In awe

Tag: camping

  • [686] Grindstone 100 prerun

    I got a chance to go back to Grindstone 100 course for a preview run a week before my big race.  I am nervous about the race, but we won’t talk about it.  It is likely the race would already be done by the time this is posted.  The race report for that will be posted eventually.

      Last year I did not finish it.  I arrived to the last aid station with only 4-5 miles remaining when the game clocked expired, which left a sour taste in my mouth. Feeling very unsatisfied, I have to go back to do it again.  The What, How and Why of that race are found in my previous race report (2024RaceReport).  Yet, every time, the memory of the race comes up, I was still confused and wondered why I did not finish it.

    I wanted to go back on the course not for the bitter parts but to see it in a new light, literally.  Most of the race where I struggled was in night time, so to able to go over the same part in day time indeed gave a different perspective.

    I was able to go back to the course several times since last year race. 

    My first trip back was in the middle of winter (Nov2024) after Richmond marathon.  At that time, I hiked/ran up Lookout Mountain and ran all the way to Hankey.  The camping there too was a good experience that time.  It was my first camping trip in a long time.  I don’t remember if I blog about it.  I think a couple week after that, I went up a second time by myself in the middle of the night.  I might have blog about it (WinterTwotHike).

    Then the third time back was maybe a couple months ago, I think it was the July 4 weekend.  Three nights and 2 and half days, exploring the course, minus, Lick Run section and Mt Crawford section, doing just the twot loop (TwotJuly4Camping).

    I hiked the whole circuit around the TWOT (about 25 miles) visited some hard part, such as Lookout Mountain, and Hankey, Dowells Draft and Magic Moss Trail and climbed to Little Bald and descended to North River. My whole goal was to know the course.

    Last weekend, I wanted to experience what it was like to start from Natural Chimneys Campground, the official starting point and ran both the Grindstone 13 mile course and the 50k course.

    In all three trips, I covered 75% of the course. Only Crawford Mnt, Dry Branch, Cold Spring, and Elliot Knob we did not visit.

    Compared to last year preparation course prerun, I covered most of it. The part I did not get to last year, I went and did it this year.

    Last year, I kicked myself for not going over the part at the start and finish loop (Lick Run and Reddish Knob) in my preparation. My intention last year was to save some mysteries of the course for race day.  Looking back, that might was a bad idea.

    This time, when my friend suggested to climb Signal Knob to see the sunset, I was thinking let make that into a camping trip.  And then a better idea  came to me to why not go to Natural Chimneys to explore the campground and do a pre-race run.  I want to follow the exact course like on race day. Of course, I had to modify it a bit to make it fit the distance and turn part of it as  a loop instead of an out and back.  Any out and back course/run is boring in my opinion.

    So Friday after work, we packed our bags and drove to Mt Solon, Natural Chimneys Campground.  It was a relaxing trip.  We did not rush.  I wanted to arrive before 7 pm to get the camping pass but it was nearly impossible leaving from northern Virgnia on  Friday afternoon traffic and expect to get anywhere.

    We arrived by 8 pm.  Set the camp up and we were able to get to bed by 10 pm.  The next day feeling a little tired since the night was cold and I only slept maybe 2 hours, decided to sleep in till 8.  Then we packed up everything because I did not want my tent to blow away while on my run.  We decided to go to town (Bridgewater) first for a little breakfast and coffee before starting.  And we did not get back to the camp until 10:30 am for the start of the run.  I don’t remember if we started at 10:30 or 11 or 11:30, but it started to get hot.  The run would take 8-9 hours and so, it was likely we did not expect to get back until dark.

    We started out from our campsite, and  ran onto the road, Natural Chimney Ln.  From there, we turned left to North River, After one block we turned right onto Lick Run.  We passed the sign I AM (the way the truth and the life) sign on someone’s lawn.  I like looking at things that are out of the ordinary.  As we ran across the bridge, I saw the North River stream was dry.  The midday sun beat down on us. Lick Run is slightly uphill and curves left and right through various farmhouses.  It was about 3 miles and eventually we made a right turn onto a trail with a gate.  The trail probably has a name.

    It was a jeep trail. We entered and ran about a mile and found a single track trail on the left.  We were unsure if that was where the aid station for Lick Run on race day. Things look unfamiliar in the day time compared to our memory from last year race.  Indeed that was the location.  We actually gone passed it, then I checked my gps  and map and realized we missed the turn.  We doubled back and turned onto the trail.  Also I put a water jug for later on the return trip to pick up, when we would loop back to there.  Note, there were a lot of gnats hovering over us all the time on Lick Run and beyond.

