During the quarantine I did a lot of (social)distance running. I had nothing to train for and didn’t pay much attention to my pace. Running fast makes me anxious, my body experiences the adrenaline rush as a full blown panic attack. Therefore, I prefer slower, longer runs. As mentioned before, I am still relatively new to running, I have no younger me to compare myself to aside from the forced Presidential Fitness Test mile in high school.
The competitive streak I didn’t know I had comes out during races. Intellectually I know that I am running in the least competitive age group (at least in my area) and in a smaller community, it’s not the Olympics. Spiritually, I am Flo Jo, without the finger nails.
As mentioned previously I was disappointed in my last race. Yes, the conditions were terrible but I sucked wind. I decided that my “leisurely stroll through the park” runs were not helping me improve my speed.
My kids are putting me on a speed workout plan! Today I ran 1/4 mile repeats (1 lap to me) 400’s to the track people out there.
1st lap was a warm up 9:41
2nd was 7:11
3rd lap was a slower lap at 8:02
4th was 7:30
5th 7:51
6th was a 6:47 (Flo-Jo!)
7th lap 7:30
I walked for around 30 seconds in between, my daughter also had me do some shorter sprints but I don’t know how to time them well, they were around a 6:23 pace
I felt pretty good, maybe I should run my next 5k in half mile bursts!
I also ran 3 days in a row, I will take tomorrow as a rest day, I have a feeling I will need it.
Tracking my runs is something I obsess over. Not because I am in some sort of Olympic training program but I think it helps to keep me accountable and I take pride in my steady, though slow, progress.
Over the summer, Runkeeper began to give me fits. My GPS would stop tracking as soon as I woke my screen up. I would run 5 miles and have Runkeeper tell me I went half a mile at a pace of 32 miles per minute. I tried changing the sleep settings, nothing seemed to help.
Reluctantly, I tried a few other aps. Map my Run has too many advertising features and it seemed like the most useful stuff was a premium upgrade. I settled on Samsung Health. It gives me all of the useful data which for me includes, current pace, average pace, distance and duration. You can also monitor cadence and elevation, which isn’t available on many free aps.
My biggest complaint is that I find the interface difficult to use when I am actually running. Runkeeper has that tacky orange and blue but easy to read screen. I have a tendency to think I am running faster than I actual am so a visual reminder keeps me on pace. Yes, I am one of those old ladies who runs with her phone. What if I need to make a phone call? What if my kids have an emergency? What if I need to send a cell tower ping for my last known location so the FBI can track me? What if I see the perfect sunrise and need to take a photo while being kidnapped?
Running with your phone presents some difficulties. In the beginning of my running journey, I would just hold my phone. After one race in particular, I developed a neural cyst I believe from squeezing my phone in my efforts to break the sound barrier.
Arm bands do not work well for me. Like many runners, I have spindly little arms and every arm band I tried wound up around my wrists. In addition, I am a fiddler, it is too difficult for me to navigate spotify and my running ap while staring at my under-developed bicep.
A simple hand held holder works best for me. I can still take a photo when I unstrap the phone, it’s a little clunky but much easier than trying to fish my phone out of a slot type holder.
this is not my hairy wrist
I am going to work on toggling my settings for Samsung health, the ap provides a lot of data which is great to review after a run but I need to find a away to make it more user friendly whilst running.
I paint in spurts. During the summer I don’t paint much. Between torturing my children at the “cabin” and working outside, I just can’t make myself sit still long enough to paint. I carry paint with me places but don’t usually do any real work.
As soon as there is a whiff of fall in the air, my brushes come out. I can feel the days getting shorter and the darkness starts to descend on me. Painting is a coping mechanism for me. I am used to having a day or two of quiet during the week but with this virtual school thing, I am never alone.
I painted a few of these wave painting as a way to practice some ocean watercolor techniques I picked up from you tube. Though they are technically not very difficult, they are fun to make and visually interesting. These paintings have been my only sellers on Etsy!
Had I thought of it, I would have “unmasked” this painting in a video. I will do that next time! Instead, I created an animation through Google photos, not quite the same thing!
Perhaps my favorite things about these type of watercolor paintings is that they don’t have to be perfect. Having a job that requires pretty much constant perfection, I appreciate the “happy accidents” that watercolor allows.
The mess behind the madness
Though I can’t quit my day job, I have enjoyed having an Etsy shop. It’s nice to share my artwork with people who don’t have to like it!
