Category: Goals

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What Winter Warrior is teaching me

On this day of finding out if I get in to Leadville Run 100 I will write about what I’ve learned from Winter Warrior:

  • Get up early and wear a headlamp to get my miles in
  • If I need to do some in the morning and some in the evening that’s okay, just get all the miles in.

The rules state that I must run or walk OUTSIDE every day in the month of January.

I track my mileage everyday using the STRAVA app on my phone or download Suunto data.

I’m going for Gold:

Bronze = run/walk 1 mile each day
Silver = run/walk 3 miles each day
Gold = run/walk 5 miles each day

All for a Winter Warrior Hat

This is the prize for running/walking/hiking 5 miles everyday in January.

I also got Jeff to sign up and we are a team. Jeff has walked at least one mile every day despite getting a cold on Day 3.

Our team effort looks like this as of today. We are in 76th place.

This is where I am as of this morning:

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Things To Do Before You Die, updated

To Do List

Today, Saturday.

A day when I wake up and have time to think and dream and write.

Today I ask: What am I doing with my life? What do I want to be?

These questions I’ve asked myself for most 30 plus years.

I think that right now is good. I think that what I’m doing is what I am suppose to be doing, for the most part.

Is my life what I envisioned for myself? No. But I don’t think many people in their fourth decade are living the life they imagined. If you are, email me. I’d love to talk to you.

As I look back on my goals and the list of things-I-want-to-do list I created in 1992, I see that I’ve reached almost all the goals I created for myself. There are a few things I haven’t done so today I created a new list of “things I want to do before I die”.

Here is my updated list, not in order of importance, with some left over from the original 1992 list and some new ones:

I have some things to start working on today.

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What are you reading? What are you dreaming about?

House of Rain Chris Childs

Me? The West.

Today I started reading House of Rain, Tracing A Vanished Civilization Across the American Southwest by Craig Childs. I’ve been debating off and on for the last few months about a trail run in Monument Valley. It’s an ultra race – 50 miles. But in reality, I’ll probably just do the 50K. I hope.

I’ve been reading books about the southwest these days. I lived in Arizona for over three years and now I can’t stop reading about anything west of the Mississippi.

I’ve always been fascinated with the West. Really, the American Northwest. However, I moved to Colorado in 2004 and then in 2012 moved to Tucson not knowing anything about the desert except that I could bike year-round. I learned a lot about the desert when I was there, but now I’m really studying it.

Sometimes it takes distance to learn and understand people and places.

Tonight I am reading about the Colorado Plateau, canyons, mesas, mountains at 13,000 feet, Anasazi, flash floods and geomorphology. Words that sound so western.

I want to be a Western American writer, Western American literature reader, and Western American Literature scholar. The third thing – I know – lofty.

But I’ve always had lofty goals. Sometimes I reach my goals and sometimes I fail miserably. I know what I like and what I need to learn. Tonight I’m just trying to learn why the Anasazi disappeared and to go on an adventure with Mr. Childs. First stop, Chaco Canyon in northwest New Mexico.