Life Without Running

After being stuck in the trailer during the deep freeze and then the melt and then the bad roads. I finally managed to get out and go to the store pick up some things I went to Safeway. And then the next day I went to Walmart with my sister and those are the only two places I went. the afternoon of my visit to Walmart I started feeling just extra tired which is not unusual. And the Second day, I started feeling it tightness in my lower or mid back that felt like I was having more difficulty breathing than usual, and I was feeling all kinds of crazy anxiety for some reason.  For some reason the next day I was having crazy symptoms that I wasn’t sure where they were coming from so I had to test for Covid and it was negative. I had an appointment with the VA G.I. the next day and had a temperature when I got there so they told me to make sure that I got a thermometer on the way home and kept up with my temperature temperature at the VA 100.4, which didn’t seem like that big deal I fe...

It started so small. Just some freezing drizzle but I gave my sister a heads up that she might have to come over and help me get my door open from the outside in the morning because ice builds up on my deck and blocks the door. Sure enough I was right.  And the it just got worse and continued to get worse for days. I got a pry bar from the tool room and chipped ice in a large area around the door that day and had to do it multiple times a day obviously having to pace myself.  And those are some pictures from the next morning. Needless to say we lost power but thank goodness Brandy had put in a generator that powers the entire place. I could hear trees breaking all day and night. Sounding like gun shots. Even without seeing the damage you knew it was going to be bad and leave a lot of cleanup and repair behind. One thought I had that second night was thank God we don’t have trees directly over our buildings or trailers.  After the temp warmed up and seemed that it would st...

Here it is the 12th of January almost half of the first month of the new year is gone. I usually wrap up the prior year on New Year’s Day but I have been totally unmotivated to work on this blog. Pouring rain again today as it has off and on for the entire month. So I woke up this morning and decided that I needed to do this post.  Certainly a highlight of 2023 was getting to complete my goal of racing in each of the lower 48 states. Tom and Stacie commemorated it with a tee shirt that I posted in earlier entries and Stacie finished it off sending me a really cool U.S. map Christmas ornament. I’m proud to have finished that quest against pretty difficult challenges..going forward it’s hard to even contemplate any race goals whether they be family runs, reunion runs or just races to keep going. I started working on my 2024 calendar and I actually wrote in potential events here in Eugene for the entire year. Writing them down doesn’t mean I’ll do them but I have to try to have some ...