Friday Night Vertical 2021

Friday Night Vertical 2021

Monday, August 21, 2023

Recap?



Weekend in the Adirondacks

I don't even know how to title this because I never followed through on the rest of my 2022 recap, and the races I last wrote about are from a year ago. My last post was from February. Man, that got a lot of hits. 😅 I wonder why. Sarcasm. I will admit that I'm done making that kind of post, unless something crazy happens. I think people have seen enough. If you don't believe me by now, you aren't going to. At least I now know that there are other people beginning to see the light, so maybe my job is done here. And I really am ready to move on from it. I just couldn't get past it because I wanted that closure, some admittance of wrong doing, but I know that's never coming. A narcissist will never admit fault or that she lied. It will never happen. There is no such thing as karma. It's time to stop holding out hope that that fairy tale exists. Knowing that we didn't do what she accused us of is going to have to be enough. I know Ryan isn't an abuser. I know we didn't have an affair. It's that simple.

So anyway... I guess I'll start with a year ago when I went back to school. I spent almost 10 years toying with the idea of going to nursing school, but the timing never seemed right. I've known for a very long time now that my current job is a dead-end. Private ambulance is a road to misery. The schedule is great. The pay is (now) decent, but it's always a revolving door. You never know if and when your company will be the next to close. If you want to be in EMS for the long haul, then the fire/ems route is the way to go. While I'm still on the Conway Fire Dept, I'm not fire certified, and I have no interest in it. For the last few years, I've been bored and felt like I'd hit my max skills with the Advanced EMT career. I thought about becoming a paramedic, but I really never wanted to do that either. Plus, it still leaves me stuck in the private ambulance business. So I finally made the decision to move forward with nursing school. John was finally able to drive himself so it gave him enough independence to not need me driving him around everywhere. 

I applied in February of 2022 and got accepted for the Fall of 2022. I was SOOO nervous, but I ended up making it through my first year! It wasn't easy, though. I still worked 48 hours per week on top of school. Not only that, I had to take most of my prerequisites in conjunction with my nursing classes. I have a Bachelor's Degree in Business, but that didn't help me much except for my two English requirements. Everything else had to be done. It was very stressful and demanding. Most people get their pre-reqs done before they start nursing school, but I don't know how they afford it. You can't get financial aid unless you're in an official program, and financial aid is the only way I'm paying for this.

My clinical group celebrated the end of the first semester at Ledge Brewing.  We also went back at the end of the 2nd semester. I sense a trend coming on! Haha.



  


Last week, I finally finished microbiology, my last pre-req. I took an 8-week accelerated class at Manchester Community College. The drive wasn't too bad, but I am so glad to be done with school for the next 7 weeks! I had been in school since last May (minus Christmas break), so it feels good to take a break.

Celebrating finishing school for the summer

Ryan and I originally had plans to do some longer races, but we both realized that we didn't want the stress of training for long stuff this year. Training for long distances is stressful for me, so I wanted to stick with shorter runs and shorter races for this year. It has definitely been the right decision. Ryan's job keeps him so busy and is physically demanding so he has had to put running on the backburner. He was stressing out about the long work days and then trying to train. He realized it wasn't worth it. He's really fit and still does strength training, so he's pretty happy with that. Neither of us love running here that much anyway. We're bored with the place. 

John will be a senior this fall! (We'll both graduate in 2024!) I can't believe it. I'm getting sad about him going off on his own. It happened so fast. He doesn't know what he wants to do yet, but he all of a sudden picked up weight training and is working out at the gym about 5 days a week, on top of working full-time. I'm excited to see him find some interests, and I hope he has some loose plan when he graduates in a year. Oh man, though, I'm going to be a blubbering mess in a year from now. Haha. 


Only one square left of high school!

