Author: lola

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.

  1. 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.
  2. 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

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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!
  4. Heavy duty gloves, buy in bulk, you will need them.
  5. 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.
  6. 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.
  7. 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.
Sneak Peak of peaks!

Next up: Shed Shopping!

I already felt guilty that we skipped a family tradition of celebrating the 4th of July with my husband’s family due to complicating factors of Covid-19 and various areas of civil unrest between our two locations. I felt even guiltier that our plans now included working from dawn till dusk on clearing out land to eventually put a shelter on. As I mentioned previously, we had been there a few days earleir, ink not yet dry on our e-docs, to clear out enough space for a tent and to bring up some supplies. By supplies I mean, tick spray, pruners, clippers, saws, gloves, eyewear all stored in a giant tupperware container.

As a side note, my husband very cleverly turned our harbor freight folding trailer into a mobile shed. The idea was to have a place to store our stuff until we have a space for a longer term shelter without having to haul it all back and forth. We had this trailer for years and have only used it a few times, by adding sides and a lockable top, it became a horizontal shed on wheels!

Our version of a “little red wagon”

There were some “hitches” and glitches but once the wiring was fixed, we were on our way! We took the very long way in order to avoid the highway, I followed behind in the Subaru.

Don’t want to get too close.

We got a later start then intended and when we arrived we needed to get camp set up.

  • Not very inviting, but a little weedwhacking and branch cutting helped!
  • Much better, almost justifies dragging the family to the woods over the 4th of July!

I would love to show you an instagram worthy photo of our first night at our homestead. But since I only have instagram so I can pretend I know how to use it in order to monitor my teenage son’s account, I won’t do that. I would love to show you a pintrest worthy montage complete with gingham tablecloth and picnic baskets. Instead, I will show you my left-over folding chair, plastic table hot mess that we rolled into town with.

Behold! Our luxury camp set up. I am an influencer for Tupperware and Igloo products.

We retired after a delicous feast, we even had a luxurious bathroom facility.

The master bath, there is even a wheelbarrow in case you really had to go.
The wet wipes in the photo are the last of their species, so rare that I hope to pass them down to my children’s children one day.
(Share on Pintrest)

I would be lying if I didn’t tell you that this first night I had some serious reservations. The first two visits to the lot we had many ticks on us, I was really worried about ticks heading into this camping adventure. I did find this spray at Tractor Supply (basically a hillbilly target and I mean that lovingly as a newly minted hillbilly.) It is made from some part of a chrysanthemum which, like baby oil to Jersey shore people, is beautiful but deadly (to ticks.) We had far fewer ticks, but there was still panic in the tent with one or both children bemoaning their fate of spending the night in our hot, possibly tick filled tent. We brought air mattresses as I knew the ground would be root laden and unlevel and the battery operated air pump we brought died midway through filling the first mattress. Que the whining about having to blow up air matresses by mouth and my husband and I attempt to put everything into our “mobile shed/ bear box.” Between the bickering, the heat, the fear of bears, the tiny battery operated fan which did nothing and the overwhelming prospect of clearing out acres of tick-filled trees Paul Bunyon style, I felt like I had made a huge mistake. I may have threatened to leave first thing in the morning and leave them with a babysitter if I ever darkened this forest again.

We all woke up in better spirits. I had not been eaten by a bear, our shed on wheels did not have claw marks all over it, there wasn’t a layer of ticks on my face by morning and it was actually cold at night. Too cold, and I hadn’t brought sleeping bags as it was close to 90 during the day. Live and learn, I did have one blanket that the kids shared. My husband and I froze. More on that later.

We set to work with chainsaw, loppers, clippers and started making piles. I am a worker and happiest when busy. The piles grew larger and so did our turning radius!

This is around the time we spotted the “murder hornet.”

During the tree trimming/cutting we upset some winged and angry insect which resembled a larger yellow-jacket. We named it the “murder hornet” after the Covid-19 trifecta. We may have put our tent tarp on top of their nest because in the morning, we all could hear a very loud buzzing.

After a day of work, we could finally see the mountain view we had fought through ticks and hornets and lots of thorns to get to. Did I mention the thorns?

We see you, mountain view!

We made a lot of progess this first day.

To reward us all for this hard work, I lightly seared and then mostly boiled steaks! Cast iron cooking on a tiny propane grill is a skill. A skill I do not have.

