Tag Archives | being a slacker

A 5-Step Program for Winter

This week, due to some home improvement duties, I was thrown multiple C-blocks in my bid to get in a 25-mile hiking week, but I somehow managed to get it done again in just four days, even with a couple days being 90˚ and humid before things cooled off. Hazah!

And with Labor Day and Fat Guy Summer now behind me and the days (actually 7 months) of darkness, cold temps, winter slop, and snow, if we’re lucky, around the corner, I have set my eyes on mental survival. Yes, I know that sounds hyperbolic, but that’s how my mind rolls: in extreme waves of perceived and actual misery, 24 hours a day.

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The Hateful Eights

At the risk of violating my 2023 resolution, I have been deep into a late summer funk brought forth by my ongoing battle with heel pain, B heading back to MSU tomorrow, a burning hatred for half the country (and 95% of mid-Michigan’s population), and my long-perfected loathing for myself and my extensive list of shortcoming and failures as a man. 

Additionally, I have also been made aware by persons close to me that my lack of desire to “go out” for social interactions has become unacceptable. 

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Glad and Less Glad

I started off last week with a 7.5-mile lumber that was both stupid (due to nursing an ongoing foot issue) and amazing because I can’t remember the last time, if ever, I covered 7+ miles on foot and did it in just over 2 hours. 

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The 4th Day of July

Do you want to know how NOT to start a week? I’ll tell you.

Wake up at the first glimmer of summer sunshine on Monday morning, eat breakfast, use the dumper four or five times, cover yourself with bug spray, and get into the woods before the nearby river is clogged with loud, cigarette-smoking, littering, beer-swilling, camo-swimsuit-wearing, neck tattooed river tubers trying their best to get e-coli from the tons of cow shit and crop runoff polluting the water.

Then push yourself to do six miles of hiking even though you are nursing multiple painful foot issues, the air is thick and humid, the sun is getting intense, your jaw hurts from gritting your teeth, and every item of clothing you have on is drenched with fat man sweat that smells like stank taco sauce and stale keg.

And when the hike is done, your goal was met, and you’re finally home; rinse the bug spray off, put on a dry shirt, and mow the grass of the vast (not really) estate of the Cul-De-Sac Shack during the hottest part of the morning, all the while wondering if it’s possible to buy new human feet on Amazon (surely it is) and if I might actually be mentally challenged, because tacking on a 2-mile walk behind a lawn mower after a 6-mile hike in the woods was fucking stupid as hell. I thought I might die and, like you, was mildly disappointed when I did not.

But hey, that was yesterday, it’s the 4th of July now, and we’re celebrating the way three people who could give a fuck do; Wifey went to a movie alone, B is sleeping and will remain so until roughly 2 PM before going out to scout a location to shoot a short film bit he’s working on, and I putzed around the yard trimming shit, doing laundry, making some food, and soon commenced toasting all the freedoms that we Americans enjoy (FINE PRINT: actual freedoms may vary based on tax bracket, skin color, country of birth, gun ownership, religious beliefs (or lack thereof), gender, and sexual orientation).

I only took a few photos on Monday due to the hurt I was in, and they still sit on the z50’s SD card, but I did find a stranger’s grocery list in a cart the other day, and I thought this one was the perfect 4th of July photo. And it’s all I have.

Later.

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. 

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Learning To Tolerate Myself

I finished up last week with 22.56 miles of hiking and missed my weekly goal by 2.44 miles. However, I finished the week with some strong lumbers and occasional running. Sadly, by Sunday, my right foot said, “piss off!” and I was hit with some raging  plantar fasciitis.

Shit.

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Music, Bikes, and Blown Pipes

It’s been ages since my last post, and I’d like to say that is because I’m out there living my best life with no time for this digital fish wrap. However, since even writing “living my best life” fills me with embarrassment and dread, we can probably assume I was not.

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700 Miles, Birds, & Viagra Boys

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.

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