
This week started where last week ended, with an early morning lumber in the unbelievably humid woods.

This week started where last week ended, with an early morning lumber in the unbelievably humid woods.

I was back in the woods for a 5.15 lumber on Monday morning, but I’ll get to that in the future. For now, I’m posting Sunday’s Photo Creep.
Even by my extremely low standards, last week was not a great week in my world of quinquagenarian, repetitive, borderline autistic, outdoor fitness micro-adventures. Between multiple days of extreme cold and one day of bad luck trying to get to the trails, I found myself on the treadmill in the basement three times last week, including before the football started on Saturday morning. That’s three more times than I wanted.
With that said, my winter beer belly recently informed me that I needed to get back to running and high-intensity heart rate Zone 3 and 4-type shit, so I guess it wasn’t all bad. After a month or so of slow, wintry slogs, it felt good to see my heart rate hitting 160 or more during my intervals. And I didn’t stroke out and get shot off the back of the treadmill like a belt-propelled fatty turd, so that’s a bonus.

After an abbreviated lumber due to the local Thanksgiving turkey trotters, I was anxious to get on the trails on Friday morning to finish off my week of lumbering.

I wrote a bunch of stuff today but deleted it because it violated the guidelines I’ve been TRYING to keep in place regarding the shit that goes on in my brain, aiming to keep me miserable. As the saying goes, “Not today, Satan. But I’m free tomorrow around 3; bring beer.”
Instead, let’s talk lumbers.

I don’t have many words to share, and rather than post these photos on Instagram, where they will never be seen, I am posting the photos here, where they will also never be seen.

I haven’t had what I’d call a “normal” lumber in the woods since the first week in January. The time in between has been spent doing the following:
It’s been a hell of a month, but such is life.

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.

Oh, Monday, there is no
escaping your misery. – Me
After a pretty good, not bad, OK sort of weekend, I woke up in a funk on Monday. A funk that got increasingly funkier with a dark morning of blowing wet snow.
So as not to be stymied by my normal Monday funkiness, I threw a lackluster breakfast burrito down my throat, took care of business (that means pooping, not real money-making business), and headed out for a 7+ mile lumber through the woods.

I got out on Monday for a 6.75+ lumber, half of which was done in a thunderstorm, and I have to say it was pretty magnificent. Plodding along through the dark woods with rumbling thunder and lightning overhead and rain pissing down shouldn’t be as fun as it is, but it is. And I only almost pissed myself once with fear.