We missed the last stop to flavor town a few miles back. At least we have the fire extinguisher handy is case that steak boils over.

We will discuss more about my shower in the next post, because with all of this de-thorning, cutting, pushing and pulling, we were filthy. I will finish with this beautiful sunset walk, a reminder of why we fell in love with this area. A serene evening, just before we saw the bear.

Yes, I said bear.

Do you sometimes feel like we have lost touch with part of our humanity? Our modern life is so easy and we take so much for granted. I am not a luddite and I do believe that science and technology can create a better world for everyone but I sometimes wonder how much of our humanity we lose due to the technological world. How many “Bed Bath and Beyond” and “Applebees” do we need? For better or worse, the Covid-19 paradigm shift, hasn’t altered my social life much. We tend to be home bodies or forced family fun day trippers. We don’t dine out much, don’t engage in a lot of social activities but try to get outdoors and play or do yard work as much as possible.

My son is a teenager and with each passing day I am more aware of how short our time is as a family unit. Though we spend nearly all of our time together, I am always questioning if we are teaching him enough. During these last few months at home, I am trying to really get the point through to both of my children that the only constant is change and the ability to adapt to your situation is the most important thing to learn.

So back to the land, literally and figuratively. I am a real-estate junkie and follow all types of home and lands on the various websites, monitoring the sales and price changes. We spend a lot of time in the mountains, here in Virginia they aren’t as busy as in many places and hotels, cabins, campsites etc can be in short supply. I saw a large price drop on a 13 acre parcel of land bordering West Virginia, showed it to my husband. He also thought it sounded like a good deal and called the agent. The agent said they were considering an offer at the moment but were waiting to hear back on a counter-offer. I asked if we could also put in an offer, he said sure could and my crazy husband and son took off on a Sunday afternoon for a 3 hour drive to see the lot.

I think it was a good bonding experience for the two “men” to go and look at the land, it was a rough parcel with no clearing. They had to cut their way through and by standing on a stump, a mountain view could be seen in the distance. Though it wasn’t an area we have done much exploring in, it was within an hour of many hiking/biking/kayaking places we wanted to be near, the price couldn’t be beat and with Corona-Tine still in effect for most summer activities, it would be something to do as a family.

As a kid, I never went camping. The closest I ever came to camping as a child was the time I went to summer camp for a week and slept in a cabin. I didn’t really enjoy the communal living aspect and I became violently ill with food poisoning one night and thew up all over my bunk and the bunk below me. I spent a lot of time in the infirmary. I did not make life-long friends at this camp.

After I married my husband, we went tent camping once in South Dakota. I don’t remember much about this trip except we brought along our little shih-tzu mix and he barked at every noise he heard. It was a busy and noisy campground and we didn’t sleep much.

Now that my kids are older, we have taken them camping a few times. I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. I tend to be a control freak and I think having to let all of that go is actually quite relaxing for me. I actually prefer the remote campsites, no bathrooms or people right next to you. If you are going to the wilderness having a giant RV next to you running a generator isn’t my idea of fun. So while I actually like camping, I don’t particularly like camgrounds.

I have always wanted to own land. I joke about wanting to be the “landed” gentry.” My mother’s family comes from a long line of farmers and I like to think that I have land lust in my blood. I also have a deep doomsday prepper vein constantly running in the back of my head. The last few months have really brought this to a head and I had to check myself from going Mad Max. But recent events and shortages also showed how by being as prepared (and certainly there were lessons on things to improve upon) I was much less stressed than I might have been otherwise.

I like to consider myuself a minimalist, I like to keep the belongings I have for as long as possible, I try to keep life as simply as possible. I work to live not live to work. Recently, we found some acerage, priced very inexpensively, in the mountains about 3 hours from where we live. We made an offer on sight and closed a few weeks later. The day we signed our documents on-line, we headed to the property with a weed whacker, a chainsaw, tick spray and a dream. We cleared just enough to fit our tent so that the next time we came back, 4 days later over the 4th of July, we had a homebase!

I am going to chronicle our progress here, we have had a blast getting outside and getting very very dirty!

I am racking up the miles, I recently had my Runkeeper odometer pass 999 miles, nothing exciting happened and it did indeed still carry over to 4 digits. No Y2k style meltdown (yes, I am a Gen Xer.) As there is no chance I will be racing against anyone anytime soon, I am focusing on running for distance, not speed.

