I spent the past week couch-surfing in NH/MA, mostly because I didn’t have to work, and had been invited up to an old college buddies house for a get-together, it lined up well with a “light” running week (40-ish miles) and gave me an excuse to run in a different environment, as well as gear test for an upcoming backpacking adventure.
As I’ve previously articulated, I’m “training” (such an ugly word) for a 50k in August, and doing so, for me, seems to avoid any specific planning, other than logging long, hard miles on a variety of hills/roads/trails/anything I can run on, and attempting to do the 31 miles over 2 days, basically at race pace… sometimes split evenly, but mostly split in a 40/60 or 60/40 sort of ratio, trying to run long/hard on harder terrain, tired legs, and slightly malnourished… So after a weekend of Independence Day-ing, I ran a little more than 14 miles at pace, drove to NH, partied some, woke up, and ran 16-ish in humidity/hills. This only confirmed to me, mentally that I’m in pretty good shape for the upcoming race, as well as pointed out some of my shortcomings, namely core strength which seems to rear its ugly head in side cramps, so, it looks like more planks/crunches for me in the upcoming weeks!
What’s more important however, is the backpacking adventure I undertook with my buddy Abe. Now I have this theory, that as a generality, my generation seems to be bored, unadventurous, and whiny, which is part of why I’ve been trying to do interesting, vital things. Being bored, really seems to lean more towards being boring, in the individuals sense of the word… but now I’m ranting. As I mentioned, I needed to test gar for an upcoming AT hike through parts of NH and Maine, and where better to become accustomed to this than in the White Mountains, go hard or go home right? So packing light, and getting ready for a simple overnight in the mountains turned into a crash course in handling a hail-storm on a 4000-odd foot summit in the middle of July… and I loved it. Yes, that is not a mistake, being in the midst of a torrential downpour, on an exposed ridge, was exciting, uncomfortable, and a great learning experience, confirming that I had packed well, was indeed able to handle this, knew what I was doing, and couldn’t wait to do it again. Not that I’d recommend being in the midst of such foul weather at altitude, but if it happens to you, it will be well worth it.
This brings me to a more important point in this rant-like post. Attitude. I’ve come to the conclusion that attitude is a choice, we’ve all heard the cliche’s such as “when the going get tough, the tough get going (or get duct tape)” but in my experience, when the going gets tough, those who pull through, simply live up to it, complaints are a waste of breath when they’re unable to change the situation, so you might as well enjoy it, be it a hard run, rough weather, heartache, etc, experience this!

That’s it for now, hopefully I can develop these topics later, in less of a hectic unconnected sense