I usually run significantly faster during a race than I do on my own. Adreneline is probably a factor as is peer pressure and being in a new location. There is a joy and energy that pushes you to perform.
Yesterday our family participated in an 8k/5k, the crowd was larger than other post-Covid races and seemed a little loosely organized for such a large event. The teenagers handing out the race bibs weren’t especially friendly, there were 2 bathroom stalls (only one with toilet paper) and the weather turned for the worse.
The vibe was off and it never felt “right.” I struggled after 3 miles ( I was running the 8k), I probably haven’t trained for 5 miles enough, I should have been running 6 miles to be ready for 5 miles. Humidity was at 100% and the light rain turned into a downpour. At the 3 miles mark, I looked longingly at the 5k finish line. Instead, I trudged on, quite literally through the remaining 2 miles.
The last 2 miles were off the pavement and onto a muddy and rocky fire road. The fourth mile was downhill, leading to the inevitable, soggy and muddy turnaround. I began the slog up the hill, through the mud for the last mile. I finished, it wasn’t pretty and I didn’t have that, “let’s do it again!” feeling. The joy was missing.
After the race, too many people were crammed into the the too tiny pavilion in an attempt to avoid the torrential downpour. We didn’t stay. The parking lot was a half mile back down the road, we headed to our car and changed into dry shirts. It was so muddy that several people were stuck in the mud, their wheels spinning.
The perfect metaphor for how I felt this race. Stuck in the mud with my wheels spinning. But just like my slog uphill, the unlucky motorists pushed and pulled themselves out and eventually found higher ground.
How could I have prepared for this race differently?
Train with enough distance running close to race speed. I needed to do some tempo runs in addition to some longer runs.
Look at the course map! I assumed I knew this course, I had run a 5k in this same park, I had no idea about the fire road and would have paced differently
Check more than one weather site, when I looked, there was a slight chance of rain. It poured.
Bring old shoes. Once I saw the course and how wet everything was, I would have opted to wear my older shoes. Instead, I wore my new Hokas which look pretty sad right now.
Not every race can be a good race. There were things I could have done to better prepare. Out and back courses are not my favorite and I don’t enjoy neighborhood loops. In the future, I should sign up for races that I will likely enjoy. Life is too short to feel pressured into running every local race!
I posted here about my reasons for listening to music while I run. When I want to do a slower placed but longer run, I try to tone down my 80’s music and mix it up with something a little more mellow.
When I feel like I am super fast ( even though evidence does not support this feeling.) My Spotify playlist titled, “Run Fast,” has the following hits:
Lots of Offspring, specifically, “The Kids Aren’t Alright,” “Gone Away,” and most aptly, “You’re Gonna Go Far, Kid.”
“I Wanna Be Sedated,” by the Ramones.
Kenny Loggins’ classic, “Footloose.”
Several Green Day songs, “When I Come Around,” and “Basketcase” are highlights.
“The Distance” by Cake is one of my families favorite songs to play before a race.
I am not a very good parent and Eminem’s, “Lose Yourself” is also one of our family psych up songs. The kids will need something to talk about in therapy aside from the heatless shed-cabin labor camp.
Having watched my husband play a lot of Grand Turismo early in out marriage, I fine the Cardigans, “My Favorite Game” an accelerator.
Looking at this list, cursing appears to be directly proportional to speed in selecting running music, I have Rage Against the Machine, “Killing in the Name” on my race-day play list. I have to make sure I don’t sing along to this one inadvertently. Don’t listen to this one in delicate company.
Me First and the Gimme Gimmes.. This band is my spirit animal. I don’t know how I lived so long without hearing them. They are a punk band covering popular songs, especially from the 80’s. It’s like my teeny bopper inner child ate 2 boxes of Nerds and Mountain Dew. High Energy. Favorite include:
Wild World
Jolene
Nothing Compares 2U
I Will Always Love You
Country Roads
There is another creatively titled Run 2 and Mo Run, I will also share my slow and smooth collection.
The older I get (remember, I am still chilly!) the more I focus on doing things that make me happy. Why then am I cutting downs trees and sleepign in a shed without heat, it must make me happy on some strange, primal level.