I have also started listening to audio books while I am running, though I still have my spotify lists and tend to alternate. For some reason my bkue tooth automatically connects in my car to the last thing on my Spotify. I listen to an embarassing list of music, Poison’s, “Talk Dirty to Me” is likely to blare on the speaker, scarring my children for life.

I have also stepped up my Etsy shop during the quarantine, this gives me a lot of anxiety. I still have trouble putting my art out there and I am afraid of negative feedback. I have been called thin skinned, usually by my parents, for my whole life. I like to think I am overly sensitive, I even found a book about it once. It was very relatable to me but hilarious to think about announcing that ” I am a highly sensitive person, please keep the noise down!”

I did sell two painting, I liked them, I hope the buyers did! I just posted these two today:

currently listed on Etsy
my saucony socks! And a painting, also listed on Etsy!

No Pinterest Pics Here!

{Warning} There are no pretty photos on this blog. I can link you to my Etsy shop for that.

I am not afraid to substitute, my family is afraid when I substitute, with good reason. I have had some less than successful baking results, but they were “healthier” so there’s that. Except the time when I added salt instead of sugar, I am pretty sure that was at LD50.

In my defense, my sugar and salt decorative jars are very similar. It was inedible. Spit it out inedible. I blamed the salted butter, which I accidentaly bought during the Corona panic buying. It was not the butter, I added a cup of salt. But they were almond flour, so healthy?

This morning, I needed a pick-me-up, I didn’t sleep well. I am trying to reinvent my life post-COVID19. This is a story for another time. We are not a “paleo” family, no verified allergies, just the vain wheat belly reasons. I randomly subsitute almond flour into traditional recipes, it doesn’t always work out. I also don’t believe in using more than one bowl when baking, sort of a “one pot cooking” but for baking, it also doesn’t always work out. I know there is a science, nay, a chemistry behind the two or sometimes 3 bowls used in baking recipes, liquid/solids, acids/bases, oxidation/reduction, etc. I just don’t think it’s efficient and as I have learned more about myself, my goal is to optimize, sometimes the baking doesn’t look so pretty.

Exhibit A. #blueberry (I don’t know how to use a hashtag either)
Kids, come take a scoop of blueberry mess!

Back to this morning, today was a good day. The recipe, once I scrolled past all of the manicured pictures and found the buried recipe treasure, was pretty simple. I decided on a few substitutions. I didn’t have much coconut oil, I generally use olive oil for everything (I know, most of the best pastries are made with olive oil, ha-ha) I buy it in bulk (optimizing) and it usually works ok in most things. I find that olive oil and almond flour prove to be a little leaden when they combine forces so I use whole plain yougurt. This seems to add the fat but allows for a lighter texture. More edible, less building material.

Not all substitutions are successful, i.e. salt for sugar, vinegar and milk for buttermilk. Pretty sure the indigenous people built dwellings from this maize creation. You could really taste the vinegar, which was not at all tasty.

I beat the eggs, yogurt and honey with a hand mixer. I felt like it needed some vanilla extract so I added a capful or so. I then mixed in my salt, baking soda and almond flour, being oh-so-careful not to overmix. Acid/base blah blah blah.

For the topping I used brown sugar, I don’t know what coconut sugar is, cinammon and all spice. Also, I learned that allspice is not a mixture of all of the common baking spices as I thought for most of my life, according to my Google overlords, it is “Jamaica pepper, myrtle pepper, pimenta, or pimento, is the dried unripe berry of Pimenta dioica.” I think I will say I added Jamaica pepper next time, sounds more beachy. I drizzled a little oilive oil on top. I did not add slivered almonds as I felt the 3.5 cups of ground almonds was probably enough nuts for my GI system to process this morning.

I popped it in the oven and then the questions began. “Another coffee cake, are you putting blueberries in this one too?” “Is that almond flour, why can’t you use regular flour?” “How old is this coffee?” It baked in less than 30 minutes and was quite attractive for one of my baking experiments.

The entire cake was consumed in a few minutes, there were no stray blueberries squished onto the floor. A success! Additionally, I had but one bowl to wash. It was relatively light, delicious and practically a vegetable. I went on a run later and did not feel like I swallowed any lead weights.

No, I am not a professional photographer, but I can see why you might be wondering.