I guess I could go back to last fall for a little recap of our races after the Ragged 75. We had technically signed up for Cat's Tail, but we backed out on that because Ryan's dad was deteriorating quickly by the end of September so we didn't want to go out of town again for a race. We managed to make it to the Megunticook 50K in Camden, ME in September, though. School was already weighing heavy on me so I just wanted to get this one over with. I swore that if it was going to be hot and humid again, I wasn't doing it, but we showed up anyway. It would be the worst weather of any of the races. Brutally hot and humid. I didn't think it could be worse than Ragged, but it was. Ugh. It was a really tough, technical course, and the aid stations were a lot farther apart than I expected so I underestimating the amount of water I carried in between. It would be a total sufferfest. Around halfway, I passed Ryan on his way into the aid station. He had gotten behind me after taking some hard falls. Unfortunately, when I saw him here, he was about to drop out. He had taken another really hard fall, injuring his toe so he had to call it quits. I so wanted to stop with him, but I was just catching up to the lead woman. We stopped and hugged each other then I went on to pass the first woman and finish 4th overall. I took a really hard digger about a mile before the finish. A rock literally poked a hole in my shin, but that wasn't what hurt the most. My calf cramped up when I tripped and man, that fucking hurt. I screamed so loudly. Haha. 









We did end up racing every weekend in October, but we went back to the short stuff. I'll admit that I'm much happier doing the shorter stuff. That doesn't mean I'm done with ultras, but you probably won't see me do much more than 50Ks. We went back to the Randolph Ramble. It was a totally different experience this time since the trail wasn't covered in fresh snow. I finished 3rd female. Ryan and I finished about 20 seconds apart. It was funny that we never planned to race together, but no matter what we did, we would always end up together. I guess training together makes us about the same pace. 


We also participated in the Dawnland 100K and 25K in Maine that was put on by our friend, Jesse Wall, of TruStrength Athletics. This was a unique format where the 100K involved cycling between multiple different trail systems, running a course in each of them and then cycling on to the next. Ryan did this. I don't have a bike so I did the running of all the trails while driving in between them. The 100k looked tough. My route was much easier, but each time I got out of the car, the more stiff I felt, which made it extra challenging. I would end up finishing the 25K first overall (very small field), and Ryan finished 4th overall in the 100K. 






We ran the Cranmore Mountain Race, as well. I like doing Cranmore because it's local and probably the race I have done the most. I finished 4th female there. I'm sure I'll do it again this year.




We signed up for the Great Pumpkin Relay put on by Six03. It always looked fun, but I always had a conflict. Ryan and I bought crash test dummy costumes and showed up with masks on and were as silent as possible. It was great. No one knew who we were. Tom Hooper said hey to us and had no clue. I let one person in on my secret after Ryan started his first leg of the relay, but that was it. I decided not to stray from the anonymity and wore my mask the entire way. It was brutal trying to breathe through a plastic mask and see the trail through the tiny eye holes. My face was soaked in sweat and condensation, but I wasn't giving in. We finished 5th team overall and got 1st for mixed gender, even though Brandon Newbould and his teammate were actually first, but they won 1st overall so we won mixed gender by default. We visited Ryan's dad after the race. It would be my last visit. Ryan would go on to visit him up until 2 days before his dad passed. Later, we were going through his things from the nursing home and found that the last phone call his dad had made was to Ryan. 


John and I flew down to Georgia to spend Thanksgiving with my family. Ryan stayed home with the dogs. It was way too expensive to buy a 3rd plane ticket AND board the dogs when we were taking a trip to Colorado just over a month later. Dog boarding is expensive. My brother, Brandon, snagged us tickets to the UGA vs GA Tech game at Sanford Stadium. I hadn't been to a UGA football game since 2002, and John had never been to ANY college football game. He really got into it and had an awesome time. I saw one of my old high school friends on the jumbotron which was crazy. Out of about 90,000 people what were the chances of that? My 2 nephews also joined us for the game. 




My nephews are on my left. Tyler is 34, and Lofton is 12. Big age gap. Haha.

Christmas was pretty low key. We paid the $10 to get a tree in the national forest so John, Ryan and I ventured off the Kanc to find one. We were psyched to have some snow to get back to nordic skiing! My Norway hat got SO MANY comments over the season. It became a joke. One couple actually asked if we were from Norway. I SO wish we had said yes. Haha.









