Getting It In

I knocked out my 25-mile hiking goal in 5 days this week, which works perfectly for me in multiple ways;

1. I can avoid potential weekenders on the trails.
2. I can avoid the 90˚ heat we’re predicted to have this weekend.
3. I can take two full days to rest, ice, stretch, and think about taking a pipe cutter and a blowtorch to my right foot and the plantar fasciitis that seemingly will NOT go away [maybe if you rested it, you dumbass- ed].

Those are all good things, but as most outdoor endurnace-ish athletes know, it can be easier said than done. 

Like in my depressed cycling days, even for shlubs like me, a “rest day” is often filled with guilt, body dysmorphia, self-loathing, shame, regret, bad decisions, and the realization that I am a hollow, vapid shell of a man who contributes little, if at all, to society. All made harder by the lack of Premier League and European football on TV right now to allow a 90-minute escape.

I’m mostly joking; it’s more that I like my routine and build in my other duties around it, and when you take out those two hours of sweat and endorphins, I’m set adrift like a Viking funeral barge stuck on a sandbar.

I will try to get out and do an early morning photo creep, maybe wash my car for the first time since February (not sure what year), ice my foot, make food, find an outlet for my idle hands, and work on my future skin cancer on the deck whilst listening to music, drinking beer and sweating all over myself as mid-Michigan turns to a waterless, dusty, arid, hell hole before my eyes; unless it rains.

I had a great week of snap-shooting during my hikes with multiple turtle encounters, a random bridge spoon, bees, flowers, frogs, and what I think are crane flies having sex on a tree ¹. Click on the pics to scroll through.

Later.

1. Hey, we’ve all been there, but for some, it was a large tree root along a trail somewhere in the Arapaho National Forest circa the year 2000. Sorry.