Posts Tagged → unsolicited opinion

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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Opting For Slack, Clean Showers

The week started with two days of indoor lumbering/running (not affiliated with the 2026 Soiled and Ignorant Tour), and was followed by two days and 8 miles on trails covered with solid ice, slush, and standing water. Which, come Friday, I had had enough of. Well, at least my feet had enough of the lateral torsion caused by hiking on lumpy ice and slush.

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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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The Last Day (2025 Edition)

I slept in a bit on Wednesday, waiting for daylight, hoping to get some actual miles in my feetz, and pics on my SD card after days away from the woods due to a multi-day ice storm.

I headed out around 8 AM and was disappointed to come to the park gate and see roadblocks with CLOSED signs up due to the number of downed trees and the service roads being solid ice. “Well, I’ll be gahdamn!” I mumbled as I turned around in the entrance way, followed by, “I CANNOT BE STOPPED!!

No, I did’t go around the gates and help myself to the park after being asked not to, I’m not that big of a dick. I had Plan B already in my noggin.

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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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Same, Warmer, Worse

Part I, Nearly Identical

Tuesday’s loop was the same as Monday’s, down to the same exact mileage; 6.09, and my time was within two minutes of Monday’s, including pauses for attempts at crap photos and a stop for bladder emptying.

I did start earlier, so that meant nearly two full miles done in darkness with a headlamp before the real balls of the dark grey day appeared, keeping ISO readings above 5000 and shutter speeds too low for quality photos even after the sun rose at 8:06 AM.

While I got next to no shots, I saw some geese in the river, an eagle flying in the distance, and a pileated woodpecker pecking high in a dark canopy of leafless trees. I did manage another deer shot (seen above), but that was about it over the 6+ miles.

Part II, Wednesday

After two days and 12.18 miles of snowshoeing, my legs and I were pretty set on keeping the miles under six on Wednesday. Especially since the temperature was 38˚ when I left the house at 6:45. That is 40˚ warmer than it was just over a week ago when I started down the trail in -2˚F temps.

While warmer temps are nice and it was great to lumber without gloves and a bobble hat, the softer snow is not so nice. Knowing that things were going to be a bit soft and slow, I figured anything over four would be fine with me, especially since I had shit to do at home followed by my bi-weekly appointment with the OG Mindbender in the early afternoon.

I was 100% right on the snow being softer and more work to get through, but I was hopeful that warmer temps would mean more critters. Um, no.

The extent of my critter sightings on the day was two deer deep in the woods, a couple of crows flying overhead, a few squirrels, and some snow fleas (Hypogastrura nivicola), but I don’t know if they count as critters or not. So, that was a bit disappointing.

Even more disappointing is the knowledge that the high temperature on Thursday is going to be 50˚ with a 1/4 inch of rainfall in the forecast, on top of 10 inches of melting snow. Then on Friday, the high temp is only going to be 28˚. Ug!! Things are going to get REAL messy, REAL fast.

With that said, I have already mentally prepared myself to skip my morning lumber on Thursday, and hope that everything freezes overnight. We shall see.

My apologies for the lack of photos and for spending nearly an entire post talking about the weather. I’m a real piece of shit for that. There’s a reason that this unnecessary, mundane shit show of a blog is unread by millions and free!

Later.

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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