    From Lick Run aid station, we would climb up to a Signal tower, not sure if it is for radio, TV or cellphone. I think the climb was maybe about a mile.  It was our biggest climb that day.  Once we reached the crest, we made a right turn on the trail there.  It was about maybe half mile we were out onto another jeep trail where we could see the radio (or TV) tower.  Once reached the Tower, there is the Tilman West Tr.  We went past it, noting that was where we would return from.  The rest of the run was mostly on the ridge.  We then descended or followed the Tower Tr. We got to a four way intersection and I was lost of which way to take.  Luckily there was three people on their bikes resting there.  We started up a conversation and asked for direction. They were 68 year old man and woman riding mountain bike.  We each exchanged our amazement.  They impressed we were running on the trail and we were impressed that they biking were biking on it. 

    I think we took the trail in the middle (kind of left and through the intersection).  It was maybe a mile or so before we reached trailhead.  We crossed a bridge and came to a road (Tilman Rd, FS101).  There the bike couple caught up to us and they gave us all their water since they finished their biking for the day.  We talked about life and everything before departing.  We were glad they gave us water because there were very little water in the creek for us to filter from. I had carried a filter on me, thinking to do filtering midrun.

    That day, we skipped climbing up to Reddish Knob and saved it for next day.  This was at the Wolf Ridge Parking Lot. We followed Tilman Road (turning left), heading toward Tilman West Tr to do our return loop back to our camp.  It was about 4 miles on the rough gravel road.  While talking, the time seemed to fly by quickly.

    Last year, my struggle during the race was climbing the Tilman Trail West back to the Signal Tower.  The ordeal seemed to take hours.  Today though, it took us about an hour to reached the Tower.  We could have done it faster, but I preferred to check the flowers and some birds (a dead bird) and dry river beds and such. We saw a lot.  Butterflies and such. and gnats too.

    Once reaching the Signal Tower, I thought it was just the Jeep Trail descending would take us back to Lick Run.  While it could, but that was not part of the race course.  We got off course for about half mile so, we had to turn around and found the proper trail to descend.  It was short but steep, maybe half a mile or so (15 mins.).  Once we reached the correct Jeep Trail, it was just a long walk back to Lick Run.  I think maybe 2 miles or so, It was not bad, there were like 4-5 hills to climb.  My memory of this section from the race last year was like 20-30 hills and it took hours to do, but with relatively fresh legs we had today, it did not take that long, maybe 30 mins.  Then and so we saw where I placed my water jug.  We refilled everything and finished the run on the road back to camp.

    Once we reached camp, I wanted to stay on a small trail that goes around the camp to run to the real finish line to get a sense how long it would take (10 mins) from outside the camp to the finish line. So in the actual race if we have to be back by 6 am, meaning I need to get to the outside of the camp by 5:45 to be safe.  Yes, every minute counts.

     That night, the Augusta County hosted an outdoor movie night at the Natural Chimneys. They also had food trucks onsite.  So our dinner was taken care of.  We brought tacos and cheese cake from the trucks.

    Good thing of having a campsite is we could shower before going to bed.  I was exhausted and walked like I ran a 100 mile already.  The shower was good and I had a good night sleep from 10 pm to 8 am the next day. 

    On Sunday, we started earlier.  After breakfast and all, we stopped by a local gas station just outside the camp for water and ice. Today, we would ascend to Reddish Knob from Wolf Ridge Parking Lot. The drive to Wolf Ridge took about 45 minutes.  I wanted to drive slowly on the forest road.  I think we finally started our run at 10 am.

    This was just a 9 mile climb.  There were on occassion some flat runnable sections but mostly it was just up.  Before we got to the Knob, there was a rocky section my friend compared it to Bird Knob of the Massanutten Trail.  We reached Reddish Knob by 2 pm greeted with an expansive pararoma view. It was worth the hard effort.  We met a married couple on motorcycle at the top and had a good conversation about politics.  Eventually, we had to part way and we ran back down, except when we got to a turn at Sand Spring, we took trail to the Sand Spring Mountain down. It was also where we had our water drop. This was the 100k and 50k course but not the 100 miler.  I wanted to check out what the trail is like for the 100k people too.  It was just 4 miles of descent.  Once we reached the road, we had a mile of hike back to our car.  We got back by 6 pm, I think it was 8 hours total for the day.  We were smart enough to leave some water (1 L) at Sand Spring but I wish I had left more.

