#WeekendCoffeeShare – Palmerton

If we were having coffee, I’d tell you that I hurt, and that I’m ready to be home again.  We should make it home today sometime, but I’m not sure when I’ll stop hurting.  This morning we’d be sitting in the Hampton Inn as the rest of the family snoozes a few more minutes, drinking there coffee, juice, tea, what have you, before we head back out on the road.  I’ve just got to be careful not to drink too much, considering that we’ll be on the road and all.

It feels like we’ve been on the road for forever.  Leaving Thursday after work to head towards Palmerton Pennsylvania, we made it as far as Richmond Virginia.  Then the next day, we continued, hitting all kinds of traffic and pushing what should have been 5 to 6 hours to more like 8.  But we made it.  Then we ate and slept, got up early, and ran the Spartan Super at the Blue Mountain Ski Resort Saturday.  (That’s where all the hurt came in.) 

I’ll admit that I didn’t know what exactly to expect from Palmerton, other than that it would be tough.  I had heard of the reputation that Palmerton has earned over the years of being one of if not the toughest race in the series.  That reputation is seems, was well earned indeed.  The ascents were brutal, and the descents were so steep and sketchy that I had to stay on the brakes almost the entire way down.  The trails were littered with large loose rock that I could easily see snapping an ankle on, so I went as fast as I dared.  Many times, that wasn’t very fast.

That course we brutal, and that double sandbag carry, ugh!  They say what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, and if that’s the case, I should have woken up as Superman this morning.  That didn’t happen.  I just woke up sore.  That being said, I want to do it again, but I want to train better for mountain running.  That’s something that is hard to do when you live in a flat land paradise, but there are one or two tricks I can think up.  We’ve got another couple mountain races coming up, so I’m going to try to put these strategies to work and see what happens.

On the plus side, I ran a fairly clean race, only failing the Ape Hanger on my first ever try at the obstacle.  A race with only 30 burpees isn’t that bad, even if my mountain running sucked a little.  A guy told me in the parking lot that this was more of a hiking race than a running race, and he was right.  Except for the top people of course.  Those guys and gals are just amazing!  How they navigate the mountain as quick as they do is truly inspiring.

As far as writing this week, I posted a couple things here.  The first was Episode 2 of my Warriors serial and the second was my weekly #FridayFictioneers post.  I wasn’t sure about the #FridayFictioneers post when I put it up, but it seemed to be accepted well enough.  Sometimes there’s only so much I can do with a picture and 100 words, and sometimes I’m happy with it, sometimes not, but I always do the best I can with what I’ve got.

One bad thing is that with all this traveling, my work on the Warriors serial has fallen off.  I want to post the next episode Monday, but it may be pushed to Tuesday.  Hmmmm, we’ll see.

Well, I guess I should be getting on the road soon, so I’ll let you go.  Feel free to take some of this fabulous hotel coffee with you!  I’ll see you guys next week!  Until then, safe travels, God Bless, and have a great week!

#WeekendCoffeeShare is an informal weekly link-up that serves as something of a mind-dump for the week.  If there are typos and what-not found here, I apologize, but mind-dump.  I don’t do a lot of editing here as I like that it is more a stream of consciousness type post, normally written while drinking coffee, listening to music, and reflecting on the week gone by.

It is hosted by Eclectic Alli. Check out her post for the week and maybe post a share of your own!