Gone hikin'

2011-07-18 1700 hrs.

My brother is down for a couple of days, so we drove to Pinecrest Lake to hike around it.

Pinecrest Lake: Hiking. Dist. (2.92)mi. Pace-avg: (25:50)min./mi. Speed-avg: (2.3)mph. Speed-max: (4.8)mph. Burned: (373) Calories. Kinda' disappointing, Calorie-burn-wise.

The last time we hiked around the lake was 2008, or 2009, and I tell ya', it was a whole lot more strenuous then. Back then, I was sweating heavily, very heavily; I weighed about (235) lbs., or so, and was still a smoker. But obviously, I was too winded to actually do anything stupid like smoke while hiking. I was too busy trying to breathe!

Today's fun-fest was sunny, and a bit cool and windy. Starting out in the parking lot, hiking to the damn, over the damn, and up the hilly trail on the other side, was very taxing, despite all my walk/jog training on the fairly flat path in the park. I did not expect to be quite so winded, but I also don't think I was sweating quite so profusely as last time.

The view from the parking lot [northeast-ish].

Looking out across Pinecrest Lake.

Looking northwest towards the dam.

The spillway.

Across the dam, and then up those rocks...

Looking back across the lake. The dam is to the right.

This time,  I have several months of training, weigh in at (202.6) lbs. and have only had a cigarette once in the last two months, or so. On the downside, I only got about (2.5) hours of sleep last night. Yet, again I have slacked off and let my body-clock get out of sync with the rest of the job-hunting world. But I am getting back into the rhythm this week.

Tree relaxing in the water.

The bridge over the river feeding Pinecrest Lake.

Naturally, I took my camera with me, and even shot a couple of short videos with nature sights and sounds. I'll have to edit/tweak those a bit before I post them.

The private docks on the southeast side of the lake.

"Suck in that gut, boy!"

And back to the parking lot.

That's all for now. Although, I was surprised and disappointed to see so many breaks/gaps in the path around the lake when I docked my Garmin. The trees must really interfere with the GPS signal more than I expected, though it might also be due to the auto-pause feature. I need to turn that off and see if it makes a difference the next time I hike around the lake. Maybe I will have to do two (2) laps, rather than just one.

-Lancer!!