I grew up in the 80s and as a child of this time period I am keenly aware of “stranger danger.” Having been fed a regular diet of “After School Specials” and “America’s Most Wanted,” I was keenly aware that I might be kidnapped at any time. Safety, or the illusion of safety is something we Gen X-ers prioritize.
where it all started
Growing up in the 80’s also meant listening to music was one of the most important things in my life. I listened at 9pm to the local “Top 9 tonight.” I never quite understood who was rating them and how it could change daily but I would record my favorite songs from the radio to my cassette player. I did my aerobic workouts listening to my walkman. I never liked the disc man as much, it skipped too much during my jump heavy dance routines. Without social media or in my case, cable television, music was my primary connection to the world around me.
When I began running in my 40’s, it made me feel like a kid again. Seriously, who other than elementary school kids takes off running at full speed (or any speed) for fun and not just to escape a predator? Runners, that’s who. We may look serious with our dri-weave running gear and our hideous Hokas but we really are just giddy kids. Happy to be outside, running into or around puddles, listening to the soundtrack of our youth.
In my neighborhood, where I have defined and regularly trafficked trails, I feel comfortable listening to my earbuds. If I am elsewhere, I may only use one earbud or none at all.
I know “serious” runners don’t listen to music while they run. It’s their loss. Running for me is basically an excuse to listen to music, especially cheesy 80’s music, though I also tend to sing which scares the people around me.
As I write this, our fall came early. I have heard of false spring but around here, there isn’t usually a false fall. The irony is not lost on me that this would have been the perfect temperature for a cross country season. My poor teenage son ran every cross country meet at 90 degrees or above last fall, this is perfect running weather.
I made a batch of chili, no I will not post a recipe or a photo (unless something disastrous happens) but my soup-based meals are usually ok. I will attempt to make cornbread, without any buttermilk substitutions. God willing, it will not taste like a 6th grade science experiment volcano.
44. Forty-four. As an age, it sounds distinctly middle-aged. We were at the cabin this weekend. As it was my birthday, my request was to spend a night at the cabin. As the leaves are changing, our view is opening up even more and it had been couple of weeks since we last visited. I knew it was going to be cold. We plan to install a wood stove, we weren’t expecting this false fall. We packed warm clothing and brought our infrared space heater. The plan was to use the generator to warm up the cabin a bit and then stay chilly but cozy overnight. When we woke up it was 42 degrees in the cabin. Warmer than outside, but not by much. The moral of this story, other than my children will have something to tell their therapists when they are older, is that I was cold. It was in the 40’s and I was cold. When the generator was fired back up and the temperature started rising to 44 degrees my husband said, “It’s 44, your are 44, if you were a temperature you would only be getting warmed up.”
That hit me. If I were 98 years old, that is pretty hot. Even 50 is cold, I probably won’t be comfortable until my mid 60’s. This weekend I will run an 8k, in my new Hokas!
Age, like temperature, is just a number and I am just getting warmed up!
We did more clearing and now Peaky Mountain has a friend!
This is a cross-over post, like when the Cosbys visited the Keatons (pretty sure that never happened but there were a lot of these type of cross-over episodes in the 80s.)
Our original interntion with the off-grid cabin was to provide our family with an active project in the midst of a global melt-down in order to maintain what little sanity my genetic code can provide for us. It was also meant to be a handy sleeping spot for the many hikes and bike trails we enjoy, typically 3 ish hours away from our home. Up until recently, my children felt like it was the equivalent of a North Korean work camp and not so much the idyllic escape or homestead I envisioned. Most of our road races were cancelled or “postponed” indefinitely this summer so I was pleased to find an in person 10k trail race in West Virginia.
This would be my second ever 10k, my family’s first even 10k race. None of us had ever run a trail race before, certainly not up a mountain in West Virginia. The start time was 10 am, leaving us ample time to use our “facilities” and drive the nearly 2 hours to the New River Gorge.
A beautiful drive! Islands in the stream, that is what we are.
We arrived at the race and filled out the Covid-19 required forms, we had our temperature checked and wore masks up to the start line.
I have never run in a trail race before and there was also a half-marathon race at the same time. They did not start us by expected finish time. I learned the hard way that you want to be in the front if you are actually planning on running up the mountain. My daughter and I “ran” the first uphill mile on a single track behind people carrying walking sticks. And walking with walking sticks. I wish I had video of the awkward running in place behind these people. I tried desperately to get around them and not fall off of a cliff. I was hopeful that my son and husband had made it past this walking stick wielding group because I know they would opt to go over the cliff rather than run in place behind this group. Death before dishonor.
My daughter is a warrior, she is only 10 but always ready to try anything! We finished strong, the trail widened up once we neared the top of the trail and we were able to actually run, finishing in the middle of the pack. My son placed 3rd overall, husband was 6th, an overall success for all of us!