If you asked me a few years ago if I would ever consider the benefits or even attempt something called a “long run,” I would have laughed. It’s been 3 weeks since I had to close my office due to COVID-19 concerns, 3 weeks since my kids abruptly left school. So much has changed. Yet, as someone who once purchased the domain name, hermitwhimsy.com, it’s more like a restrictive summer vacation to us. We generally don’t socialize much and our summers are chock full of togetherness. We hike a lot in the summer and explore places and things, we are trying to stay close to home now.

The long run has become my coping mechanism to deal with uncertainty. I take a wide berth around the people I never saw until a few weeks ago, I run all winter and summer, like the post office, wind, sleet, snow, etc and have never seem most of these people.

I didn’t realize how much my winter psoas injury had effected my running. I read that a posas injury can take months to heal, but I am stubborn and don’t think normal healing times apply to me. I am not running fast, though there isn’t much incentive as all of our local races have been cancelled, but I feel strong and I am pretty much heading out until I feel like turning around. I ran over 7 miles the other day, a personal record. Not a marathon or even a half-marathon for that matter, but I kept a steady pace (around 9:45 min/mi) and managed to run the last mile in under 8:30 min/mi. I listened to music, admired the blooming trees, held my nose past the Bradford Pear trees (smells like vomit!) and focused on putting one foot in front of the other.

I am trying to look at this break in my life and work as a sabbatical, something I always joked that I wanted. Well, I have it and now I just need to keep putting one foot in front of the other. And veer around all of those other people.

Today is a special day for me. This is the 3rd year I ran in our local Sleighbell race. 2 years ago was my first 5k. 2 years ago I was so tired after the race, I spent the next day in bed and took many Ibuprofen. 2 years ago, I was panting my way to a 32 something finish time. 2 yearsa go I know I walked part of the race.

Today I ran a 25:43. Today I did not need to take any Ibuprofen. Today, I ran the entire race and sprinted (my version) at the end. Today I feel good. What a difference 2 years can make. 2 years of running consistently 3-5 times a week, despite illness, injury, and weather.

It’s not just a difference of 7 minutes, it’s a difference of confidence and stoicism in the face of less than ideal body and weather. It’s knowing that you have committed and short of something cancelling the race, you are going to show up. My body feels strong and my mood is good.

I am going to be even faster next year.

Maybe you are new to running. Maybe you ran in years past but want to try again. Maybe you just want to read a blog post on running a 5k, no judgment here, everyone needs to start somewhere. This is the story of running my first 5k.

The first question you need to ask yourself is, “why should I run a 5k.” I don’t think there is a good answer but knowing your “why” will help keep you motivated. For some it is a way to lose a few pounds, for others, a chance to spend some time away from people and devices. Since this is my blog, I will go first and tell you why I ran my first 5k.

I actually ran 2 first 5ks which isn’t actually possible but I will explain. The first was never meant to be part of a larger running plan, my son was in a Montessori preschool and as an annual fundraiser, they had organized a 5k race. I was a local business owner and was one of the sponsors, a perk of which was a free race entry. As mentioned before, my son is a natual born runner and he “trained” with me. By trained I mean he ran next to me, talking the entire time while I gasped for air. I don’t think I ever even ran 3 miles until the day of the race, this is not the way to train for a 5k!

This first of 2 first 5k doesn’t really count in my book. I did finish and may have even placed (it’s a really small race!) and I was sore for several days afterwards. There was no plan and there was no commitment.

My Second 1st 5K

My interest in running was piqued about 6 months before my actual first 5k. My son was in middle school and was in the running club. As part of the running club all of the schools in the district participated in a spring 5k that runs through Colonial Williamsburg. The race is early in the morning and spring in Virginia can be unpredictable, this year is was a very hot race morning. My son was the only one who raced that year. I stood near the start line and as the runners passed, I felt an overwhelming mixture of emotions. I was brought to tears by the ROTC and military runners leading the race, many of whom held American flags as well as the wheelchair and stroller athletes. There were waves upon waves of kids, elementary, middle and high school all running together. I guess it was the together that got me. I felt so isolated and an “us and against the world” mentality that I was envious of people who were participating as a group. I was jealous of the runners. Proud and envious at the same time. I wished that could be me.

watching the start of the race, as a spectator

“I can’t run, I hate running, the last time I ran was when they made me run a mile for the Presidential Physical Fitness Test in high school, my organs aren’t well attached to my abdominal wall and they jostle too much when I run.”

I had repeated those things to myself and to others for so many years that I truly believed them. I also thought I was in pretty good shape, not overweight and I walked a bit, sometimes I even did a You Tube yoga video!

