It’s just after 7 AM on Sunday morning, there’s no football on for another couple of hours, and my weekly mileage goal as part of the 2023 Soil The Woods Tour was met roughly 20 hours, 4 beers, two failed chicken tacos, and one pre-bed peanut butter and syrup sandwich ago. So, with no better place to be— here I am.
I remember back in the days when I thought I was “training” for mountain bike races (AKA, paying an exorbitant—borderline criminal—entry fee as a solo racer to ride my bike for a long time, become totally dehydrated, and destroy myself and my bikes in the name of perceived fun).
In those days I would follow a lightly researched, poorly self-prescribed plan that loosely followed periods of building, pushing, and recovery based on the periodization model “real” athletes follow that includes Base, Build, Peak, and Race. Since I have no inherent talent for bike racing, and a couple of 3rd place finishes were the best I ever had, mostly due to Solo attrition rates, this plan either worked extremely well or not at all.
After a long winter of trails packed with ice and snow, I have been like a fat guy in a beer store since temperatures warmed, trying to gobble up miles and work on increasing my fitness. Sometimes that feels like pissing in the ocean, but sometimes, just sometimes, it feels pretty darn not bad.
It’s been a while, I know. That’s the thing about being an unpaid Slacker Blogger; there are no rules, no money, no deadlines, and no mid-level boss man wearing short sleeves with a tie to give me the hairy eyeball or question why I am looking at NSFW photos on the web whilst sitting in my “fat pants,” burping up the morning’s breakfast, and listening to the thunderstorm beat against my office window, instead of writing a blog post that no one, not even me, will likely read.
With that said, here is a post.
Damn, it feels good to be almost kind of like spring (as well as a gangster, but you know that). And it feels even better to have returned to the trails after a brief bout of desperation (not referring to my pre-Wifey sex life).
However, to quote Sponge Bob, “All that glitters is not gold,” for my eagerness to jump back right into my “normal” hikes of 4 to 5 miles at my “fast for a fat guy who’s not actually running” pace has brought back a case of mild plantar fasciitis still left-over from using shitty hiking boots over the winter.
These are desperate times, and I am a desperate man.
This week, my longing to walk and hike on snow-free trails drove me (literally) to a couple of my old Dirt Road Launching Pads1 to use as a “trailhead.”
Honking of Own Platypus Alert!
Sunday marked the 6-month anniversary of the 2022 Not Dead Yet Comeback Special/2023 Soil The Woods Tour, and I, of course, celebrated with a short morning hike in the snow to put me at 600.95 miles hiked since September 19th.
Writing is sort of like self-gratification; if you stop doing it every day, it’s real easy to lose your mojo. At least, that’s what I assume my creepy college Creative Writing professor would have said had I actually gone to college and had I actually ever taken a creative writing class.
And that is my way of saying that I got off track with my blog writing due to spending too much time in the wintry woods, taking shitty photos, perfecting the dark art of the homemade veggie burger, and of course, self-gratifying. But like wayward vomit to a drunkard’s shoes, I’m back!
At least until I get sidetracked again.
Despite spring being uninterested in making an appearance anytime soon and continued snow and wintry puke, I managed to hit my WCA-approved 20-mile goal last week. There was much rejoicing.
Last week was completely and utterly forgettable. The snow/freeze/thaw/freeze/snow situation only got worse, and the calluses on my feet that I was “this close” to being rid of became more painful due to my feet constantly adapting to the frozen and or soft and lumpy terrain. To quote my wife, “poop.”
As a result, I found myself housebound for a few days to mentally and physically prepare to get back this week.