    I saw some bear bogs. Not so stinky.  I did not go near it to smell. The weather was nice.  It might be a bit hotter than the day before. I was happy for two days of long run.

    Little did we know, we were on the other end of Tilman Road and it was like a mile from Hone Quarry where we ran a 40 mile earlier in the year.  Seeing Hone Quarry and road to its finishing line brought back memories.  I saw the church with a big cross where the finish was for that race.  I remembered running in and urging a runner next to me to run his hardest, who then bested me to the finish line. It was also close to Dayton, where we previously stayed and to Harrisonburg, where we ate and stayed plenty of time. 

    Seeing familiar places brought back wonderful memories.  We decided to stop and have a good dinner at Quacker Barrel before driving back home.  Our runs are just that of one memory overlapping another, and I love the new memories we made and left behind at the place for next time.

  • Day341 reality

    I have to accept the reality that to run back across Tennessee (virtually) within two weeks is out of reach for me in my condition.

    I had the ambitious goal of doing 250 miles this week and another 250 miles the next. I have ‘slowly’ trying to bring my miles up from 5 miles to 30 miles. My body still prefers running 5 miles. Beyond the 5 miles it bonkers. So I splitted my run into two. 5 miles during lunch and 15 miles in the evening. Doing 5 miles are great. 15 miles not so great.

    After 4 nights of running 15 miles, yesterday, the body relented. I walked most of the 15 miles.

    It reminded me back at the time I was in Atlanta when I was trying to run a hundred miles. It came to a point where the body can’t run any more and running is no longer fun. I felt I was 10 miles away from my home and couldn’t get back.

    I had blisters on my feet. I don’t mind the pain or the discomfort. It is just all my muscles are so tight. I don’t think I could squeeze any more out of it.

    Also I am suspecting my cardio has taken a hit. Last year I had Lyme disease and I know how that feel. I felt something similar. My performance is really poor. At least I am not yet fainting. Last year when I overexerted I fainted. I am also questioning whether I might contracted the corona virus. It is a respitory disease. My breathing is fine, just couldn’t run. Maybe it is really over exertion.

    Anyway for the GRVAT. I am at mile 901 and I need to get to mile 1270 to be considered ‘finished’. I have about 10 days left to do it. I could try to get mile 1000, there is an award for that. 10 miles each day is doable. 370 miles is too much to ask of.

    Weekend is here. Originally, I planned to put in 100 miles, 50 on Saturday and 50 on Sunday. Now scratch that plan. The body just couldn’t handle it.

    This weekend I will go down to Virginia Border to Buffalo State Park for a family camping trip. I don’t have children of my own, but I will join my brother-in-law and he will bring his wife and kids. My mom will be there too.

    Personally this kind of camping is not my kind of thing. I don’t like sitting around at a camp with nothing to do. There are the kids. I rather be hiking all day (or run) and only get to camp when we can’t go on further. Survival kind of camping is what I like.

    My mom will like it. It is her kind of camping. We don’t do it often enough. As I was growing up, money was tight and going camping was not our family thing. I really didn’t get on the camping stuff until a few years ago when I started running and discovered this whole world.

    My mom and brother-in-law though took the kids out for camping a few times every years. As for me, I think this is the first time joining them.

    Any way, it will be like a party. Indeed, my niece I think is turning 5 today, so we will celebrate her birthday at the camp. My mom’s birthday too is over this weekend. Obligatory I have to show up 🙂

    I know the kids will enjoy the trip. They are leaving for the camp today. I have work and so will join them tomorrow. Still debating if I should drive down after work…I’m afraid I might fall asleep behind the wheel.

  • Day303 LH#4

    I decided to go to PA this weekend. Staying at a campsite tonight. Normally, I go into the woods and camp to my heart content, but my mom is with me. She can’t do the wilderness survival stuff I do, so we are staying at a more civilized campsite, where we have bathroom and we are three feet away from the car.

    One benefit is we have unlimited amount of food. I don’t have ration out my portion. A store or bakery is only several miles away. There is probably no bear.

    Tomorrow I will do some running on the Laurel Highlands Trail. I have done it before at this section. Twice at least. LH1 and LH2.

