[WDT] HOPPY EASTER [NSFW]

I swear my in laws are the sole reason California has had droughts. In the week they've been living in our house they've used more water than Jägerette and I have used since we bought it in October.

Anyway, I'm having a hell of a time finding a leg of lamb this year. How can I celebrate a rabbit bringing Jesus back to life using chocolate eggs and magic if I can't roast a chunk of a baby animal?

 

LOL. That is soooo many cans of spray paint to make that. We are talking cases, possibly a thousand dollars to create that. Working frantically in the dark at night while criminally trespassing.

What’s more, there’s a million cars done up like that on this continent alone.

 

Smart move. A friend of mine took the opposite approach and wound up with the ATV landing in him. Multiple pelvic and leg fractures and he had to get out of the woods in that condition. Horrific.

 

Pictures never truly convey just how steep or tall something is. I've recorded hill climbs that friends and I would do, it never looked nearly as steep as it did in person. Same for the size of waves on the ocean. I'd be like, "holy crap, these seas are huge," and they look so little in video.

 

There's a bike path near me that goes straight toward the ocean. I can measure the wind coming off the water based on the gear I top out at heading toward the ocean vs coming back. Sucks at the start, but damn it's fun to be a little sailboat on the way home.

 

The FB algorithm has figured me out. I just got an ad for trail race in a few months, located about 20 minutes away. I know the park well -- it has some very steep terrain, and would be a blast to run on. Even better (more dangerously), the run is at night. Starts at 8 pm, goes until 5 am. Doing this with headlamps, you WILL fall, it's just a matter of how many times and how badly.

There's 25k (15 miles -- 3 loops of the course ) and 30k (30 miles -- 6 loops of the course) options. Y'all know which one I'm thinking.

How cool would it be to say I did an ultra marathon before a marathon?

If it wasn't on a loop basis, I'd have already signed up for the ultra. Worried that doing 6 of them would get really boring really fast. But still. Trail running.... at night....

 

That seems like a really bad idea with your history of injuries.

 

I hear you.

[Imagine a beautiful picture of a blue sky day here at the Braves Truist Park today. You have to imagine because I can't post a 6MB picture from my phone to TiB.]

 

I did not know the Samsung Gallery app allows you to resize photos. Learned something new!

 

So does the app I use, called Image Size.

Nice pic

 

you are 100% correct. But sometimes bad ideas are also fun ideas! It's just a matter of which one ultimately outweighs the other. I start my official "training block" for the marathon in early august, and this nighttime trail race would be in early june. In theory, it would give me enough time to heal if something bad happened, but also I don't wanna push it too hard since the race is completely unnecessary to my ultimate goal of the marathon and would be just for shits and giggles.

I have until two days before the event to register, so I have time to consider my fate.

 

Dude this mindset is why I’m going to disappear from this board in the not too distant future.

Take care of yourself. Trying to go in reverse is so much harder than taking care of yourself going forward.

 

the reality is, I've waited almost 16 years to be able to get into this mindset and physical space. I was training for a marathon when I had brain surgery, then I had to re-learn how to walk. That sense of "tomorrow might never come" is very much still real to me. I want it all, and I want it right now. And then to start to get back to running, and have it all taken away from me with long-covid -- for 3 years I could barely walk up a flight of stairs, not knowing if I would ever recover; I had dreams every night of old cross country meets and such -- it just takes a mental toll for sure. When I was in therapy for PTSD we talked about it and it's just something that's always going to be there.

My ADHD combined with that very real understanding of when tomorrow isn't promised, results in sometimes extremely impulsive decisions. That's one of the main reasons alcohol didn't work for me. But there's also an understanding of "I can take this risk and if it goes sideways the consequences are xyz and I can recover from it" vs the clearly unacceptable "this activity has too high of a risk because the consequences of a mistake are an unrecoverable outcome."

For example, I recently went from 6 miles on my long runs, to 10. Normally you increase by a mile at a time. Ideally a quarter mile. However, I knew my body, and the 4 mile jump was far enough away from my marathon goals that, with the consequences being some sore muscles, I could take a week or more off to recover if need be. Worst case, I could cut that run short at any point. However, if I were to immediately do another similar jump in miles, to over half a marathon distance on my long runs, the outcome could be potentially catastrophic. Your bone density increases as the the mileage and stresses on your body increases. I have to stay at 10 miles for a bit and allow my body to adjust, not unlike a deep sea diver pausing at various depths on their way up to decompress.

So certainly, I can do an ultra if I were so inclined by the time that rolls around. I will have taken strategic pauses at enough mileage points along the way (next one will be half a marathon, then roughly 16 miles, then 20 miles -- after that, your body density and frame kinda plateaus and from there it's a matter of pace and strategy). The bad idea part comes from "more time on course = more risk." But a life without risk is boring. I tried that. It sucks.

 

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