works of wanderlust

Tag: running winter

  • Pathfinding & Found Paths

    Sunday Runday and we should have known better than to go onto the icy trails after an overnight snowfall less than a week after an ice storm.

    But the sun was peeking over the eastern horizon and lighting up the December sky in all sorts of pretty colours, so the ice seemed like a temporary problem which could easily enough be solved by four guys in winter running shoes.

    Compared to this time
    last year are you
    more lost or found?

    It wasn’t a temporary problem, of course.

    And no amount of winter grip can make up for ten kilometers of hidden ice under two centimeters of fresh, light snow.

    No amount of dodging into the neighbourhood streets and hoping for better traction on the suburban car-packed roads made much of difference.

    No amount of pathfinding through the crunchy, fresh snow counteracted the frustration of pulled muscles and near falls and aching hip flexors.

    Like so much this year, running has become something of a microcosm of my life and an analogy for everything else. A determined effort to engage with the world that has been met with all manner of resistance no matter my level of persistence. This week it happened to be icy sidewalks, but two weeks ago it was heel pain. A few months ago we were battling wasps. Over the summer I tripped and hurt my shoulder as I collided full force with the trunk of a fir tree.

    Yet, we keep going and trying to make it fun.

    Likewise, this whole year has been something of an exercise in navigating.

    The pandemic. Probably enough said about that, but then again…

    Work changes have taxed my frustated mind.

    Friends and family seem complicated by twisted politics and nearly fully electronic relationships.

    Weather. Supply chains. Misinformation.

    Rules. Regulations.

    Waves and lockdowns and everything else.

    It’s hard to even recall that two years ago I was feeling quite solidly purposeful in my own way. Things felt found. Things were on course and on track.

    At the start of this year, though, I think that like so many others I was feeling not just a little lost, but caught in a maze of a world gone mad. We cheered the end of 2020 as if it somehow marked the end of the worst of it. Yet, here we approach 2021 and I’m not clear on if I’m still lost, somewhat found, or just resigned to the newish reality in which we exist now.

    The last year has been a little like running on ice. Uncertain underfoot and apt to cause a slip unless one watches every step carefully. At the end one feels a bit accomplished, a bit sore, but a bit foolish for venturing out looking for a running path where none should rightly exist.

    On the other hand, the only other option is to stay home and wallow in the lack of action.

    Maybe it’s not a bad thing to go pathfinding after all, through snow and ice… or through a crazy, slippery year.

  • We Interrupt this Training Plan for …

    Sunday Runday, and I woke up to a skiff of fresh overnight snow and a minus twenty world out my front door.

    Yeah, you read that right: -20C. (Not even mentioning the “feels like” -33C wind chill estimate that accompanied the forecast on my weather app.)

    As I was eating my breakfast, one of my running partners (who is a government meteorologist) texted me at 7am with the (I assume) professional advice of “stay warm, I will not be out this morning…”

    And then I did the thing I’ve done too often this past year and a half…

    What do you wish you’d done
    less of this past year?

    … I tried to get out of my run.

    Sure, it was the coldest day of the season to-date, and sure, I’ve been feeling a little lazy since slowly nursing a sore heel back to health.

    But the last twenty-one months has been full of countless excuses to curl up in a ball on the couch and ignore the realities of life, the universe and everything. Who hasn’t wanted to do exactly that? Sometimes multiple times per day.

    This morning as I looked at the outside temperature, as stuck my barefoot out the back door, as I let the dog out at quarter past six in the biting cold, I immediately started thinking of additional excuses to stay home in my pajamas and curl up on the couch with a coffee and Netflix … y’know, instead of doing a training run.

    I didn’t stay home.

    I wanted to bail.

    But the text message thread the followed left me feeling guilty that one of my other partners had already left his house and was en route to our meeting place. I complied. I layered up in my warmest gear, dug a fuzzy buff and an extra pair of wooly mittens from the cupboard, and made my way in my truck (switching on the 4×4 for the treacherous roads) over to the nearby parking lot from where we usually leave. Nine klicks later of slogging through the cold and snow and wind. The sun was barely cracking the horizon and as it lifted over the frosty treeline just to the side of the path a beautiful winter sunrise cracked a bit of the cold and offered a hint of apricity against the brutal, biting freeze. A cold run. A run at the limit of my cold threshold. Weather that literally hurts. We ran for nearly an hour with frost clinging to our lashes and ice crusting on the brims of our toques.

    I wanted to bail, bail like I’ve done a few too many times this past span of time, but this time I did not. I ran. I froze. I kept running. And ultimately I returned to the warmth of a hot cup of coffee and some good conversation. But I wanted to bail nonetheless.