    I hope to meet up with couple other people to run together. We are just doing a short run. No one will be doing the whole thing (,70 miles).

  • Day288 weekend joy

    [old post] originally written on 2019 Veteran’s weekend

    It was a wild weekend and I was still running high on adrenaline just thinking about it. I spent 12 hours in the car to do an eight hour marathon. I spent eight hours running before, and even 10. What tired me was not the race, but everything surround it, either before or immediately after. I overpacked my weekend, as always.

    If it was the usual running, I wouldn’t have been so exhausted. It was too three other camping trips or outdoors events in one weekend, plus the cold weather, that really got to me.

    Thursday, I came home past midnight and was franctically packing for the trip. Why I always leave things to the last minute? I don’t know. I had many things to pack.

    I intended to do a bike ride on the race course on Friday, which mean I had to hit the road at dawn to get myself down to the course around noon. Fortunately, I didn’t wake uo in time on Friday and didn’t leave my house until 11. I brought my bike any way. It took up all the backseat section of my truck. Luckily, I did not try biking because it was way too dangerous. I am not a pro to do downhill biking with such steepness they have there at Kairos resort.

    Then I had to pack for Friday night cold camping. I brought the usual stuffs, tents, sleeping bags (two of them), fleece blanket, pillow, toiletry kit, food, cooking kit, fire kit, safety/med/first aid/injury kit, water and filter, flashlight and batteries, camp shoes, and hiking boots, and lot of thick hiking socks. Cold weather gear – wind breaker, wool layer, a base layer, long johns, spandex underwears, head cover, gloves (two kinds, inserts), and more socks (for sleeping). Then duffle bags. You got to waterproof them even if no rain was forecasted. I got together four or five bags. Yes it was overkilled. Oh, let not forget my stuff animal. I love my cat! It served as a good pillow.

    Then of course the big event, the race itself. You got of think of clothing for pre-race, race, and post race. Pre-race was a fleece jacket over a long sleaves and a short sleeves. I had tights on. I ran with my camp boots with two layers socks. I had two buffs on, one over my head and one around my neck. I had my racing glasses and a heavy trucker cap. For hydration pack, instead of being minimalist, I had a 20L hiking daypack. It held my phone (which I forgot in the tent), my thick wallet, my Sawyer water filter but forgot the sawyer water bag. My set of keys. I carried a wool long sleeves, and a clean shirt to wear at the end of the race. Two bottles one with half filled with Gatorade, the other empty to be filled at water station because this race was cupless. I also carried an empty hydration pack (2L). Keeping all the things needed for the race was not fun.

    During the race I stripped down to only one layer and the rest of stuffs went into my day pack. After the race, I pulled out a clean set from my pack and bundled up. I know I could have left everything at the starting line (because starting and finish line was at the same place) or use the dropbag and left them at an aid station. Silly me to carry everything on me. I don’t think though that was a reason it took me an hour longer to run the 50k.

    Ah, I placed in my truck also four pairs of running shoes. In the end I did not wear any of them. The hiking boots did it all. They are now very muddy. Surprised to me some finished with very clean shoes. I am just sloppy I guess.

    Don’t forget the food. I brought lot of them, both for pre-race dinner and breakfast. I did my shopping on the way. Unfortunately, I did not pack the food to eat during the race. I brought a lot of food too for after the race meal. You have to eat a lot to add back the calories lost during the race. I did not eat that much though and brought all the food back home. I did not have an appetite after the race!

    Saturday night camping was an optional challenge. I could have driven six hours home that night. I would have arrived around midnight or a little after. However, I had a habit of sleeping immediately after a long workout, so driving the long distance home would have been a very bad idea. Or I could have stayed at a motel/hotel along the way. Spending money for such luxury and I did not want to when there was the ‘free’ /low cost camping available. My campsite was only $15 with race discount (about a price for my meal).

    The other option was to go camping at a place nearby. Jefferson Forest is just down the street (still about 30-45 mins away) and Salem, which is where I wanted to do my hiking (the Triple Crown). I thought about going there and hiking about 10 miles into camp. So, I packed a separate bag for all the light weight gear for this second trip. Fortunately, the plan didn’t pan out. I stayed the second night at the race course venue. It was all by myself then since everyone else had left and I got to unwind on a dark and cold night (moon was up). Still being by myself, the night felt darker.

