I am on my second pair of Hokas and I think I am ready for my third. I started with the re-release of the Clifton One one oneoneone. Super ugly shoe but it helped with my plantar plate injury I discussed here. One thing I can confirm is that when running in your 40’s, your shoes are really important!
My second pair of Hokas was the Rincon, much better looking and frankly, more comfortable. The tongue never stayed put in the horrendously ugly Clifton Ones and the Rincon had a more comfortable fit all around.
I don’t know how to crop in wordpress
I have run many, many miles in these shoes. I can’t tell you the exact number because Runkeeper and I are no longer speaking. I run 3-6 miles every other day, carry the one, that’s a lot of miles since Christmas, when I got these Hoka Rincons. After several weeks of lies, 12 min mile runs and other impossibilities, I decided to change my tracking ap. To be honest, social distance running has been more about mental then physical health, so my stats seem to matter less. Virtually every race has gone virtual so I wasn’t really training for anyting. I am now using my default Samsung health, I don’t love it but Runkeeper and my GPS couldn’t find a way to get along.
Back to the shoes, I am tempted to find another pair of these. The newest Rincon 2 aren’t my favorite colors, I guess this one is ok.
What I liked about the Hoka Rincon:
Lightweight, I am apparently very weak and most shoes feel like those aerobic lead weights people used to wear in the 80s. At least that is how they feel to me.
Breathable, the mesh is very interesting, though I am starting to get some holes in mine. The hammer toe I am now sporting after my plantar plate tear, approves of these shoes
Color, I love the grey and the teal. I don’t feel like I am wearing orthopedic shoes.
No blisters
Can’t feel gravel. Loved my Merrells but I could feel every stone I ran over. I could run over fairly long spikes and not feel anything in these.
Don’t Love about Hoka Rincon
Not much in the way of arch support. I actually use these inside and though I have no background in podiatry, I have found them very helpful against blisters from pronating. There is no evidence for any of this, I could very well be exacerbating some other issue but since I went to several podiatrists/orthopedists who were less useful to me than a Wendy’s drive up window.
Material is a little flimsy but I think that also adds to the comfort.
Could be wider in the midsole/bunion area.
I am getting ready for my first official trail run, a 10k in West Virginia next weekend. Let’s hope for no tropical storms!
Avoiding bears and clearing land, tips and tidbits!
A beautiful sunrise at the homestead to start the 4th of July. It was this very clearing where I saw the bear!
Getting our Bearings
As much as one can mentally prepare to see such things, I had mentally prepared myself to see a few things, ticks, rattlesnakes and bears. With the amount of brush/thorn/possibly barbed wire we were clearing, I treated every stick like it was a snake. We had far fewer ticks than on our first day, we had sprayed the area ( I am sure this is in the environmentally incorrect way) but I can only handle so many ticks and weeks later we still seem to have bees, dragonflies and butterflies so maybe they hate ticks too. I had read much about the black bear, in Virginia it appears to be flourishing. In this reading, I found that, unlike vampires, bears do not need to be invited into your home. Black bears also like the smell of shampoo and soap, luckily we were filthy. I was brushing my teeth ( also an attractant) and attempting to spit far from our campsite when I saw something huge at the end of the clearing. Unlike thinking that every speck of dirt is a tick and that every stick is a snake, there is no mistaking a bear. The bear took one look (sniff) at my showered personage and ran swiftly into the woods. I have since seen a few tracks and dirty paw marks on my car, but no further sighting of the bear, at least not by us. The gentlemen with the backhoe who helped level a bit of our clearing to make way for the shed-cabin (a process accelerated by the bear-sighting) said the bear ran out at one point. Here is the best photo I could get of the paw prints.
I did buy bear spray in case I am unable to persuade a bear that I smell very un-soap like and my attempts to make myself noisy and larger fail.
In all seriousness, though I am still told by Google that I have zero readers, I will share my bear-minimum knowledge.
