January | 2016 | MtnRunner

…so I guess I must be a giant sugar cube. I’ve never been one for New Years resolutions, rather opting to try to improve myself on a daily basis. While I usually try to eat somewhat healthy, I know I’ve got room for improvement in that field. Recently I was reading through ingredients on several packaged foods and kept noticing one theme pop up way too often….sugar. If you know me, you know I have a pretty bad sweet tooth; gummy bears, Reese’s PB cups, otter pops, ice cream…., but was somewhat surprised how many other things I could add to this list. Items like bread, many salad dressings, granola bars, frozen sweet potato fries, peanut butter (non-natural varieties), 75% dark chocolate, chai tea mix, many almond/soy milks (except unsweetened variety), pasta sauce, and on and on.

Though usually I succeed on consuming these only in moderation, lots of moderation can lead to excess. So I’ve decided to perform a little experiment on myself and take two weeks where I don’t consume anything with added sugar or sweeteners (cane sugar, corn syrup, agave…its all sugar). Before anyone out there launches into a diatribe about eating vegan, or gluten free, or raw, or paleo or whatever else diet you think is best…..that’s not the point of this exercise. It’s simply to become more aware of what I eat and put into my body, and to see how difficult it is (for me) to eliminate such things from my diet and how it makes me feel.

I’m not a dietitian and far from an expert, but simply an observant human being (and scientist) who loves to experiment. I know a lot of this can be remedied by simply cooking for myself more often, but as someone who spends 11hours/day associated with work and likes to recreate/socialize every once and a while, that doesn’t leave an over abundance of time for 3 complex meals a day. Yes yes, excuses excuses, but that’s the goal of this little exercise, to break old habits and negate the excuses for long term change. So let’s see how this goes. Note, I don’t plan on giving up sugar/sweets forever, what fun would that be 🙂

I’ll update on how this little test went in two weeks…..

I’ve been somewhat slacking of late in my writing, too much work, too much wandering, and just too much scatter brained-ness going on. While I try not to live in the past, its always good to take a moment to reflect, remember and relish all the wonderful things one has done. 2015 was an amazing year, some amazing highs, some tough spots, but overall full of friends, fun and adventure. First a quick synopsis of a few stats, because I’m geeky like that, then some photographic highlights from the year.

	Miles	Vertical Gain	Time on Feet (h)	Vertical/Mile
Running/Climbing/BC Skiing stats	2686.5mi	678,700ft gained (New PR)	749.73hours of time on feet	252.6 ft/mi gained

Since my last post about UTMB way back in September I’ve been to the Eastern Sierras for some fall running, scrambled a number of flatirons, spent a week in Zion canyoneering, snagged several days of back country skiing, had a feature article published in the inaugural ‘Boulder Running Journal’, and spent the holidays in California. Life has not been short on action and fun, and when 2015 is all said and done I’ll have spent 17 days traveling on airplanes, visited five different countries, seven different states and summited Green/Bear/Sanitas a cumulative 96 times. Here’s to a great 2015 and hopefully and even better 2016.