No matter where you live, people will say that the weather is psycho, except maybe in Pittsburgh, where crazy weather means going more than 24 hours WITHOUT “partly cloudy” skies (which is a nice way of saying “it’s cloudy with a chance of rain, yinz guys.”).
Last week, as I tramped over the gravel roads, my gut feeling was that the local trails wouldn’t be completely bare of slippy, packed snow until Monday. However, since I only trust my gut when it’s hungry or has to poop, I attempted to hike those trails on Friday with meh-like results.
Fast forward here, please. >>>
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
I knew I would struggle to get 25 miles in my feet last week, but I didn’t foresee it going quite so poorly; melting snow followed by 24 hours of heavy rain, followed by a return to below-freezing temps, had the trails alternating between slippy mashed potato snow and solid ice that crushed and snapped underfoot as I trekked over them with mico spikes strapped on my shoes.