Don’t eat in your tent, this shouldn’t be hard for most people but if your have a kid who likes to hide food in her back-pack “just in case,” you may need to do a pat down before bed.
Don’t keep food or trash in or around your tent, nor in your car, we were told to sling a bag over a tree but that seemed crazy. I did not have a bear box but if you remember our shed-trailer, it made a good bear box.
3. Do your toothpasting/facewashing away from your tent, we walked down the driveway to spit out our paste. I am aware they sell some kind of camping toothpaste but I am winging it here.
4 Be noisy when you walk in the woods, we have two children with us most of the time, we never take a quiet walk in the woods, and that, my friend, has made all the difference.
During the great Pandemic of 20-ought, I have heard about kids withering away from lack of vitamen D. Determined to develop strong bones and immunity, I put those kids to work, we cut, we hauled. We had’t wised up to the neccesity of a wood chipper yet, or we would have chipped as well.
How many rattlesnakes do you see?
We had a mixed weather forecast over the 4th of July, we expected rain every day but wound up not having any. This was really lucky because when it did rain while we were tent camping a week or so later, we were grossly under-prepared.
My cast-iron cooking skills started to improve, my eggs weren’t so sad looking!
I have no explanation of the slingshot or the whipping cream.
To show that I am not entirely heart-less, we did take a day trip to a nearby waterfall. It was a nice hike and would have been refreshing has I thought to bring aqua socks!
We knew that we wanted to add a shed to use as a camping cabin, we also knew we had mountain views all around. Though we enjoyed our 4 nights of tent camping, we knew long term it would be more relaxing to have a dry place to stay. We picked a spot that looked relatively flat and worked our way out from there. The sheer volume and ferocity of the thorns really can’t be described, it was like something out of a fairy tale. The brambles wrapped around each tree, you had to clear them to get close to the trunk or to walk past the trees.
‘Barrow of fun!Spoiler alert! The wheelbarrow doesn’t make it to the sequel. Timber!
After the weeding and wacking and wanton destruction of wheelbarrows, we found our view!
Hello, view!
My advice when clearing raw land
Be prepared to be unimaginably dirty, I was obsessed before we left about making a camp shower, my husband thought I was crazy but I am telling you, it was a life-saver! I followed this guy’s youtube tutorial, super easy. I set it up on paver stones that I brought from my failed raised-bed garden.
You can never have too many tarps, they can be used to haul brush, cover equipment, create shower curtains for step one! They are the duct tape of the animal world.
Repel Tick Defense, I love this stuff! Made with Picardin, a synthetic derivative of a pepper plant, I find it very effective against ticks and chiggers. I am a bug magnet!
Heavy duty gloves, buy in bulk, you will need them.
We bought the “Last Woodchipper in Virginia” it seems, we had to drive to a store close to neither home nor homestead to find it. Country Pro 196-cc Kohler 3-in Steel Gas Wood Chipper isn’t cheap but when compared to renting a comparable until for any length of time, it was worth it to us. I consider Chippy to be a member of our family now, I know we would never have made the progress we made without him. In addition to eliminating our giant piles of rattle-snake den, it provides a much needed mulch layer around camp. I had no idea how important this would be until we had bare ground with no pine needles etc, the dust was unbelievably messy and when it rained, it was all mud. The mulch made a huge difference in not only our erosion control but in the cleanliness of camp.
Beware of sap, I have sap in places I didn’t know could have sap. Water will not help you, not that we had running water. Alcohol based cleaners, hand sanitizers, etc are the key here. I stepped in a hug mound of sap that took every bit of my 80’s kid stepping in bubblegum know-how to get off.
Bring something to relax/sit on. We had a tree- hammock (watch the sap mentioned above) and later added this crazy “inflatable hammock.” My kids describe it as sitting in a giant hot dog bun, but I like it! Sitting is a luxury when you are cleaning raw land.
