Year: 2015

SnowShoeFest III

Canaan Valley, WV

January 31 – February 1, 2015

 

 

 

 

There were a lot of new faces at SSFIII this year.  There was Sarah Wright, fresh off of hip surgery.

This was Cecily and Ben’s web redemption from their snowless New Year’s visit.

Over 14″ of snow had fallen in the last week and it was a winter wonderland.

The towering conifers in Stone Coal flats were a definite highlight.

The thermometer read 6 degrees in the morning, bringing out the Mad Bomber hat.  But bright sun, not a cloud in the sky, and it got pretty roasty toasty on the climb up to Bald Knob.

 

 

 

January 1, 2015

Dolly Sodds, WV

 

Poor Cecily and Ben had traveled from DC to snowshoe and cross country ski with us in Canaan, but the weather gods had not delivered.  There was only one other way to bring in the new year: Smoking Bench.

Well, to be specific we visited Smoking Bench II. Smoking Bench I is by the WIS hill in Cleveland Park.  Smoking Bench II is atop Cabin Mountain in the Sodds. These benches have earned the title because, well, if I ever smoked, these are the select benches from which I would exercise my habit.  I’ve never myself smoked, but I’ve always been a bit envious of smokers for the way that they have this beautiful permanent excuse to step out from a loud crowded party and sit outside alone in peace for a defined ten-minute interval.

The weather gods had at least produced a sunny, clear day up on the ridge, ideal for a trot along Martha’s trail (for some reason, despite criss-crossing the Sodds for many years, this ridge trail had not previously been part of Aaron’s repertoire).

To my great delight, Cecily and her boyfriend Ben moved to Woodley Park this summer.  The second half of 2014 has really been a social windfall, with both Cecily and Sarah W., two of my oldest friends from childhood who know my quirks inside and out, moving back to DC.  Definitely makes me less enthusiastic about leaving DC for a new job.  So here’s a brief summary of my history with Cecily:

We were in ballet class together at 5.

We were ‘Mean Mints’ together on our 4th-grade soccer team (which had mint green shirts), and later Potomac Red Devils when we went Select.

We were basketball teammates in 5th grade (we once lost a game 3-2).

We were in the Chevy Chase Elementary School chorus.

For three summers we lived a month together in a tiny cabin in northeastern Pennsylvania at Campus Netimus, braving the slimy freezing lake and the dramas of teenage girls living in too close quarters.

Later in high school, Cecily paved the way for my running career by being the top cross country runner at Richard Montgomery high school as a freshman (I had started out my freshman year at B-CC playing field hockey and basketball and switched to cross country as a sophomore to win the state championship).

Our families also went on ski trips together in high school to Colorado, where Cecily learned the particular Bob Nelson style of skiing without turning or stopping.

Cecily once again inspired me to compete in running in college, when Cecily was a freshman standout at Dartmouth and I was bumbling around Stanford not doing much of anything.  After visiting Cecily at Dartmouth freshman year I came within a whisker of transferring there to run with her on the team, but in the end transferred to Amherst, which was an even more extreme polar opposite of Stanford, with a total student population of ~1600.

I also have to give Cecily due credit for her indirect role in launching my career in science.  Cecily was living in London when I happened to visit the city for RAND work.  Naturally, I spent a couple days with Cecily after the meeting.  After a day or so wandering around London I decided to take the train to Oxford.  I was generally interested in seeing Oxford, and I was specifically interested in talking to a professor in the Zoology department named Edward Holmes.  At the time one of my main projects at RAND was to evaluate the Federal Pandemic Influenza Preparedness and Response Plan.  This had entailed weeks of interviews with head people at NIH, CDC, FDA, and throughout the Federal government.  I was just a lowly research assistant, but my main observation in the plan was that it was very heavy on vaccine development, but very thin on other aspects of preparedness, and had a lot of assumptions about how a pandemic virus would evolve in the first place.  As an undergraduate who had majored in biology, with a focus on evolution of disease, I had dived into the literature and come across what I thought were fascinating papers by an Oxford guy named Edward Holmes.  The uninhibited mindset of a 23 year-old is so foreign to the mindset of a 33 year-old that I really can’t explain the bizarre series of events that unfolded during the six-month interval between that fated train ride to Oxford and the beginning of a PhD with Edward Holmes, who was not actually at Oxford when I had visited because he had just moved to Penn State University a couple weeks prior to my visit but whom I had tracked down nonetheless.

