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This weekend I ran in a race that proclaims that it is the 14th largest race in the United States. I’m hazy on the details of how they know year to year how large a race will be but in this case, it felt like the 14th largest race in the country.

There were 640 women in my age bracket!

Yes, in a 5 year age bracket. I didn’t win my age group. Though according to my math loving husband, my 34th pace finish was almost in the top 5%! There were so many people passing me, I was surprised there was anyone left behind me!

What I did wrong

I went out way too fast. I had not been training for faster than a 9 min mile pace for 6 miles and I wanted to be at 8:30 on race day. I was too fast for the first 2 miles, around an 8:10 to 8:15 and too slow in mile 4, over a 9 min. My average was around 8:45 but I think if I had started at the 8:30, I might have had a better chance of staying there.

It’s hard to “run your race”when there are 14,000 people around you, I really wanted to match my seed thime of 53-55. I managed to stay under but I think a more consistent run would have been better for me psychologicaly.

I shouldn’t have used ear buds or listened to music. This race is known for having a “Block Party” feel. There are bands on every corner and porch parties the entire way. I had my music turned down so I could hear if someone yelled “get out of the way!” or “runaway bus!” I didn’t really get into my own music due to the ambient noise. I didn’t really get into the live music or the party atmosphere because of my earbuds. I would have been better off leaving the music at home and enjoying the race.

I was nervous about being in a large crowd and it affected my sleep. I am a little paranoid and the though of a violent or random attack was in the back of my mind. I don’t know how much you can change the way you are wired. Large races like this one, might not be for me!

What I did right

I pushed hard and didn’t quit. Until the finish line, then I felt like I would throw up for a minute. I am a lazy runner. I don’t like pain. I had a cramp around mile 4 and actually stopped for a few seconds, touched my toes and then pressed on! After this, I got back on pace and finished to the best of my training.

I paid for parking earlier in the week. Not knowing the course and worried about navigating the “big city” on race morning, I did something I wouldn’t normally do. I paid for parking. In advance. I reserved a spot quite close to the start/finish line and it made the morning much easier. We even walked back before the start to put our sweatshirts in the car.

We arranged a meeting spot. Finding a single person out of 20,000 people in hard. Planning a meeting spot is easy. Do it the easy way. We were not running with our phones and made sure we had a meeting spot so one of us didn’t have to walk home.

I stepped out of my comfort zone and tried a new race, in a new city. This is what I love about running. Running is a great way to explore new places. I find that when I do too many of our local races, I lose this sense of freedom and exploration. One of my goals is to try new races in new places!

I follow a few artists on YouTube and thought it would be fun to post my sketch and painting of one of Alan Owen’s tutorials!


Alan Owen has that breezy, easy style that so many of us long to be able to pull off. I spend to much time fiddling around and stuck in details and I long to be a a landscape painter that gives the “impression” of the scene, not a copy. We always want what we don’t have, but I don’t call this blog “Learning New Tricks” for nothing! Alan uses some interesting paint combinations, I am trying to be more consistent with my trial and error so I wrote out his colour recipes and a quick sketch/painting.

If you are like me, you are forever trying to find the perfect green. I learned the hard way that a tube of green is usually not your friend. In this painting, the palette is muted but the green quite lovely, it is a cadmium yellow, windsor blue and raw sienna. I don’t have raw sienna (thought it is now on my list) gold ochre is listed as a possible substitute. I tend to mix my greens with ultra marine but the windsor blue mixed nicely and I will try using more often. I also like the grey we put in the sky, it was also a mix of cobalt blue and Indian red ( I used alizeron crimson). I didn’t do the sketch book until after I finished the painting, if I had I would have realized there was going to be a house! I put a bit too much shore line in front of the house, these people are definitely not going to get flood insurance…

For my next tutorial I started with the tiny painting and color chart.

I haven’t done the exercise on real paper yet but I love the grey from cobalt and burnt sienna!

I enjoy Alan Owen’s videos and find him easy to follow, though I do pause to catch up when I need to!

I found a list of some additional watercolor tutorials, some I have watched and some I plan to watch! As a visual learner, I really find watching other people work gives me so many ideas.

I like to watch terrible television. Having children forced me to watch less terrible television in both quantity and quality. I can’t take back the years I watched, “Rock of Love” or even “Daisy of Love.” Regrets, I have a few. I did love my Top Chef and Project Runway years. Even Survivor was fun in the early years. Come to think of it, I watched the old TLC “A Love Story” and “A Baby Story,” these were truly terrible shows, ver boring.

Netflix currently has the second season of “Love is Blind.” Unlike my early years of terrible television, I now have this thing called “streaming,” and I have pretty much watched the whole thing in two days. I have a few thoughts:

  • This group of millenials uses the words, “Like” constantly, like even more than like the valley girls of the like the 1980s, like really
  • Constant cursing, f-bombs are apparently appropriate for pretty much any situation, even a family brunch or dress shopping with your grandmother!
  • If you give people a constant flow of alcohol then they will “fall in love.”
  • The lighting of the interviews in the “pods” made everyone look freakish.
  • What was the deal with the golden goblets? Product placement for a future line of wedding tableware? ” There is a hilarious meme about the golden cups in this post!
  • The music throughout the series is TERRIBLE, which probably means I am too old to be watching this show. There is also far too much Sal’s ukulele playing. But Caesar needs his own show.
  • I won’t even get into Shaina’s cowboy hat…

I won’t spoil the results of the show, there plenty of ups and downs in this train wreck!

