Running pack

I recently got an Osprey Rev 6 for a good price secondhand. I love it when people buy things as part of a plan to do things that they end up not doing. "I'm going to dehydrate all my own healthy snacks!", or "I'll use this exercise machine every day!". And then, six months later, that stuff is on craigslist for 80% off. Have I used everything I ever bought? Nope, sure haven't. But I have used darn near all of it, and most of it until it was totally worn out.

Anyway, the rev 6 is a much smaller pack than my other osprey, a much-used hikelite 35 that I bought new (on sale) a few years ago. I still use that pack several times a week, but I wanted to get something that could hold a few more things than the elite survival systems running belt I have. Today, I went on my first run with it; a 15-kilometer jog that, for the first time, saw me running my "hatchet route" in reverse. I was feeling a bit lethargic, and my pace was quite a bit slower than usual; 6:35/kilometer, compared with my usual 6:00 or slightly under. It will be interesting to see if that gap narrows as I stay in keto for a while, and my body adapts more and more to burning fat. Anyway, I'm not bothered by it; I'm still getting a lot of cardiovascular benefit, and I'm still increasing my distance per week. My weight loss is proceeding, and I'm increasing the number of reps I use a 10-pound weight for on my strength exercises (yesterday was 70 each of my 100 crunches and squats that I had the weight for). The pack itself felt like more of an item of clothing than an item of cargo, despite what it held (a jacket, survival kit, first aid kit, and my phone).

I also got some good advice regarding packing for ultralight camping, and as a result I took a few things off my list. For example, I had listed both a lighter and a matchsafe, with the matchsafe being an emergency backup. But my survival kit already contains two different emergency ways to start fire, both matches and a sparker with tinder tabs. I did have a trowel on there, for digging catholes, but really wouldn't a tent stake be perfectly adequate? My morakniv weighs over 100 grams; gerber makes a 17 gram folding knife that's perfectly fine (and, really, I could use the RSK5 from my survival kit as my main knife and out a folding razor knife in the survival kit). There's always room for improvement, even if the effect is primarily psychological; I even spent a few moments thinking about trimming down the drawstring on the stuff sack for my titanium mug/pot. But then I realized that the bag itself might be worth replacing (is three layers of material really necessary to hold a mug?)

I also finally got my boat wrapped today. And none too soon; now I can put my dehydrator on the back porch and start dehydrating kimchi en masse.