the Way of the Turtle

NOT WITH A BANG, BUT A WHIMPER...
So Much For Snowshoe Season 2017-18
Saturday, March 10, 2018

The original plan was that I would run the men's 10k and the half marathon National Championship races this weekend at Prospect Mountain Nordic in Woodford, VT. Except a distinct lack of snow in Albany, a bout of some flu-type bug, and a certain amount of laziness/exhaustion on my part left me pretty unprepared for the half marathon. Last weekend I found out that a friend I don't see very often was planning to run the 5k, so I transferred my half registration to the 5k and planned to do a shorter overall distance, with only one trip to Woodford this weekend.

Except when the alarm went off at 5:30 I found I had no enthusiasm for getting up so early - while this week hasn't been as long as last week, it was still pretty long - so I relaxed for a while and figured I'd just do the 10k later in the day. But then as I was eating breakfast I found myself trying to come up with reasons not to go, which started me wondering if I really wanted to run the 10k. Eventually I concluded that the answer was no, and that was it - last weekend was the last race of the 2017-18 snowshoe season for me.

One of the things I've come to realize is that while I appreciate snowshoeing as a way to run and hike trails in the winter, I don't love snowshoeing like a love running, especially in recent winters where the snow has been intermittent at best and just about every time I go out on snowshoes I'm back to square one instead of gradually building snowshoeing fitness. Which raises the question of why I used to look forward to snowshoe season so much - and I think the answer was the people. Snowshoe season was an opportunity to share time in the woods with people that I very much enjoyed being with - and a lot of those people aren't snowshoe racing anymore.

JMH