Since childhood I have been a “glass half full” or even a “let me get you a cleaner glass” type of person. During the Locke vs Rousseau debates in high school, I always sided on the “man is naturally good” view of the world. In our house, 3 out of 4 of us are optimists, so it’s always interesting to hear from the pessimist in the room. In fact, only the pessimist of our family is anti-jigsaw puzzle so I am going to make a sweeping generalization that only optimists like to do puzzles.

I can think of few things that test this hypothesis more than buying open-box jig saw puzzles from your local thrift store. When buying a 1000 piece puzzle, I suppose one could, remove the tape and count out the pieces before buying the puzzle. One might if one had unlimited time and no actual duties or responsibilities. Or, one could take a leap of faith, trust in the good of our fellow man and plunge headlong into assembling a puzzle of questionable origin. Our family pessimist rolls his or her eyes as soon as the puzzle with the tell-tale grease pen price marking is set forth upon our coffee table. You can hear the pessimist practicing his or her, “I told you so.”

Does buying open-box puzzles from Goodwill make you an optimist or fatalist?

As we learn in school, the altruism gene allows animals to make sacrifices of themselves in order that others of their species will survive, prosper and procreate, thus helping then entire species. When I donate or re-donate my puzzles, I try to ensure they are a complete puzzle and have found that my fellow puzzle people do the same, Thus, the hypothesis is proven, we are free to be fruitful and perhaps multiply.

Life is like an open box puzzle, you never know if you are actually going to have all of the pieces. Even when we don’t have all of the pieces, the process is the fun, not the finished work. Because in life, the finished work is pretty much the end. I like to think of returning my puzzles to the thrift store from whence they came as a sort of reincarnation. A rebirth, a new chance for someone else to participate in the process.

The only puzzle that is impossible to finish is the one you never start.

I really like to kayak. My kids really like to complain about kayaking. It’s a yin/yang type of thing. We opted to stick the kids together on a tandem kayak with the hopes that their whining and negative comments would cancel each other out. It didn’t but my husband and I could paddle out of ear-shot so I considered that a win.

We had kayaked Stump Pass Beach State Park a few years earlier, our kids were younger and even whinier at that time. Both times we launched from the parking area, using a local outfitter who dropped of the gear and picked it up from the same place. We used SUP Englewood and found them friendly and responsive.

This is a great place to kayak, I recommend going early. We did the four hour rental starting at 9 am. The pass can get busy in places with boat traffic though much of it is quite shallow which helps to limit the size and number of boats.

You can paddle to the far end of the beach and park the kayak and explore the beach. This time, they were dredging the far end of the pass/beach so we had to park the kayaks a little further up.

The water is very clear and there are lots of fish. marine life and birds. This is especially true if you skip the main stretch and loop around the islands where the water is shallow. There aren’t many mangrove “tunnels” in this stretch, though you are literally in the mangroves. Don Pedro, a little further south has more of these small inlets to explore.

  • crab!
  • artistic shot
  • anemones?
  • bird
  • really clear water

If you are looking for something to do besides beaching and shark-toothing, kayaking is a great family activity. I bring a soft cooler with water bottles, usually these are sit-on rather than sit-in kayaks which means there isn’t a dry storage space. A beach towel is nice to sit on or to put behind your back. There is a place to stow a small amount of “stuff” at the rear of the kayak, but it will likely get wet, zip lock bags can save the day!

On a previous trip we rented kayaks and went to Don Pedro Island, just below Stump Pass. I remember the beach here being really cool, accessible only by boat. The park was closed the day we were kayaking, I would highly recommend visiting this park if you can!

Though running is my preferred exercise, kayaking is so peaceful and allows you access to places you can’t see any other way. I like to consider it a leisurely bike ride through the water. We have kayaks at home, we don’t use them nearly enough. Part of the reason is the mental block of having to take them down, put them on the car, strap them in, drive them around, unload, launch, paddle, land, reload, unload, store. It is so much easier to show up and have literally all of the heavy lifting done for you! Apparently I am lazy and I just realized this. Blogging can teach you so much about yourself.

kind of crooked, I was holding a paddle and trying not to drop the phone. tilt your head.

We like to hike as a family. Well, my husband and I like to hike so by virtue of the “I am your parent, obey me” property, we hike as a family. I am not going to romanticize this, there is an undercurrent of whining and eye rolling when I announce we are going for a hike. I tend to do things on the spur of the moment, throw a “picnic” lunch into a bag and hit the road. Before we had the beloved shed-cabin documented here, here and here.

Room with a view!

I love this little table, it’s from IKEA and came with 4 chairs. It is made from real wood and matches our unfinished cabin! You can’t beat the price and the small foot print works well for us.