    In 2021 I wish I’d done a little less of that wanting to skip the things that used to be the highlights of my everydays, runs, and adventuring, and getting out and about. I know there have been great excuses, often even mandates and strict rules enforcing those same reasons, but I wish I’d had less opportunity to slip into whatever pattern it has created for me and left me thinking first of a reason not to do something than the former excitement that launched me off that couch and into the world.

    I don’t know for sure how to do that less, but I think it’s worth aspiring to.

  • Them Feets

    Sunday Runday, and I didn’t.

    For a whole week I’ve been sidelined by a heel ailment that I’ve self-diagnosed as a touch of plantar fasciitis, or runner’s heel.

    Them feets!

    The thing is that I’m supposed to run a half marathon in a little more than a month.

    The thing is that I need to keep in half marathon shape while not exacerbating an injury that could take a couple weeks to recover.

    Them feets!

    The thing is I’m a stubborn guy and I’m having trouble sitting it out. Resting. Healing.

    I have a stationary bike in my basement tho, so while my running crew plodded out on the winter trails I descended to my little exercise space and spun out twenty klicks of aerobic fitness.

    Them feets!

    Then I met the runners for coffee where we can actually, finally, go inside and sit for a bit at the local recreation centre, proof of vaccination required, and all in all not quite back to normal, but close enough.

    The countdown is on to race day and I’ll cross that finish line, hell or high water. Right now, tho, it might be with a limp rather than a leap.

  • Three Cheers for Traction

    Having run for well over a decade in the ever changing seasons of the Canadian prairies I have fought many battles with the hardened warrior otherwise known as winter trail conditions.

    Ankle-deep fresh snow. Ice-slickened asphalt. Road slop like oatmeal or worse, dirty slush.

    It is only November yet already the paths have become an assortment of challenging terrain …

    … except that back in the late summer I bought a pair of trail shoes.

    They haven’t been a perfect winter shoe, but they have made tackling the traction obstacles a formidable challenge rather than an impassible barrier. Unlike my summer sneakers or even previous winter runners I’ve owned, there is a remarkable surefooted stability to be found even in deep snow and icy patches on the sidewalks that I’ve struggled to find elsewhere. I’m sold, and even pullover spikes or other traction offerings that I’ve used over the years don’t seem to fall into a comparable classification as having tested my trail shoes through the abrupt arrival of winter weather this past week.

    So I ordered a second pair yesterday.

    Kinda. Sorta. Almost.

    The summer version, which I own, is a light and responsive shoe meant for muddy paths and navigating narrow gravel trails.

    The winter version, that second-ish pair now en route to my house, is a waterproof, insulated version of the same shoe but with grippier soles designed to take on those cold and epic winter conditions and a warmer approach to footwear.

    Ice and snow will become far less of an excuse this winter.

    I mean, I say that now… ask me again when it’s dark, icy, and minus forty degrees outside this January.

  • trails chill blight

    We ran in the fresh snow last night. It was cold and potentially dangerous, a truth unceremoniously marked by an encounter with the local emergency services at work in the dark, chill below the trails.

    pow’dree treads in i’see dark.
    en frozen. blust’ring. cold. nay, stark
    thern’winds whorl, rustle, haunt thas’night.
    four, boundless, b’yond trails chill blight.

    tha’sun were set, tho hints re’maned
    magenta skies in west’ern waned
    walk’d peoples and der’hounds thru snow
    we past dem. wav’d. en on weed go.

    where fresh fel’n snow obscures ern’root
    leap’t o’er berms forged a for’gone foot.
    tho, oft thru past we runners been
    wern’t weer cool soles upon thas’seen.

    resolute shunn’d eer’even pace
    skiffs weer leapt oer’en shad’wee lace
    well thru branches blinkt urgent reds
    signals marking emerg’nt dreads

    where oer thar creek spans trestle’d path
    uniforms climb out tha’natured wrath
    en’wen weed shine er probing lights
    peekt down tward on griz’illed sights

    silence. chill. in’gulfed we four souls.
    onward ran, tho er hearts weer holes
    marked hold’en to thas thing below
    som’one fell, froze, succumb’d by snow.

    thern’winds whorl, rustle, haunt thas’night.
    four, boundless, b’yond trails chill blight.
    digits numb’d weed end our jaunting,
    frozen. blust’ring. cold. nay, haunting.

    – bardo

    I am not a poet, but a friend has inspired me to read more of it and think more critically about its place in the constellation of my creative pursuits. Occasionally, I’d like to post a poem here when inspiration strikes.