    I had the Saturday night camping as an option was because my friend and I were supposed to go to do the Triple Crown, which is really close to where I was racing. I would have gone there if I knew for certain that my friend was going to be there and that she would be happy to see me.

    However, she said her plan has changed since I was going to do the race and she did not feel like driving six hours to hike by herself. For me too doing it by myself was no fun, knowing she probably was not there. Also even if she were there, we kind of still left on a sour note the Friday morning, so I did not want to run into her not knowing how she would reacted if she saw me. It was a no-no to be out in the middle of no where with someone who doesn’t want to be with you. However, I had all the gear with me and was ready for that trip after my race. I just was not able to will myself to do it. Physically, I know I can do it, but mentally, I was not.

    I had no regret because there was nothing better than to be able to unwind after the long race. I did. I built a fire, both for cooking as well as I had nothing better to do and there were a lot of fallen branches. I sat all night by the fire by myself tending it. This was a big thing, because I was not good at making a fire.

    Then on Sunday morning, I had to leave at the crack of dawn to drive back and to have everything pack up ready to roll out. However, I overslept again! I would have a long drive of about 5-6 hours back home, except I was not going home. So it was not a leisure packing up, but a rushed packing. Just I threw everything into the back of the truck and drove. The morning was beautiful!

    One of my friends wanted to do a day hike in West Virginia at Harper Ferry. It was his birthday and it has been a tradition we started last year to get together. So, I was beating the traffic to get back by 11ish to meet up with him and his other friend.

    I packed a separate bag for this day hike too. I would be simple since at most we would be doing only 5-6 miles. It is a cake walk for me. However, a hike is a hike. I carried the daypack that I ran with on Saturday. The day was warmer, but I had my fleece jacket on. I had hiking pants and boots. My pack was light. I had a fresh shirts and pair of socks.

    The birthday event took whole day, but there was still one more event left — church. I didn’t mind the slow pace stroll. We had a lot of fun catching up. It though caused me to be late for evening church. However, I ended up of not going. I had packed a fresh set of clothes for that event. I had also intended to shower first before going to church. I did not want to smell like I had ran an ultra and spent two days camping and a day hike before arriving at church. In the end I missed the evening church.

    I closed my day with stopping by my mom’s place. This was not planned. However, they don’t care how bad I smell. I found out then everyone there was sick, from the oldest to the youngest. Even the family dog was sick. I stayed a long time, talking and listening to my mom talked.

    This post ended up longer than I wanted to. It was because, man I had an awesome weekend both with the race and time by myself, and with friends and family. I did not end up being with the one I wanted to be with, but it was definitely a worthy trade-off. Sometimes, you can’t have everything.

    [race] https://antin.blog/2019/11/11/epilogue/

  • Near miss

    Day 153

    If I don’t write about this, I won’t be able to move on.

    Over the weekend I and several others headed to West Virginia Roaring Plain which is southern part of Dolly Sods Area.

    The trip was a one night camping and the next day a 15 miles hike. We camped at the trail head. Apparently there is a nice big area in the woods for our big group of 7. We brought along several newbies unexpectedly.

    The trail was technical and we have never been there before. Even experienced hikers had hard time finding and staying on the trail, so we read from the trail notes we brought along. It was my first time encountered such a challenge. It was beyond my level. I was given several chances to locate the trail during the hike and I failed to find it before others did.

    I had a GPS unit but it didn’t really help to stay on track because the resolution was not high enough. If it was off by 50 meters, that is a big distance in the woods. I always know we are near a check point but we are never right on the check point at places where we should be turning. So every time we lost a trail we scattered around to search for trails. The GPS was of no help. There are many false trails too. Plus, my GPS North alignment was off by I think 30 degrees. So wherever it says to go in one direction, I couldn’t trust it. Which direction is the real direction whenever I looked up from my unit, I would ask myself. I had to use my phone compass to confirm. It was good still to have the unit because at least I could find how far I have walked and where I was on the map. However in term of picking the next direction to walk to reach the next checkpoint, the unit was way off, it was all pure skill from my hike leader, that we found the next point. She did spectacularly there. Also a handheld GPS is not like a car GPS, it updates at an interval, and what shown on the screen was the last update, which could have been five minutes ago. I could have forced an update on the position but there is usually a delay. I couldn’t trust it.

