work is located just outside the City near the Patapsco River State Park-Running trails galore.  The area also has other running tracks and low traffic cycling roads in the area.  Just about every day I will train during my lunch break and train again after work all in this area-outside of the City.  Staying in the area after work also allows me to miss the bulk of rush hour traffic too!  Typically, once I do finally get home after 15-30 minutes of light traffic I run or bike another couple miles to the City gym, which houses an awesome outdoor salt water swimming pool for me to get all my training in. And then I run another 2 miles back home. :)  On the weekends I travel out to various areas in Maryland to bike and run.  My favorite place to go is coincidentally called the Oregon Ridge Outdoor Center.  The center provides a nice place to park before I go out on my 4-6 hour rides and allows me to get in quality brick runs.  It's about 20 miles north from where I live and the area allows me to get in as much cycling and running as I want on hilly (very hilly) country/low traffic roads.  One surprising fact for those that have never been into Maryland - It is HILLY.  Obviously not mountainous like cycling in parts Oregon, but it has the never-ending short choppy hills, which is great for training. Training on hills have easily made me a better runner and cyclist. Only problem is that running on hills the majority of the time has really put the pounding on my body and this requires that I rest more often in addition to doing more strength training. I try to test out new areas to run and bike every other weekend or so.  Sometimes I'll travel out to the hills of Frederick Maryland, Central Pennsylvania or to the Eastern Shore for a reprieve from the hills.

First FULL IRONMAN 10 weeks away

Few things make me happier than being outdoors.  Triathlon training gives me a perfect excuse to be outside all the time.  Now that I have time in my life to train and deeper pockets I've decided to race the inaugural IRONMAN MARYLAND (formerly called ChesapeakeMan).  It will be my first attempt racing a full Ironman distance.  It is is late September, which gives me plenty of time to prepare.  I will more than likely be racing other triathlons before that date, but besides a SPARTAN race in August nothing is on the schedule yet.  The Ironman will be in Cambridge, MD (similar to the Eagleman 70.3 Ironman I've done a couple times).  I've trained on the course a couple times now and it is as flat as flat can get, similar to that of good ole Virginia Beach.  Its pretty wild to think that besides the Wildflower Triathlon I did a year ago with the Oregon Tri Team, I haven't raced a triathlon since 70.3 World Championships in Las Vegas September 2012! I never stopped biking, running and swimming!

Training is going pretty great and I am finally getting back into race condition.  Ironman training obviously requires a lot more swimming, biking, and running time and mileage than 70.3 training.  Generally on the weekdays I focus on one bike or run speed session/day and one bike or run active recovery session/day plus a strength/stretching session plus a solid 75-90 minute swim session four times/week. Weekends I focus on endurance... logging 6-9 hours of cycling over the weekend plus 1-2 hours of running transitions off the bike each day.  Right now intensity is fairly low for the run transitions after long bike sets.  I'll speak in more detail about my training in a blog to come, that will hopefully answer some questions people had for me and reveal some secretes to staying injury free. Speaking of injury,  I do have a nagging issue with my hip flexor currently, caused by all the pounding hill running, I assume.  I find as long as I keep them loose and stretched in addition to continually strengthening I can avoid debilitating injury.  I've also been taking a day off from training when they get bad or I just feel very tired. One thing I have started doing is resting more.. I'll take about 1 day off a week plus 3-4 days straight off per month.  The Ironman distance endurance is pretty much there, I want to focus on speed and swim improvement the next couple months.

Senior Stormwater Design Engineer

I've now been in my new position for about four months.  Everything is going great, really great, I couldn't really expect it to be much better.  I am luckily to work for an awesome and supportive green tech company and I'm enjoying my leadership role. I love that I have a career soley dedicated to protecting water quality. Most of my business is in the Canadian provinces as the government has committed to investing in protecting streams, rivers, lakes, and oceans from the pollution runoff from development. Without boring everyone too much with talk of water quality engineering I'll just show some pics and move on.  I still kick myself sometimes for not being able to find a position like this in Oregon, but all is not lost.. the main office is in Portland :).

Stormwater filtration device "Jellyfish FIlter". This particular filter is about 1/4 the size of the typical filter length as these were for a shallow catch basin installation. Look how much pollution they capture!

These filtration units can get massive and expensive. I visited one of our manufacturing plants in Quebec and took a picture our 10' diameter unit, not even our biggest one, and it hold roughly 16 filter cartridges.  The filtration cartridges remove over 80% total suspended solids, down to 1 micron particle!

 Travelling for work as been a new experience.  I've since been to Montreal and Toronto a number of times now.  We do a lot of business in the Calgary Alberta and Vancouver BC areas as well!  Favorite place to travel so far has been Montreal.  Beautiful area with a European vibe, great food, outdoorsy people and beautiful women!  I'll be out to Portland for team meetings and the STORMCON conference the first week of August. Super excited is an understatement.

Training and Life in Baltimore post coming up next...