30+ DRC 264

Wow. 264 days run.

A little over three months and I'll have reached a year.

And what have I learned from this? That I can always make time for at least a mile. Twenty minutes out of my day to prep, run and cool down if I'm in a hurry. But I usually have more time to do more stuff so I take advantage of it.

I'm lucky about where I work. Yes, it can stink to high heaven at times. It's a mushroom farm and we make our own compost. But once you get used to it (after a few years), it ain't so bad. At times it smells like pork rinds for some reason. Then I get hungry.

Most of the time though, it's wonderful. The farm is situated in bowl, kinda. The composting yard up along one of the hill sides on a huge, paved area. It's on the opposite side of where I work. It's the start and end of what I call the SWT (Shitty Work Trail). As I've said before, it sucks because the elevation changes are spaced really close. I'm running on a sawtooth ridge.

On the map below, the Start is colored in what I think is teal? And the end is in black. The yellow spots are where I loop back. I kinda follow my gaming methodology in this. I always go right . . . until I can't. Then I loop back and go right again. It mostly works. Sort'a.

The big brown chocolate stain at the top of the picture is the composting yard, what is known in the mushroom industry as Phase 1. The white roofed buildings next to it are what are called the Phase 2 rooms. After they get the compost from phase 1, they stuff them in 4'X8' trays and stack them in these temperature controlled rooms get them colonized with what the growers call fire-fang. In the lab, we call it scytalidium. It a fungus that thrives in relatively high temperature. It's also food for agaricus bisporus . . . your typical, store bought white or portobello mushroom.

Yes, the white mushroom used on pizzas and salads are pretty much the same as the portobello mushrooms. They are analogous to how dogs are different, but can still breed with each other. Not you'd want to breed a Great Dane and a chihuahua . . . poor chihuahua.

The grey roofed buildings below the phase 2 rooms are the actual growing rooms. Most of it is dedicated to the white mushrooms. Each section of those buildings is a growing room. They are huge rooms. The buildings by where my trail starts are pretty much dedicated to growing the portobello mushrooms. Not as much coming out of those as the other side of the farm.

I don't know if I said before, but the reason I'm running the SWT is because I was getting tired of my bum knee. It really was jacked up and I couldn't comfortably run flats anymore. I took a shot at the trail one day to see if having a constantly changing trail would help my knee out.

Unfortunately it did. I hate it because of how friggin' hard the trail is to run. I mean, SHIT! It really kicks my ass! I love it because it's actually helped my knee. I love it because I get to do it at work early and not worry about having enough time to do it after work. So I get to spend more time with the daughter.

So . . . that's the lesson for the day. I want a 1000 word report on how fungi can save the world. Due next week.

GD

p.s.
didn't check. run smiley :)