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.
Over the last few months, I have been stalking a duck couple (Sid and Nancy) that I see swimming in the nearby river and adjacent swamp areas during my hikes. I got a few photos from distance along the way, but nothing great.
Wednesday’s hike was a wonderful 6-mile lumber with an average speed of 4 miles per hour; it was a great way to surpass the 800-mile mark in my ongoing journey by foot to find lost fitness and mental clarity.
Another week of mind numbing existence in the books, as well as another week’s worth of woodsy miles. And I have nothing to say.
Ready to have your socks blown off with another volume of soiled randomness?
No?
Well, too bad.
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.
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.
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.
Damn, it feels good to be almost kind of like spring (as well as a gangster, but you know that). And it feels even better to have returned to the trails after a brief bout of desperation (not referring to my pre-Wifey sex life).
However, to quote Sponge Bob, “All that glitters is not gold,” for my eagerness to jump back right into my “normal” hikes of 4 to 5 miles at my “fast for a fat guy who’s not actually running” pace has brought back a case of mild plantar fasciitis still left-over from using shitty hiking boots over the winter.
