I’ve never thought of myself as Nostrafuckingdamus. Still, I know a little about a lot of useless shit. One of those things is knowing that despite the vast (not really) estate of the Cul De Sac Shack being void of snow and two full days of sun (yes, hours of sunshine for the first time since December, I believe), the woods and trails would still be filled with a mixture of melting mush and hard-packed slippiness.
The trails are getting there, but not yet, and this week was a combination of stumbling around in the woods trying to stay upright while hiking through slippery melting snow, pounding out laps on the park’s dirt service road, a combination of both, or recovering/being bitter with frosty adult beverages while watching football—until Friday.
I thought that January broke me on Saturday when I looked out the window, saw heaps of rain-soaked snow, and said, “fuck it, I’m ‘running’ on the treadmill.” I was wrong.
No, January would save the real breakdown for Monday morning’s hike.
The outside was a mess of ice, melting snow, slush, and rain on Friday, and after 15 miles of snowshoeing already completed, I was a mess of aching knees, stiff calves, sore hip flexors, and an arthritic mind. So with that, I took Friday off to bask in the glow of the dank sky and catch up on some long overdue house shit.
The start of the week was awesome, with two 5-mile snowshoe hikes through the cold and snow. It was a great workout, and it felt awesome to be back outside after two days spent goofing off indoors
Do you smell that? It smells like hyperbole.
– Me
I’m no good at this.
While you may think that I’m about to say I’m no good at this whole “life” thing, and I tend to believe I’m not, I’m actually referring to multiple days off from outdoor activities. In post-blizzard Michigan, during the longest, darkest, coldest, rope-to -the-fucking-attic month of the year.
It’s been four days since I was last in the woods, and it might as well be 4 months. While I know it’s near impossible, I feel like I’ve lost every shred of fitness I gained over the last 16+ months; my Instagram feed is set to be bombarded with ads for big and tall stores (again), and the brain that I have worked so hard to semi-salvage from a sticky web of depression and life-long self-loathing is set to go into shut-down mode and return me to the fart scented sheets of The Bed of Torment.
What a crazy week! As mentioned in my previous hard-to-read Soiled mega post, the week started with a 7-mile hike on Monday, followed by a snowy 5+ mile hike on Tuesday, then as more snow arrived, morphed into slow 4+ mile snowshoe stomps on Wednesday and Thursday.
Part I, Tuesday, 6:17 AM
I was up at 6 AM on Tuesday to tend to the dogs, drink giant mugs of coffee, make food, and slack around the internet in the dark, waiting for dark grey daylight sometime after 8 AM and a chance to get some miles in my feet.
It’s not the first time it’s happened to me, but this week, I once again suffered from Premature Mile Accumulation (PMA). Unlike more awkward premature “ations,” PMA leaves me feeling quite good about myself but similarly leaves me questioning, now what do I do, but with fewer sheepish apologies.