Our New Years expedition continued with a journey to the source of the mighty Potomac River.

On Day 2 of our New Years celebration we opted for the calmer Spruce Island Lake loop.

~            ~               ~

So, what’s ahead for 2015?  We’ve got a lot on the first half of the calendar:

January: Peru, Colorado Ski Trip with the Schwartzbards & Andrishes, SnowShoeFest

February: Holiday Lake 50k

March: Belgium, Netherlands, Germany

April: Bull Run 50, Boston, Run for the Birds & Lobsterfest

May: Iowa

June: Laurel Highlands 70

July: MuscleMan 1/2 ironman, Escarpment

August: Luray Tri

2015 could be a Big Year.  It could be the year that Aaron has his breakthrough race that assures him he’s back to normal post-Lyme.  It could be the year that I put an end to my great cycle of injury and strengthen up.  It could be the year that my stomach settles down and I see what I can do in an ultra if I don’t vomit midway.  It could be the year that I finally sort out a position at the NIH so that I can kiss off those draining cycles of faculty interviews.  Or, short of that, 2015 could be the year that I just throw in the towel and decide to be a hippie contractor until some indefinite point when the gig is up.  Here are my predictions for 2015.

(1) I have at least one ultra where things go well and I don’t barf.  And I don’t injure.  And that’s good enough for me.

(2) I make more Sundays in the Park.  Even though they start at 8am.  Because they’re fun.  And I drag Cecily and Ben there too.

(3) I don’t see much of Sean.  Except when the stars mysteriously align and we both find ourselves independently at Snowmass on separate family ski trips, our hotels a stone’s throw away.

(4) I swallow considerably less lake during my summer triathlon.

(5) I have every intention of making it back to the Escarpment, but for the 8th year in a row am thwarted by circumstances.

(6) I kind of freak out about turning 34.  Not because 34 is a bad number.  I actually like the number 34.  Just because the numbers 35-40 are terrifying.

(7) I volunteer at the Women’s Half.  At the aid station with the tequila shots.  Because I’ll be taking those.  As I watch someone else win the race.  Hopefully someone who covers their bum.  But I’ll still cheer if they don’t.  Probably too loud because I’ve had too much tequila.  Which is anything more than half a shot.

(8) I don’t get to run the Run For It 5k in Davis.  A race I’ve desperately wanted to run ever since meeting Aaron in 2011. Last year I couldn’t run it because I was in Indonesia.  The year before was Megatransect.  Two years before we were both injured.  The calendar gods will not take pity in 2015.

(9) I travel less.  Intentionally.  I get a little more scheduled in 2015.  I use my Garmin.  And Strava.  Even though Aaron promised me the data was private and Robin still gets email notifications.  I never look at the watch.  But I accept more structure in my life.  The food routine at least is good for me, and I get my weight up into the 120s.

(10) My NIH building is repaired.  Even still I go to work with Aaron on ‘Tuesday is take your girlfriend to work’ day.  Because Aaron’s boss got a new work kitty.  And I start riding horses again at Potomac Horse Center.  I stress out a bit about how much money I’m bleeding.  Especially when I’ve taken the hippie contractor career path that could end in measly income.  I cry because spending money like that goes against all my minimalist instincts.  Whether I stick it out or not depends entirely on whether I like my instructor and my ride.  But I put down the money to give it a whirl.  Because 2014 was stressful — too many interviews, injuries, obligations.  And in 2015 I’d like to give myself a loopier rein.