The Great Solar Eclipse of 2017 crossed the continent, from Oregon to South Carolina, and gave millions of people the chance to witness one of the most awe-inspiring events in the natural world.

But you had to be within the "path of totality", a narrow band across the earth's surface several thousand miles long but only about 70 miles wide. Outside that band you would only see a partial eclipse, not a total eclipse.

And there is no such thing as a "partial total eclipse", despite the impression blogs and the news media might give. I honestly think that's why so many people misunderstand the utter beauty of the spectacle; they may have seen a partial eclipse in the past that was total somewhere else, and even though they weren't in the path the news kept gushing about it being a total eclipse, so they assume they must have seen a total eclipse and just didn't find it all that impressive.


Posted by Dan 08/29/2017, revised 09/06/2017

My DNF at Boulder Peak was followed by... Another DNF at IRONMAN Boulder 70.3 a month later. This time it was premeditated, a hard decision to come to terms with, but ultimately my choice came down to either Did Not Finish or Did Not Start. By the end of July it was clear that I was battling a hamstring issue, among other things. I had my first rendezvous with Dry Needling treatment, which feels like a pokey spike climbing into the achiest part of your muscle and burrowing around like a gopher making a little nest deep inside your leg. It's delightful.

I asked myself the obvious question: Was my last minute decision to add an extra twenty one miles to my Ironman "training day" the reason for this late season injury? If so, I accept responsibility for the choice that did exactly what I feared it might (by denying me my next two races).

However, there is also the possibility that the Ironman was not the determining factor in whether I stumbled upon injury this year, and when I look at it that way, I am infinitely more grateful that I seized the opportunity when I did. It is still a shining, thrilling milestone in my race career, and one that even with the benefit of hindsight, I would again sacrifice the rest of the season for.

But it's hard to pinpoint the cause of vague overuse irritations. I felt fine (relatively speaking) during and after the Ironman. I recovered in the following weeks as well as one could hope. But three weeks later I apparently pushed myself over the edge running a 5k. Was it really just the 5k? I ran a 5k two weeks before the Ironman with no ill after-effects. (To be fair, I did run the second one faster, with every intention of running absolutely as hard as I could.) But my personal experiments as well as observations of other people's ill-advised endurance over-reaches have given me familiarity with the pattern of delayed onset consequences. So the 5k could have just topped off the trouble that was already brewing.

Overuse injury comes from a perfect storm of conditions -- physical structure, technique, level of repetition, degree of intensity, as well as external stress and/or benefits. It's impossible to isolate just one of these. It's the combination of those elements (and more) that determine why some people can run back-to-back marathons with no fallout, while others struggle to complete just ten miles without breaking themselves. Overuse injury does frequently pop up out "out of nowhere," but in reality it is the million tiny repetitions of a slightly inefficient movement that lead up to the final seemingly insignificant event that gets blamed for the problem.

I had a rough few weeks accepting the setback. This exposes the obvious vulnerability in the life of the full-time athlete, or really anyone who places a high priority on their athletic pursuits -- an injury, however slight or temporary, threatens your very sense of identity and purpose. The pain of compromised physical capability is felt most acutely by those who put a disproportionate amount of value in the ability to complete the day's workouts successfully, and to achieve competitive goals exactly according to plan.

I was trying to keep things in perspective.


Posted by Kimberly 09/23/2017

Nik completed his final race for the Cal Poly cycling team, the Wheelmen. The Western Collegiate Cycling Conference's final race of the 2011 Mountain Bike season was hosted by Cal-Berkeley at the Bailey Bike Park course.


Nik racing down the slalom course at Bailey Bike Park


Posted by Dan 11/14/2011

Wow. My last blog was from Koh Phagnan... that seems like ages ago! I guess it seems like ages ago to Mom and Dad, too, 'cause they haven't been diggin' the long silence from their (awesome) daughter.

There's good reason for my silence, though. I was lost. I was lost in an amazing Neverland of happiness and fun. I was living the life on Koh Tao, and for me to sit in front of this computer screen with the task of "write about your month on Koh Tao," well, that's quite possibly the most immensely intimidating, overwhelming task I've faced in lifetimes. But you know what? There's no possible way I could ever ever portray to you the amazingness that was my month on Koh Tao. So with that fact having been recognized, I can now approach this in a "just write something and it's better than nothing" manner. Much easier to get my mind around!

The reason I haven't written a blog in so long

Koh Tao is a little island off the east side of Thailand, in the Gulf of Thailand. It is warm and tropical and happy - essentially everything you want your standard tropical paradise to be. There's so much to be said about the island itself, and there's so much to be said about my personal experience on the island. But I can't say it all in any reasonable number of days, so I'll break it down like this...

The 5 aspects of Koh Tao that make it what it is, ...or 5 reasons "1 week" turned into a month

A picture's worth a thousand words... this one should suffice as a substitute for a blog

Posted by Whitney 10/24/2008