Did I mention the view?
Most importantly, our worksite had become not only a cabin but a getaway!
As mentioned previously, I never camped as a child. While I have come to enjoy sleeping in the great outdoors, we realized the impracticality of spending multiple days/nights at the homestead without some sort of shelter. With the clever advent of my husband’s shed-trailer (discussed here), we eliminated much of our lugging back and forth of goods.
The anti-shaggin’ wagon
The summer of 2020 taught me many things; that I have a pretty non-existent social life as a matter of normal, daily, living, we use far too many paper towels, and my job can’t be done remotely. I also learned that when in self or state imposed isolation people buy these items in abundance: paper products, disinfecting products, wood chippers, fences and sheds. Interesting how many of the list above revolves around trees/pulp products. If you were cleaning with pine-sol, I guess it would come full circle. According to those in the business, sheds have been selling like hot cakes. Large, splintery hot cakes. I guess people are working from home and realize they can’t muzzle their children without many repercussions and are resorting to an adult wood-fort in the yard.
Shed Shopping in a Zombie Apocalypse
We considered buying a shed kit, but it was very hard to find one in stock. And it would need to delivered to the house and transported to the lot as our homestead has no delivery address. AND we would have to actually build the shed. I have been told that cost of building materials is rising sharply and doing out the numbers in my area, buying all of the lumber and hardware would be even more costly than the kit and not too far behind the “Amish” shed we eventually bought already assembled and delivered. I am a little hazy on where exactly the Amish fit in to all of this, but my son did some research and told me that all of the sheds you see for sale in the roadside shed patches come from a single factory in Louisiana. The lumber is then sent to the Mennonites where the sheds are assembled into one of several styles and distributed to their dealers. Apparently our shed was assembled by Mennonites in North Carolina, I was fact-checked by my son, so no Amish were involved in the process.
The Winning Shed
After visiting several road-side shed farms (I now see them everywhere, I assume they were always there) we were fortunate to find our dream shed close by the lot. Most of the shed places offer delivery within a 50 mile radius. We opted for a 12×20, double lofted, barn-style shed in a light color with a metal roof.
She’s a beaut, Clarke!
We had been told by multiple outlets that custom order sheds were backed up several months due to demand and the ones on the lot were being sold quickly. We purchased the shed despite not being quite sure if our site was adequately prepared or if the delivery truck could make it up the former logging road leading to our lot. My husband had had several phone conversation with the shed-manager, he was not there the day went to the shed ground, but his new trainee was there! I know she was new, we were very patient, she had no idea about how and when they could deliver our shed. The shed-lady got the shed-manager on the phone and he freaked us out by telling us they couldn’t deliver the shed if we had left any stumps. Would our hand-cleared lot pass muster? We tried showing pictures to the clueless but kind shed-lady. She agreed with us that it looked FINE. Shed manager was back-peddling. Eventually we had a verbal agreement that the dealer would refund our money if the delivery driver said they couldn’t get it up there, that’s good enough in our book! Most of our cleaning was by hand, the trees were relatively small but very dense, we had no idea how wide or flat the site would need to be for delivery of our shed.
We were told it would be about 2 weeks until delivery, we had plenty of time, or so we thought. Luckily, we are very impatient and immediately went back and cut down more trees. A neighbor stopped by and offered his backhoe services, we gladly accepted, he would return during the week to clear out the width and flatten the site a bit more. This is where my important dos and don’ts list in land clearing comes in. The dust, Ken Burns could have held off on making his Dust Bowl documentary and photographed our dusty and weary faces upon returning to our ravaged land. The wood chips and grass seed have given us hope once more.
After the 3 hour trip home, we got a call from the shed-man that they wanted to take a trial run up to the lot prior to the delivery truck making the trip. My husband talked to Roger, the backhoe man, he had returned the next day and done the additional clearing. The 3 hour trip was made again by my patient and bear-fearing husband and he led the shed-man up to the lot. We passed the shed-man test. I wasn’t there for the delivery, but my husband said it quite the production! There is a separate “rascal” type of pulling machine that places the shed on the site after it is delivered from the truck, they use concrete blocks to level the shed and Voila! No more tent camping with the bears!
Our new off-grid getaway!
At some point I will show you the treacherous, miles long, single lane gravel road we take to reach this glorious indoor/outdoor space, it is not for the faint of heart or weak-willed shed delivery people.
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!
