After a mug of coffee and saying goodbye to Wifey, who was taking advantage of her use-it-or lose-it vacation days and leaving for Pennsylvania to visit her dad, I headed out for my non-runners version of running.
The morning air was downright cold for August, hovering right around 48˚ with not a cloud in the sky. Downright cold, yes, but also downright perfect for a sun-loving, big-boned person such as myself.
After a successful Monday morning doing my best interpretation of trail running for 5 miles, I wanted to do something slower on Tuesday, as well as get some time with my camera.
I chose to go to the Bundy Hill Preserve, the highest point in the county, coming in at a whopping 1,270 feet above sea level. It’s no mountain, that’s for sure, but it’s a beautiful wooded area, and its location is along a very rural gravel road that I often frequented on my bike due to the series of climbs on it.
In my mind I planned to get out for a short lumber with my camera over the weekend, but it never really materialized.
Some of that was due to the fact that I had already hit my weekly mileage goal and lacked motivation, but the main issue was the fact that I was balls deep into the kickoff of the 2024/25 Premier League season (Nerd!). That means early weekend mornings filled with copious amounts of coffee and a big-as-your-head breakfast burrito and then an afternoon spent enjoying adult beverages and listening to music as I catch up on the rest of the European football action. Good times…. good times.
I was recently thinking (I know, I know, I shouldn’t) about this whole lumbering thing I’ve been doing for the past two years, which has sometimes morphed into attempts at trail running, especially recently, and why I have been enjoying it despite not being good at it.
I was eager for a lumber at Deerfield on Thursday morning and was in bed Wednesday night just as the sun set.
Sadly, I was wide awake about 4 hours later and would remain so for hours before briefly falling asleep and dreaming about legs covered in mosquito bites that I squeezed like pimples and orange centipede-like worms came out. Needless to say, I passed on breakfast. And I almost thought about passing on the hike.
I did not.
It was nice to return to the Hall’s Lake Natural Area for a hike in the woods on Tuesday, and it did wonders to improve my mood as well as help get my creative juices flowing despite not seeing much to photograph.
I was also eager to get back to running1 on Wednesday and mapped out a new 5-mile on-the-nose course using Mapmyride.com. Apparently, they don’t discriminate against you if don’t plan on riding a bike.
I felt good physically after Monday morning’s lumber/run (runber?), and in a perfect world, I would do the same thing again Tuesday, especially since the mood I was in at 6:00 AM called for intense flogging and punishment for unknown reasons, although I have a feeling that it has something to do with still being alive. But it also could have been gas.
Before I start typing shit that no one, including me, cares about, I am coming clean that I missed my already shortened goal of 25 miles lumbered last week by 5 miles. It was the second failed week in a row.
Or was it?
After I recovered from Thursday’s lumber/run and lawn mowing, I was eager to get back into the woods on Friday morning, especially since the horn-happy UPS dude dropped off some new shoes that I was anxious to break in.
After months of going back and forth between the Speedgoat 52 and the New Balance Fresh Foams3, along with reading and watching shoe reviews, I finally found a running shoe that appears to fit my needs as a shoe to hike and lumber in, but more importantly, are light and supportive enough for my version of trail running. That shoe is the North Face Altamesa 500.
I had a loose plan to do my version of running on Thursday and found myself at the trailhead parking lot and ready to go at 7:45.