    We lost the trail a few times. The worse was we had to look for an oak tree to make a turn at a rocky outcrop. We couldn’t find the oak tree. We passed it by a few time. I think we spent an hour there going round and round. We even backtracked for a mile. I got blame for this since my coleader at the time didn’t know she was backtracking but everyone else knew. She blamed me for not telling her.

    At last someone, my coleader’s friend (he was an experienced hiker) pointed out the small oak tree we passed already several times. The light bulb lighted in us. We knew then we were on the right track. My leader then fan out to search for the next trail (teepee trail) we supposed to take and found it. That was the most difficult trail to locate. The reason was some of the carne were knocked down so we couldn’t find it. The trail was way up and out from where the oak tree was. It was unexpected.

    The rest of the hike was pretty easy. We got to the forest road (FR 70) and entered a next forest where the trail was wide and blazed. There were only three miles left to get back to our car. Unfortunately we hiked very fast then and the newbies (or one of the newbies) couldn’t keep up. We didn’t worry because my leader’s friend was the self-designated sweeper (last of the group) to catch any the stragglers. Unfortunately near the end our sweeper friend couldn’t figure the way and they had to backtrack to FR70.

    By the way, I am normally a sweeper on most hikes but my leader wouldn’t let me be one on this. She wanted me to be next to her to keep an eye on the trail. I ended up usually in the middle position (4th person down) in the group.

    For us, after didn’t see them coming out the forest we went back in to search for them. Later we decided to send a group home first, while two remained to wait at the trail head. While I left the mountain we got the text message from ones who separated and their intended heading, which was a miracle in itself because the cellular signal was poor/non existent in the area. So we went back to pick them up. Of course the ones who got lost in the forest were not happy, even though it was a happy reunion for us.

    Everyone said there is a lesson to be learned. One, was to wait up and keep everyone together. I won’t disagree with that, but I don’t think that was the main lesson. I have been in many hikes where I was hiking alone and got separated from the lead (since I was usually the sweeper). I think the main lesson is communicate what is expected from the participants. Most newbies had a rude awakening that they might have died in the woods (if they were not able to come out). They were never expected to be alone and lost.

    I felt that according to common outdoor rules and I learned this very early on in my hiking experience is to have a map and know where we are going. It is generally expect that we can find our own way out. I knew this because I got left behind on my very first hike.

    Second is this, and we did well, is an inexperience hiker is to team up with an experienced one. That was the reason nothing worse happened. Our sweeper friend was confident even when lost that he could leave the forest in his own power without the need of a search party. He did. I was as cool as a cucumber except for the other new guy with him. He took care of the inexperience one.

    Third is communication. My leader relied on her friend who took the rear, on any hikes it wouldn’t be a problem except on this he didn’t know the trail (and didn’t ask about it), though he should have. I think both he and my lead was overconfident. If we had taken time to show him the map and the way of the last segment of the hike he even if separated he still would able to proceed. We were trusting his common sense to find the way because the trail was easy compared to what we have been hiking the whole day.

    Though his backtracking was a smart decision, it wasn’t the best. If he has remained in place our search team would have located him (with only say 30 minutes). He wouldn’t had to backtrack and ended up walked an extra 6-10 miles out. The backtrack costed 4-5 hours. They were like only half a mile from the car when they got lost. They backtracked because they think we ourselves were lost. Any way a lesson learned.

    My friend who led the hike was quite shaken from the experience, mostly dealing with everyone blaming her for the fiasco. I felt yes things like this can happen and people can get separate and lost. But also those going on a trip should be prepared with the necessary tools like maps and compass, and knowledge of how to use them. etc. None of them printed a map out. They have themselves to blame.

    As for me, I am not that much being bothered. I just have to remind people that they have to be responsible for themselves on the next trip I lead. True people are not really blaming me any way, I am just a co-lead. They blamed the lead.

    By the way, I learned my lesson of bring a map and compass after being left behind in the woods the first few times, when I went hiking with my current leader. I always was able to find my way out by luck! And usually I got left behind at an ‘easier’ section. That said.

  • Middle of the night

    Day 73 Halfmoon Mnt

    Run: It got cold since last night. I was going to run to get to 30 miles but having been out the whole day, I just couldn’t bring myself to get back out there in the cold.  More on this why I was out.  Instead of running, I had a cross-train day.  (more…)

  • Camping

    I camped at home the past weekend. Instead of going to West Virginia, I decided to camp on the deck. I did this I think last year, when I was totally

    (more…)