Run DMZ

Occasionally, my brain and body rebels in most inconvenient ways. My mind refuses to stay on task with big deadlines approaching. It indulges distractions, like finding the right holiday photo card instead of finishing the library book due the next day. I get body aches and chills without a fever, nausea of unknown origin, headaches no painkillers can penetrate. Just weeks after a glorious trip to Maine, I suffered from all three ailments. I didn’t have the luxury of curling up on the couch or in bed for a few days to restore my health. So instead, I leeched mounting stress with useless flu meds, a few over-the-top outbursts, and one heart-stopping nightmare. This was not the homecoming I anticipated after my time in the Northeast, anchor of my ancestry and place I miss most each fall. At the invitation of a dear friend with a lovely vacation home, four of us ignored the first day’s rains to explore beautiful Bethel, followed by two days of the best hiking conditions – sunny and m...

  A peek at my most recent adventures in New England while I catch up on all of the work and family time I missed.

I’ve been thinking about why some of us use guides and others don’t when venturing into unknown territory, especially tough, multi-day hikes. A guide sets the pace, makes sure you don’t get lost and can provide local lore and points of interest you might miss on a solo trip or one with friends. They also carry first aid items and monitor members for signs of hypo- or hyperthermia, dehydration and other common medical conditions.  But you also are tethered to a team that might not have the same objectives, pace or experience levels. This can either slow you down or force you to go faster than you prepared. Your guide may be having a bad day or just be a general jerk, which casts a trip in a different light. You might get disparaging looks from others on the trail for taking up so much space. And, guided hikes cost more than do-it-yourself ones. My friend and I had a guide when we went to  South Coyote Buttes , mainly because we didn’t know how to reach it on ou...

We were about three hours into the day’s hard hike when we took the first wrong turn. Then, about an hour later, on a slim path of slick granite boulders perched precariously along a cloud-dense cliff’s edge, we became consumed with death, specifically hikers who’ve perished, but in worse weather. By then I had broken my trekking pole, my shin’s skin, my shoe and my spirit. I couldn’t keep my backpack balanced, nor steady my fatigue-shaking legs. Anyone familiar with the Presidential Range in New Hampshire’s White Mountains knows it’s difficult terrain, but I didn’t. I hadn’t done all of my homework. I also hadn’t physically prepared as well as I could, consumed with work deadlines and a family emergency in the weeks leading up to the trip in August 2016. But our team of two was determined to “bag” five peaks that day despite high winds, rain squalls and poor visibility. So, ever the businesswoman, I did a quick SWOT analysis in my head – taking in my strengths (my endurance, h...

Stonington Point   When I first saw “Visit Anne’s Childhood Home” on the official vacation itinerary, I secretly worried this would be a major letdown. The visit along a narrow, rural road would take all of 10 seconds, maybe less if there were cars behind us. And while a significant chapter in my own personal history, the place on Pequot Trail hardly registered as an attraction to others. But it turns out I can claim not only the modest yellow house but all of Stonington as my personal domain, and so it came that we four spent an entire day within my former hometown’s borders. And, we got to spend more than mere seconds trespassing visiting the place where I grew from a toddler into a teenager. We started with apple picking on a farm, a first for me. The first thing that struck me was that the trees were pruned to bushes to make access easier. The second oddity was payment. A half peck was a very reasonable $5 but there wasn’t anyone to collect the cash. Just an un...

Can't seem to embed the video (anyone beside me starting to have it up to here with Blogger? . . .) There will be a post to go with this video in the coming days. http://vimeo.com/51888519

Tuesday night I fulfilled my main running goal: returning to my club's track workouts. A small victory, maybe, but a very significant one for me. I'd last run with the group in July 2007. I was still suffering from serious sunburn behind my knees where sunscreen had worn off on Sunday. It ached every time I bent my legs. I was hoping I'd forget the soreness once we started and I did. Amazing what going anaerobic within a minute does to pain priorities. Since it was the first post-marathon workout for some folks, we had it "easy." We were assigned eight 400m repeats w/ 30 sec. recovery between followed by ten 100-meter strides, then we finished up with crunches. My group took longer recovery breaks, so we managed only 7 repeats before we were told to fall in line for the 8 remaining strides. My 400 splits were 2:10 to 2:12 - consistent if not quite fast. I did the first 50 crunches, but only managed half the rowing rotations and just two minutes of planks. I have n...

From a friend's collection of photos during a recent trip to Vermont.

When it came to putting together an itinerary for our New England vacation, I suggested a trip to Block Island . It’s one of the only places in the region I’d yet to visit. Just as the islands of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket are similar yet distinct, Rhode Island’s ferry-bound tourist spot has the same appeal. By the final day of our trip, we’d already been to Connecticut’s Mohegan Sun casino, where once again I proved I have no business gambling, and designed our own jewelry at a Mystic bead store. That Saturday morning we boarded a ferry in New London with hundreds of Glastonbury high schoolers. Midway across the sound we felt a thud and the engine slowed to a crawl for a moment, then regained its momentum across a fog-enshrouded sound. The official story is the boat hit a lobster pot but some of us still believe it felt more like a marine mammal. We arrived to damp, overcast skies and immediately headed to the recommended Orange Cat Café near the harbor docks to warm up with a h...