Category: New Normal

I have heard of people becoming born again virgins. Can one have a born-again PR? Let me begin by saying that I have run in a handful of races since the “Corn Teen” of 2020.

not me

The first two were tiny and shy, unsure of what to do in this Covid landscape. One was through the ground of mental hospital on an insanely (poor taste?) hot day. It was a race to promote mental health so there is that irony. Another was the slightly chaotic, very wet and very disappointing 8k that I was unprepared for written about here.

I didn’t think I liked running in races, I am not especially fast, except compared to women of a certain age. Typically, I spend the first mile freaking out that I won’t be able to finish and that they will find me curled in the fetal position when they “sweep” the course at the end. The second mile I am cursing my idiotic ideas and vowing to never race again. “This is the last race I will ever run in, I will only run for fun from this day forth!” By the 3rd mile, I see the literal light at the end of the tunnel and I tell myself the faster I run the faster it will be over. It doesn’t help to think that when I am finishing mile 2, my much faster son has finished the race and is snacking.

Is it me or is that last 0.1 unnecessary? Is it not the longest 100 meters on planet Earth? Do the laws of physics cease to exist? I always forget about that damn 0.1.

Not running in actual races has made me slow. Not even particularly steady, but significantly slower. I thought I would be ok with this but I am not. There is still some life in this old girl yet.

Back to my PR goal of running in the 25’s for my next 5k. Well, I was looking through our local run club results and the results from the last Turkey Trot we ran in Florida and found that I have already done this, more than once! I have no recollection of this, I thought my time was in the 26 range but no, 25:10 is my PR and I see no way that I am capable of running this time in 3 days. That’s something like an 8:06 pace, a pace which is perilously close to what I consider a “sprint.”

But do I look good?

On a positive note, I have been stealing the running sunglasses my son got for his birthday often enough that he finally yelled at me and I bought my own. Like everything I do and buy, I spent way too much time analyzing and being “frugal”. Ordinarily I buy whatever sunglasses are available from TJ Maxx or Marshalls, the idea of buying sunglasses without trying them on seemed foreign. How would I know if they were distorted or if I looked like a cast member from Dynasty?

I settled on these and I love them, the Tifosi “Swank.” The matte finish is so much better for sweaty faces. Having the bright polarizing lens means I don’t have to keep pulling my glasses up and down depending on the tree canopy above, allowing me to leap gracefully over the rocks and roots on the trail. They look pretty cool, at least as cool as I am willing to look. Though more expensive then the 9.99 glasses I usually buy, they are not ridiculously expensive.

In case I didn’t like the Tifosi’s, I bought these Knockarounds. I liked these too so I am keeping them both! They are a little less fancy than the Tifosis but they are still much better than my usual sunglasses!

The pair of Goodr that my son has are nice too, I wasn’t as crazy about the mirrored lenses but they have a great lightweight feel and ample but not overly dark light blocking.

All three of these brands, Knockarounds, Tifosi and Goodr have fun colors and remind me of the Swatch watches I so loved as a kid. I am coming full-circle, I will be the old lady trying to chase her best 5k time wearing some crazy sunglasses and checking my time on a swatch non-smart watch. Maybe a perm and bangs to complete my teen look?

We can at least all agree, I will be wearing ugly Hokas.

While I may not be able to run a 25:15, my goal is still to see a 25 in front of my time. I have been doing at least one speed workout a week, which I hate. I can feel a difference when I run faster, my legs hurt and I sound and look like Cujo on a hot day. Speed is not my friend. The one thing I have learned is to never say never, maybe I will like speed workouts someday. After my lobotomy.

Next, I will regale you with spooky tales of my pumpkin pie.

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!

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.

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!

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.