It was in the fall 3 years ago that my son brought home the flyer for the winter race in which the school participated. In a half joking way I said we should all run it. We signed up. We paid our monies and I put on what I thought were running shoes and headed out the door.

Which brings me to me feet. I had been having foot pain, likely from a neuroma, for a few years. The only shoe that seemed to help was the Ryka Graffik, super light weight and good arch support. This is what I started running in, today, this wouldn’t make it though a month of my running but at the time, it was good enough. You don’t need fancy shoes to get out there and get started! I ran in these shoes for several months before changing to a minimalist shoe discussed here. We live in a neighborhood with many hills, out house is at the bottom of one of those hills, it is a half mile of a steady incline from our house to the top of the main road. I made it about a quarter of a mile, I have no idea what my pace was, I wasn’t tracking my pace, my time or anything I was just putting one foot in front of the other!

My family laughed a little at me, I was more out of shape than I wanted to believe (did I mention I had just turned 40?) but I walked up the rest of the hill, turned around and ran back home. Downhill. I had about a month of what I will call practice because to me training implies a plan and there was no plan, only survival. My only goal was to finish. I may not have been in the best shape but I am very stubborn and perhaps too prideful, I would finish this race.

I have suffered from insomnia most of my life, mostly due to anxiety. I was so anxious leading up to this stupid 5k, I know it wasn’t the Olympics but I was really afraid I wouldn’t be able to do it. I slept little and poorly and woke up very early. It was freezing outside, literally freezing rain, about 30 degrees and sleeting. I knew from other parents that there was a lot of standing around outside before the race so we opted to leave the kids at home and head to the race ourselves. Miserable, cold, wet, nervous. I wasn’t sure what to wear, how many layers? How do I pin on this number? This all becomes important around mile 2 when I am so hot I am trying to take off my outer layer, which I have pinned to my inner layer, while running since I told myself that I wouldn’t stop no matter what. I planned to take it slow and steady and finish this race.

My husband and I huddled under the hospital carport to escape the wind and did some stretching, when it was time to line up, we left our coats near the breezeway and headed over. They had little signs for your anticipated time, I lined up in the 30-35 minute spot. I remember little about the first mile, it was kind of surreal to me, “you are actually running in a 5k, you are really doing it!” There was a a turn around near the 1 mile mark and as I headed back the other direction, I was surprised by how many people were behind me, despite my very slow pace.

I tend to run hot. I get really hot when I run. I didn’t know this yet and had put on gloves, ear muffs and 2 layers of long sleeves. Even at 30 degrees, this was too much. After the 2 mile mark, I pulled my outer layer over my head, while holding my phone and my not cordless headphones, wriggled one arm loose and discovered that I was pinned by my number to my inner shirt. I am still not sure how I undid all of this, I was able to free the pin and I must have repinned the bib, though with freezing fingers I think I only managed to get 2 back on. I tied my sweatshirt around my waist and pressed on. My husband later marvelled that I was able to do all of this while running and holding the above mentioned phone and headphones. I don’t know, as a mother we figure out all kinds of ways to get out of a jam. The good news is that all of this undressing and phone holding distracted me from the feeling that I was dying so it brought me another half mile closer to the finish line. As I made the final turn into the parking lot towards what I thought was the finish line, I was so disappointed to see there must be another parking lot loop to go as I couldn’t see the finish line. All I saw was another hill. I stopped for a second, then I heard my husband yelling, “Don’t stop the finish is just around this corner!” I wiped the snot on to my sleeve, mopped the rain from my eyes and pressed on. Though I had planned not to stop, I forgave myself, I had tried my best and finished the race. My time was a 32:35, a 10:31 mile pace. I placed 275 out of 575 runners/walkers. I was amazed to have been in the middle and impressed with all of the people coming out in this awful weather to do this thing together. I was part of the group, a crazy group of people raising money for Habitat for Humanity, cold and wet together.

I was looking back at my Runkeeper activities and I didn’t start using the ap until the week following this race. But I got right back out there and ran regularly despite the holidays and inspite of the weather.

My next race was even colder, taking place in the beginning of February 2018. My goal for this 5k was to be under 30 minutes. This race also featured a large uphill in the beginning, but as I had been running a similar hill from my house, it didn’t seem so bad, plus I got to finish on a down hill! My time for this second 5k was a 29:05, a 9:23 pace. I had shaved over a minute per mile in just over a month.

