Saturday Surf Session

Original Photo by Clayton Plummer

Saturday I finally used my GoPro Hero 3 Black Edition - Surf camera.  I attached it to my Kialoa paddle with the handlebar/seat post pole attachment.

I surfed at Anderson Street, as is my usual.  I really like this break because it is fairly close to home, has a mellow crowd (if any crowd), and the waves are typically small and fun.  Plus, it has showers at all the bath houses.  I love being able to rinse off all the saltwater and sand after surfing.

I surfed for a little under an hour and had a blast.  It felt like a much longer session for sure.  I caught quite a few waves.  I even had the fortune of being caught on the inside during a set.  Managing a paddle and a huge longboard is really tough.  I understand why surfers don't like SUP guys in the line-up.  If I have to let go of something, it is going to be the board, since it is tethered to me by my leash.  The paddle is not attached in any way, so I'm holding on to it for dear life.

I set up the GoPro to take a photo every five seconds while taking video.  This made for some cool shots and some really candid shots too.  The view from the paddle was really odd when I was paddling, but once I was actually surfing a wave it was a good view point.

All said, I love the GoPro.  I'm glad I followed the advice of previous owners and READ THE MANUAL!!  This is definitely NOT a point and shoot kind of camera.  However, once set up, it takes some really amazing video and photos.  Now, I have to learn how to use the iMovie software on my Mac.

Friday Night Lights

Original photo by The Marmot

OK, so I didn't really go out to any local high school football, especially since it is spring time.  However, I did go for another hike on Friday.  This is part of my training for Montana later on this summer.

My girlfriend and I took my dad down to The Fullerton Loop Trail.

The hiking is pretty mild going out to The Laguna Lake Park via The Juanita Cooke Greenbelt Trail.  It is a rails-to-trails system, so the elevation gain is almost zero.  The Bud Turner Trail is the trail that actually circumnavigates Laguna Lake itself. 

It was a beautiful day and we saw some fun wildlife.  The highlight for me was a Blue Heron hanging out in one of the pine trees around the lake.

Original Photo by Clayton Plummer

We did a total of about six miles round trip.  It was fun.

Surfing and Hiking

Original photo by mnapoleon

Thursday the 18th of April, I had the day off because my dad was supposed to be flying in from Tugun, Australia. Dad missed his flight, thinking that it was a PM flight instead of AM. Thankfully, $200 USD later, he was able to get on Friday's flight at the same time.

Since I had the day off and it was SO beautiful, I took the opportunity to go surfing on my Meyerhoffer Lemon Drop.  I had a good time.  I set the board up as a tri-fin thruster; I liked it.  It definitely worked for the day. The waves looked a lot like the ones in the picture. There was a heavy off-shore breeze and the sets came in with nice little A-frame peaks.  It had a lot more hold than the quad set-up I usually run.

Unfortunately, I didn't have my GoPro Hero 3 Black Surf Edition hooked up yet.

As I was surfing, the usual dolphin pod was at play in the waves. There was a picture on SUP The Magazine's facebook page that shows the very dolphins I'm talking about jumping out of a wave around a girl on a SUP.  I showed my girlfriend and made the comment that I see them ALL the time and have never had them THAT close before.

Well, ask and you shall receive: as I sat between sets, I saw the dolphins.  Sure enough, a pair of them swam right at me!  I was a little freaked out because they're pretty big up close and these are wild animals.  I pulled myself up onto my board, but I could have reached out without any effort and touched the both of them as they swam on either side of me!  SO COOL!!

I probably rode a handful of really fun waves that day.

As I was leaving the water, there were more scallop shells than usual on the beach.  There were quite a few big ones, and in really good shape, too.  So, I'm walking along like a little kid picking up all these shells while carrying my surfboard in my other hand.  Then to add to my awesome day, I found a starfish and a sand dollar.  SO COOL AGAIN!!  It was quite the morning.

After getting a fun surf session in: I came home, rinsed off, hung everything out to dry, ate some lunch, and went on a hike with my girlfriend.

We went down to Laguna Canyon Wilderness Park again.  I forgot my Garmin Edge 500 this time, but here's the previous data when we hiked it about a week ago.  We did a different route this time, longer, but less overall elevation gain.  It was BEAUTIFUL.  We saw lots of animals, plants, birds, bees, etc.

Pretty good day.
I slept like a baby to say the least.

Clayton

Training for Glacier National Park, Montana

Original photo by Port of San Diego

My girlfriend and I are planning a trip to Glacier National Park in Montana.  To say it's hilly is an understatement.  In order to prepare we are training legs and starting to hike around here in SoCal.

We are doing legs outside at a local park.  It's sort of boot-camp or P90X Plyometrics style.  We started getting serious this past week on Thursday.  I've been working out, but WOW it was tough.  My legs were seriously thrashed the next day.

Then, this weekend we went hiking at the Laguna Canyon Wilderness Park.  Specifically, we did the Willow Canyon Trail.  Here is the Strava file from my Garmin Edge 500.

The plan is to do legs Plyometrics style two days a week.  Then, go hiking at least one day, if not both days of the weekend.

That way we are working on our heart and lungs as well as the ups and downs of actual hiking.

We also plan on starting to load up our camelbaks with water and some weight to make the hiking more realistic.

Happy Training!

Clayton's Plyometric workout for 4/4/13:

• 15 min warm up

25 reps of each of the following.
The single leg stuff, we did 25 reps each leg per exercise.

• Lateral squat leap - one left and one right = 1 rep
• Falling Towers - down and back = 1 rep
• Hindu Squats
• Wall sit for 1 minute
• Super Skater - one left and one right = 1 rep
• Walking lunge with a torso twist
• Step ups or hop ups on a bench
• Jump knee tuck
• Bulgarian split squat
• Mary Catherines
• Gap jumps - so the link is for the visual.  Our gap was more like 2 to 3 feet max.
• 10-15 minutes of dedicated stretching.  Trust me, you'll need it.

Have a good day and happy working out!

Up in the Club workin on my

Original photo by myvirtuallady

Fitness.  I fought the good fight tonight.  Mondays, all across the US are the ubiquitous Chest and Triceps Day for every dude ever at every gym ever.  So, like all dudes at the gym on Monday, I did chest and triceps.

I don't know what the virtual girl in the photo has to do with working out, but it got your attention.  She is covering her chest. . .

Anyways, I asked my girlfriend and she said that she's attracted to chest and arms.  Which is ironic, because of all my body parts, my chest is probably the second worst.  My abs are my #1 problem area.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all fit with all the SUP Surfing I do.  Plus, I do a ton of other things at the gym and outside of the gym.  My Tanita body comp scale says so, too.  I'm rocking 168lbs and 9% fat.

I went onto the interwebs and found a pretty healthy amount of chest and tricep workouts.  I chose one that had chest split into five days.  No wonder there are dudes with chicken legs and huge chests at the gym.  I honestly never thought to break it into multiple days.

Since the multiple day thing isn't my bag, baby, I combined them.

Clayton's Chest and Triceps for SIZE workout for 4/1/13:

• 15 min warm up
• Stretch
• 6 different core/ab exercises of 25 reps each 

3 sets of 4-6 reps each of the following:
Choose a weight that will make the last set hard to achieve 6 reps.

• Flat bench barbell chest press
• Chest flys on a fly machine
• Incline bench dumbell chest press
• Incline dumbell chest flys
• Decline bench barbell chest press
• Dips
• Overhead tricep extensions
• Pushups - go for 3 sets of reps to failure each time - I did 3 sets of 8.

Have a good day and happy working out!