Two weeks ago, I lumbered over 30 miles and felt great. Last week, I lumbered 20 miles on slippy, lumpy snow and felt like an aching bag of shit by the end. Come the weekend, I sat my fat ass inside and did nothing. Then, I woke up Monday morning at 6 AM, rolled over, farted twice, looked at the -1˚ weather icon on my phone, and said, “fuck it.”
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: it doesn’t matter if you have to go to work or school or not; Monday’s vibes are always shit.
I ended this week with no real way to make my 30-mile goal and nursing a few aches and pains. So, I opted for a short photo creep around Meridian Park rather than a lumber. In hindsight, I should have just hiked; the pain would have been more fun.
Last week kind of sucked. I did a dirt road ride on Monday due to a continued issue with my right foot, but I wasn’t really into it, so I headed back into the woods at 85% fitness and had next to no fun and only got 16.5 miles in my aching feetz.
I once again took the weekend off from any outdoor fitness activities and committed to stretching, resting, and watching the last weekend of Premiere League football until August.
My pledge to take a short break from lumbering was short-lived and unwise.
As I sit typing this dross on Sunday, I am trying to put out of my mind that earlier this week, I hammered out 3 lumbers in 3 days and got 18.5 miles in on dry trails before we got hit with a Thursday morning storm that brought 4 to 5 inches of heavy wet snow; the sort that breaks snow shovels.
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.
In response to my last post:
I knocked out my 25-mile hiking goal in 5 days this week, which works perfectly for me in multiple ways;
Those are all good things, but as most outdoor endurnace-ish athletes know, it can be easier said than done.
So, close, yet so far away. Well, at least until Wednesday morning.