How I feel about cold weather running, I’m usually hot but I don’t want to be cold….

I tried to run every other day, usually 2 to 2.5 miles. I do not like to run on a treadmill so unless it was below 25 degrees or ice/snow on the ground, I ran outside. Being outside is probably what I enjoy most about running. I feel like an animal on the earth not a human in a cage. I know a lot of people need to run on treadmills due to work/family/weather issues but it takes much of the joy out of running for me.

My 3rd 5K,

At the beginning of this post, I talked about the mixture of joy/envy/pride I had watching that group of runners from all walks of like running in unison. This year, at the same race, on a beautiful and not hot spring day, I found my place with the people.

If you haven’t visited Colonial Williamsburg, you should. It is a unique place of living history, both in architecture and landscape. I love running here. Having a backdrop of the interpreters dressed in colonial garb next to the William and Mary students and the elementary student field trippers and tourists provides endless people watching opportunities.

The race begins adjacent to the William & Mary campus, winds through the campus and finishes on the historic Duke of Gloucester St. Williamsburg in the spring is beautiful and seeing everything come alive is invigorating. This time I was not a spectator, I was part of the messy, loud throng!

My Runkeeper clocked this course as a 3.2 (which it has in subsequent years) so I think it is slightly longer than a 5k, my time was a 27:54, an 8:44 min/mile pace. Nearly 5 minutes faster than my race a few months earlier.

The last 3 years hasn’t always been easy or fun. I have had my share of foot pain, wardrobe malfunctions and less than optimal performances. I haven’t yet run a 5k where after the first mile I am not vowing to never run again. Without fail, once the race is over, I am at the reception table picking up flyers for the next race. Running has brought me emotional peace, a sense of pride in my accomplishments I haven’t felt since my school days and shared experiences. with my family.

This is the story of my first (second first) 5k, In my next post I will give my unsolicited and likely unhelpful advice about running your first 5k!

You know how we all need someone to toot our horn? To make a small accomplishment feel like something worth sharing? I know I am often the first to dismiss my progress as “old lady running,” but in truth, I am proud of my achievements. Runkeeper and I go way back, I started tracking my runs about 3 years ago when my son came up with the hare-brained scheme to sign his family up for a local 5k. As a first-born child I am hooked on praise and concrete goals. Runkeeper (or any tracking app) gives you that instant feedback that the people-pleaser in me so craves.

Runkeeper does more than that for me, the little confetti animations when I achieve a new fastest pace in a week/month/fortnight etc breaks up the miles and gives me a second to reflect. The Richmond Marathon took place this last weekend and though I didn’t run, or even consider running the marathon, I know several people who did run the half-marathon and I have even considered trying it next year.

I have been working on a “training plan” using a more structured approach than my typical go out an run and see how I feel. For the past month, I have been doing one longer run a week, 5 or 6 miles at a slow pace, running for duration rather than speed. I have been shooting for around an hour and found this to be a very pleasant run, usually the run I enjoy most all week. Who would have thought a long run would have been my favorite? Not me.

I discussed my version of a “tempo run” here, I have tweaked this a bit. Once a week I run around my 5k pace, which I believe can be improved by a bit, as I find the adrenaline rush I get at the beginning of a race flusters me. I am trying to push myself more instead of my usual, lazy running.

I have incorporated sprint workouts into my training, I am sure the neighbors think I have lost my mind but I can really tell the difference in my endurance since starting these sprint runs. I am not that fast, I feel like I am really fast but Runkeeper would beg to differ. I run at about 7:30 pace for quarter miles at a time for 1-2 miles then finish with a 8:30 ish mile. I like these days least, but maybe in time I will learn to love them.

Yesterday, Runkeeper sent me the nicest email.

This run was my longest duration and my greatest distance and my largest elevation climb! That’s a lot of adjectives for one run! The best part is that I felt good running, not fast but that wasn’t my objective. I could have run faster as my last half mile was almost a minute faster than the rest of my run. I will fear no 10k!

3 years into my running journey, thinking about it makes me a little emotional. My kids are so much bigger than they were, looking at the pictures from our first race together it doesn’t seem possible that my son is now in high school. I have lost weight, though that wasn’t my goal, I sleep better and I have more confidence to tackle things that I know will be difficult. I will definitely write more about the insomnia thing, running has possibly saved my life in that respect.