I guess what the title says – that’s kinda what I have been doing since Logan Peak…

Actually, a lot has been going on. Definitely in the good way. First off, I was correct in saying that Logan Peak didn’t slow down my training, if anything it helped. It was a great wake up call like I stated, but I was back on the trails 2 days after the race, picking up where I left off. The July 4th weekend gave me the opportunity to put in plenty of training, and plenty of climb. I enjoyed a nice “speed hike” on the 4th, exploring the web of trails in my backyard. Saturday and Sunday brought 3+ hour long runs. Over those 3 days I put in about 14.5k of elevation gain.

It’s a good deal I got going on -The Canyons ski resort being in my backyard and all. Reasons being that it is free to take the gondola down the mountain, which is open every weekend through September. There are some great trails and forest roads that lead up to the gondola, and each trip up there is about 1,800 feet elevation gain. Good training. With that being said, I have been working on my “uphill power hike form”. If I want to do well, or at least finish, this thing called Speedgoat 50K in 10 days (damn, 10 day already?), I gotta accept the fact that I will be walking a lot.

This past weekend I put in a 5 hour run on Saturday that included running from my apartment up to the Wasatch Crest trail, lollygagging around 10K feet for a few hours, and coming back down. Felt great. The scenery definitely distracted me from the tired legs. Sunday was followed by a hard two hour run, which included a 2,700 ft. climb on the north side of The Canyons, ended by a sprint on the Mid-Mountain trail towards the gondola.

A few hours ago I completed a good 90 minute run that included an 1,800 ft climb, followed by a decent on the Holly’s Downhill trail (the gondola is closed on Mondays and Tuesdays). For those of you who have run down Holly’s Downhill trail, you know its 30 minutes of pure bliss.

This weekend is the last weekend before the Speedgoat 50K – as a “taper” I’ll be enjoying a 4 day backpacking trip in the High Uinta Wilderness, camping and hiking between 10K and 12K feet elevation (maybe it will help with elevation sickness I had at Logan Peak?)

Yeah… I love vacations

I am also going to be visiting family in August, as we have a family reunion beach get-together every year. I am looking forward to that very much so!

Finally, I am very excited to say that I will be taking a week off in early September to help crew for Karl Meltzer during his Appalachian Trail speed attempt. If you haven’t noticed by now, I am not a big fan of talking about my job on my blog (even though its a kick ass job!). Not that I am that dumb to post stuff in a negative light about my job in which people from my company can see, I just prefer to completely leave it off my blog.

However I’d like to make an exception in this case as Backcountry.com (who is sponsoring Karl Meltzer to attack the AT from Maine to Georgia starting August 5th) is sponsoring some employees to assist, crew, and work behind the scenes. I happened to fall on that list after much waited anticipation! I am very, very excited to be a part of history, and part of a company that can give an amazing athlete like Karl an opportunity as such.

The world will be able to follow Karl’s progress online at WheresKarl.com, which will be updated daily with pictures, videos, news, gear reviews, thoughts, updates, and so much more. It’s going to be awesome – I am very excited! I am unfortunately missing the weekend when the Mid-Mountain Marathon and the Wasatch 100 are being run, but most definitely worth it!

That’s all I got – definitely a lot of great things to look forward to! And oh yeah, I started up guitar lessons again, watch out flatpickers of America – I’m gonna be dangerous!

If a picture is worth a thousand words, how many words is a video with 60 fps that is 10 seconds long worth? This video was taken the morning of June 11th from my apartment window. Give me a break!

It has been a while since I have updated. I apologize! What has it been… over 2 weeks? 3 weeks? Anyways…

Not a whole heck of a lot to report, despite keeping busy all the time. My focus right now and the last 3 weeks has been on my running and training. I feel like I have been putting in some good miles the last 3 weeks. I’ve been putting in a lot of days where I run in the morning and then again in the afternoon. I feel like it is more manageable for me. This past weekend I actually ran 4 times, which is something I have never done in a weekend. I ran 9 miles on the Wasatch 100 trail around 8K feet elevation on Saturday morning close to the Mountain Dell resevoir and a quick 6 around my apartment at night. Sunday morning I climbed up the Canyons as far as I could from my apartment before the snow covering the trails turned me around at 9100 feet elevation and tapped off the weekend with another 7 on some great trails in The Canyons.

The weekend before I ran a good 19 miler on the Wasatch 100 mile course, again close to the Mountain Dell Rec. Area. I started around noon (hey, I like to sleep in from time to time, so sue me!) and ended the run around 4:00pm. It was to be a simple out and back from a small Jeremy Ranch parking lot. Carrying about 55 ounces of water, off I went up the Moose Hollow trail on what was supposed to be a 15 mile run. 15 miles may sound a lot, but I have but up endurance to where a 15 mile run on the soft trails sprinkled around the Park City area is a very manageable run as long as I keep my eye on fuel and hydration. I had intended to finish the run in about 3 hours (which would include breaks to catch numerous glimpses of the Wasatch Range to the south from time to time), putting me at just above a 10 minute pace.