We have hiked many trails, for years I have wanted to blog about our various hikes but never got around to it. I will attempt to pick one trail and see how it goes from there. I have so many favorites but I will try to stay on topic and focus on ONE hike!

Recently we hiked to Hanging Rock Raptor Observatory. I will admit, I had images of vultures and condors soaring overhead with a dark bell-tower looming atop the mountain. It wasn’t like that. This was for us, an easy and short hike, it should be doable for most people and families. There is an elevation gain but the trail is clear and it is a steady rise to the top. Once at the top there is an observatory (not a dark tower) with several steep flights of steps. It was under construction when we went which was eavn more terrifying. There were many brave volunteers replacing the decking around the observatory.

One of the volunteers showed us the “peaks” of interest. From this observatory you can see Flat Top/Sharp Top as well as Buffalo Mountain (all of which we have hiked and are fantastic!).

Getting there:

The road in is windy, like most mountain roads. There was a Mennonite bakery with delicious hand pies (think hostess but much better) on the main road just before you turn on to . The road is paved all of the way to the parking lot ( if you hike many trails you know that sometimes the roads are very rough.) The lot is small so plan accordingly and on weekends, it fills early. There were no open spots when we arrived, we drove further down the road to turn around when we saw a group walking up what was labeled “Fire Tower Road”. We pulled over onto the very wide shoulder and checked the map.

All roads do not lead to the Observatory.

We hiked this fire road to where I thought there was a trail which would intersect with the Allegheny trail. It did not, we turned around and drove back to the trail head lot.

The hike up is an incline, but not very steep, the trail is well cleared and not a rock scramble. The elevation at the top is over 3500 ft and it was quite cool, be prepared for the lower temps in cooler weather. It would be a nice hike in summer to get away from the heat!

Clearly we need to work on posture…

It’s about a mile to the top, there was a port-a-potty just past the building but the sign on it said it was closed due to Covid. One of my troop used it and said it was particulary nasty, closed apparently meant no cleaning or emptying.

I wished it were a little more like a haunted tower with spider webs, dark clouds and menacing raptors. Maybe a quothing Raven or two.

Once you reach the top, or use the port-a-potty, you can climb on the rocks and peer over. There is a very steep drop off and no barrier so I would be very careful! Here are some views from the top and a picture of me slinking towards the top of the rock!

This is a great family hike, it is about a mile each direction, here is a longer description of the hike.

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.

Despite my low battery and lack of image loading, I earned 25 percent off!

Thanks RunKeeper, I will stick to my free tracking, but I do appreciate the offer and the encouragement!

To be fair, I had a few fast races this month and I have been trying to do my “sprints” or “tempo runs.”

Today was cold, I do not like to run on a treadmill so it will have to be in the low 20’s for that travesty to happen. I waited as long as I could, schedule wise, to run today. This February weather for me, I was not mentally or physically prepared, but I have 2 new shoes to try out.

brrrr

Today I tried the new Hokas. I have been running in the throwback Clifton 1 one, it has been the savior of my hammer toe, documented here. The Hoka Clifton 5 were less hideous than the shoes I already owned and were on sale for a mere $99! They boasted a knit finish/body/heel? I chose a less garish color and waited for their slow delivery.

Not neon. I believe it is called lichen.

I ran a slow first mile pretty much uphill ( my house is sadly at the bottom of a half-mile hill.) I then began my “sprint” work out. I have decided to try to run quarter miles as fast as I can, pausing between each to blow my nose (it was freezing) and regain my composure. I did this for a mile and then ran the last mile at my ideal 5k pace. It was a challenging run and I definitely felt stronger on my last mile. This could be a combination of my longer, 6 mile runs and the tempo runs.

As for the shoes, I think they are very comfortable when standing, I did not care for them on my run. I think the toe box is narrower than in the Clifton One 1 (so many ones!) I found my 3rd and 4th toes were getting numbness/tingling. I also felt like my heel was slipping. The material is stiffer than the Clifton 1 Ones and wasn’t as forgiving on my hammer toe. I prefer the lighter mesh on my old Hokas, they also seem to be lighter but that may be due to the frigid temperatures numbing my appendages.

I will try to run in them again but I think I will try putting new insoles into my old Hokas. Tune in next time when I cave to husband pressure and try the Saucony Kinvera 10, a running shoe that is the perfect crayola color of seafoam green!

Back to my Runkeeper kudos, I am slightly obsessive about tracking my runs. I don’t throw out any data unless it is something really disruptive like bringing in my neighbors trashcan and forgetting that I started my run. I have two more “major” races this year. My local run club has updated the grand prix standings and I still seem to be holding on to my coveted 40-49 plaque! I am hoping that my fastest pace in a month with translate to a new PR!


I am writing this blog to help people explore new passions and hobbies as we careen towards middle age. I am passionate about art, especially water color painting. I didn’t say I was good but I am enjoying the process! I will also offer travel suggestions and very unprofessional running tips. My life is one big DIY project and I hope you find some humor, inspiration and motivation from my blog! We are all capable of Learning New Tricks!