Posts Tagged → sorry attempts at humor

Lumbering and Clumping

TUESDAY

With my rediscovered motivation via the not-so-subtle art of self-fat shaming, I was back on the trails Tuesday for another lumber in the snow.

The additional snow that fell over the weekend had turned softer, and while not that difficult to walk in, it was mildly irritating when I suffered from the age-old problem of wet clumps of snow forming within the chains of my microspikes. One minute I’m walking along fine, the next minute it’s like walking on high heels made of snowballs.

With that, I had to make some adjustments to my gaiter straps, the main culprit of the clumping. The “clumprit” if you will (sorry). And during this adjustment at the .50 mile mark, I realized that my Garmin had accidentally paused right after I started. Thankfully, after thousands of miles on these trails, I knew that I was indeed at mile .50 and was able to make the correction when I got home. It took my dim bulb of a brain a little while to process the mismatched mile-math along the way, but somehow I survived.

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Shameful Motivation

After Saturday morning’s loud clackity-clack-clack of a lumber on the still icy trails, and the remaining weekend filled with slack, sloth, and existential outdoor fitness ennui, on Monday, I found myself hurling Escape II down the road towards the trails and another lumber.

Saturday afternoon, we got around 2″ of wet snow, and it turns out it was just enough to cover the ice and allow for more grip, less ass cleching, and way less ice-crunching noise. Yes!

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Lumbering Through The Melt

We sort of lucked out on Tuesday when the predicted day of ice and sleet ended up being a day of rain, on top of 3 or 4 inches of remaining snow and ice. This made for some Grade-A winter slop. It also forced me to retreat to the Not-So-Stankment to bust out another 3 miles of intervals on the treadmill, leaving some Grade-A sweat and uncontrollable projectile body fluids in my wake.

After two days and six miles of running intervals, I was determined to get into the woods on Wednesday for some miles and pics.

I was up early as per usual, got my gear together, and then proceeded to do some laundry and make Wifey breakfast as I waited for daylight to make an appearance.

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Housebound & Not So Down

In my last post, I lamented the fact that mid-Michigan was hit with an ice storm that made driving the trails pretty dumb. That was Friday.

Saturday, the ice was still here, but given that we lacked a number of kitchen staples, I made an early morning trip to the grocery store instead of the trails. Later that day, we got even more ice.

Sunday came, and guess what? ANOTHER day of freezing rain and ice. Meanwhile, an hour away in Lansing, a friend of ours said it was 46˚.

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Re-Frozen & Doable

It happened again. I thought I could justify not lumbering in mid-Michigan’s recent snow/rain/thaw/freeze hellscape by calling it a “mini-break” and embracing four days of rest, recovery, good food, and slack in the name of staying warm and dry with bones all in one piece.

I thought this plan would be good for me, and have me rested, recovered, and ready to get back at it come Monday morning.

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Remembering With a Laugh

Part I, Thursday

Mother Nature threw mid-Michigan another meteorological curveball (high and hanging) in the form of 50˚ temps and several hours of steady rain on Thursday. Followed by 20˚ temps and high winds overnight, which proceeded early morning snow showers on Friday.

Due to said rain and melting snow, I avoided a woodsy lumber on Thursday, and spent the day doing what I do, along with writing a long-winded post that will be published in the near future. Maybe, I don’t know.

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A Normalish Stomp

After my snowshoe lumber (snlumber? lumbershoe? snumbershoe?) on Friday, I came home, made breakfast, and set about getting shit done. Thankfully, there was no need for me to leave the house. So I didn’t. Nor would I leave the house for the next 48+ hours except for brief forays onto the deck to get a couple of bird pics, refill the bird feeders, and yell at Lola to hurry the hell up during one of her shit journeys in the early morning darkness.

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Attitude Adjustment

After Thursday’s short 4.35-mile snowshoe that felt like 20 from breaking trail through fresh snow, I knew I needed to return on Friday with a new plan and a better attitude.

Not that my attitude was bad on Thursday, but after I was done, I felt beat down and winter weary. That will happen in time, usually around late January, but right now it’s way too early not to make some adjustments to find more enjoyment. You know, sort of like life.

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Breaking & Nearly Broke

I took the day off from lumbering on Wednesday due to overnight snow, the need to shovel out a driveway, and a strong desire to not leave the house after I was finished.

So, today I was off like a herd of turtles at daybreak (two full hours after I woke), and eager to be in the snowy woods. Until I got to the snowy woods.

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From Lemons to Potatoes

Lola (the dog), or should I say, Lola the Hairy Food Slut, was up around 4:45 AM this morning, WAY before my 5:20 alarm, wanting food. She was denied, but once you hear a, shall we say, “robustly built” bulldog rambling down the steps like a herd of cattle to do whatever a hungry bulldog does alone in a dark living room, you never really fall back to sleep. However, I stayed in bed just to prove a point—I will not be bullied by my bulldog!!

When I did finally get up at 5:20, Lola excitedly chased me around the kitchen and then ran outside into the dark and cold to do her business, completely oblivious to the two deer standing roughly 20 yards away from her. This was on the heels of a 25-minute growling stare down with a large block of suet my neighbor had put in his yard for the critters two days ago. Deer? Who cares! Block of suet? I’LL KILL YOU DEAD!! Or at least relentlessly growl from a distance, while looking out the door window, safely inside my human’s house.

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