I headed up and away on Moose Hollow trail. The sun was beating down on the exposed single track, which made me regret not putting on any sunscreen. It got up to about 75 degrees, which isn’t too hot in comparison to Atlanta, but because it was the first “warm” day of the year, it made me a little weary. I got to the halfway point, Bald Mountain at about 7900 feet, around 1:40pm. Because my car was parked at 6200 feet, I expected the return trip to be much quicker. Boy I was wrong!

Everything was going quite well until about 3 miles from my car parked down in Jeremy Ranch. I had my 3rd moose encounter, and this one was a good one (well, good depending on how you look at it). Maybe I should say it was eventful. I was rockin’ the downhill as I love to do, probably turning in 7:30 to 8:00 minute miles at this point, and concentrating on my footing, trying not to trip over the rocks and roots that littler this particualr portion of the trail. I picked up my head to visualize my next few steps, and my eye caught a glimse of a few large brown blobs in the trail. My heart stopped, followed by my feet.

About 30 – 40 yards in front of me were several moose. Both keeping me within their sites, both still as a rock. Yikes!

I stood on the trail and kept them in my sight but tried not to make eye contact. After I realized I had sunglasses on, I realized that they probably thought I was looknig right at them. Whatever the case may be, clapping my hands together did not seem to bother the moose. In fact, they seemed interested. They took several steps towards me. Now, let me tell you, I have probably had at least 8-10 bear encounters in the last year or so, all of which came from running in the Appalachian foothills when I lived in Atlanta. The black bears I would run into were generally skiddish. I know how to react to a black bear and a grizzly bear if the situation may arise, but moose? I know they can attack, and I know they are bigger than me.

After the moose seemed interested in me, I calmly walked backwards until I was out of their view. Once about 75 yards away and out of their view, I turned around, and found a dirt road down towards the interstate. Once there it was another 4 miles around I-80 back to my car, adding on an additional hour and 4 miles to my run. I guess that’s why I always pack an extra GU

I know the moose, mooses, and meeses in Utah aren’t as large as moose elsewhere, but check out the video below. It’s the reason why I am a tad spooked of running into moose. I’d honestly rather run into bears… seriously.

I cashed my bonus check today – woohoo!

I took that money and spent a good majority of it on buying domain names. My list has been updated on the domain name page. If you want a better reason of why exactly I have been doing this, feel free to check out a cool page I found regarding domain name sales today – www.namebio.com

I hope that this is an investment that I will be thanking myself when I am 30 years old

Finally, this is another reason why running is a beautiful thing. I love it, it’s a great hobby from a health perspective, and its free! Anyways, back to eating Raman I suppose

This is in the ‘About Me’ section as well but I thought I would add it here:

My name Greg Goodson. I live in Atlanta, GA having graduated from Georgia Tech in December 2006 with a degree in Management – certificates in Marketing and Operations Management. Currently work at a company called 360i – a digital online agency with a strong emphasis in search engine marketing (PPC, SEO, etc.).

When I am not working, I keep up with many different hobbies. My first hobby is running; I have over 20 ultra-marathons (any footrace that is over 26.2 miles marathon distance – usually 50K, 50M, 100K, and 100M runs) under my belt, as well as 6 marathons (3:08 personal best), and numerous shorter races.

I consider myself an outdoorsy kinda guy – hiking, backpacking, trail-running, camping, etc. All of my vacation days in 2007 were used to visit locations in Virginia, NC, TN, and WV and run races or backpacking- as well as a 10 day trip out to Montana’s Glacier National Park in August/September.

If not outside doing something, which I usually am, I am inside, browsing the internet, either networking in some fashion, or trying find opportunities to work for myself. I did a good amount of PPC affiliate marketing in 2007 with some good success. Buying and selling domain names has become of popular interest to me recently, so many of my affiliate programs have been placed to the side for the time being. Hence where this blog came from (I bought GregGoodson.com and GregoryGoodson.com last weekend and figured I’d develop it).

While I have never blogged before, I plan on using this blog to not only share pictures, videos, and my latest adventures with family and friends, I also plan to use this tool for networking. I do plan on buying a Flip Video and begin “vlogging” (video blogs), but first I need to buy one!

Hmmm… bought GregGoodson.com and GregoryGoodson.com (which I will have redirected to this site evenutally).

Putting up a blog – I consider myself an idiot, but word-press is idiot friendly.

Not bad (how about you get your own bottle!)