The first week of January, we took a much needed vacation to Colorado. We spent most of it in the Grand Junction area. John had never skiied out west so he had a blast in the powder at Powderhorn and Sunlight Mountain. Ryan and I were really excited to skate ski on the Grand Mesa, but with the brand new snow, the conditions were tough, and we completely waxed wrong. It was still soooo pretty, though. We only did one run, which was in the snow in the North Fruita desert. We spent the last 2 days in Crested Butte. If it wasn't ridiculously expensive, I'd live there in a heartbeat. Ryan and I had a great skate ski the first day, then we all did downhill at Crested Butte. Ryan and John skied together the whole time since they're better skiers than me. John loved it. I hope he ends up out there some day. What a great place to live.










When we got back to NH, xc ski season was in full swing. We don't run anymore in the winter because we love nordic so much more! If I could ski year-round, I would. I never thought I would get the hang of skate skiing, but after getting a new set-up, I improved quite a bit, but I was still missing something in the technique. I decided I finally needed lessons so I signed up for 3 lessons with Sue Wemyss. Who knew just a small change in how I held the poles would make such a difference. I finally had it down! I'm still slightly lacking in balance on one leg, but I feel like I'm almost there. I couldn't believe how much better of a skier I was by the end of the season. We finally got classic gear this year, too, but that's still a work in progress. 

We did 3 skate ski races: Ski to the Clouds, the Rangeley 50k (actually 42K) and the Long Hall Loppet. The first two were really tough conditions. I was completely spent at the end of the Rangeley race. The Loppet had great conditions this year. I improved on last year's time by almost 30 minutes. 








I feel so cheated out of getting into xc skiing as a kid by growing up in the south, but it's better late than never. I love it so much! Plus, I am the fittest I've ever been while doing it. I also can't believe how strong my entire body gets during the winter. I didn't have any trouble jumping right into running again... and I was faster than last year! During my A&P II class in March, we did spirometer testing, and my results were really good! Haha. My VO2 max in 2016 (I was really running fit) was 55. I wish I could see where it is now! It decreases with age, but I have a feeling that during ski season, it wasn't far off from 55.

My friend, Liz, was my lab partner and took this photo. Yes, we were being childish. Haha. And we were just messing around with photos here. I actually wore the nose clips for the official test.


Ryan was able to take the winter off from work so he was out there training for hours every day. I made time to get out there 6 days/week, even if I only had an hour some days. Ryan got really fit and fast. He did the Tuckerman Inferno again, as well. He and Josh Flanagan duked it out with Josh passing Ryan in the last part of the ski and beating him by 8 seconds to finish 3rd and 4th. Ryan was really happy with his race this year. I crewed him as usual, then skied up to the bowl on the race skis to watch him. It was a beautiful day. I was too nervous to ski down all the way from the bowl on the race skis, so I hiked down to Hojo's and skied from there. I was shocked at much I liked going down the Sherbie on the race skis!

















I actually had a lot of awesome powder ski days on the Sherbie this year. I also did the Gulf of Slides trail for the first time. I'm pretty terrible at backcountry skiing, but I like it, even though it's terrifying. We only did one skimo race this season. Ryan and John got the flu REALLY bad right before the first race. I had had the flu shot, but I still ended up catching it, but with much more minor symptoms. But it was in the chest so I was out for the first race, too. Next year, I'm going to finally use the skimo race skis instead of heavy metal. The heavy gear makes these races really tough. I'm usually out there an hour or more longer than the real racers. It's time to give real skimo a try, but I'm still really nervous about it.

John turned 17 in February. It was a low-key birthday this year. He worked at Cranmore all winter doing ski rentals and making decent money.



Only one photo left of high school!

I started writing this post a month ago, so I have no idea where my train of thought was when I last wrote. There isn't much to share really. The summer has been a bit of a dud. Ryan tore his MCL at work in early June (I think!). It was probably a grade 1 tear, but he didn't realize what it was at first and ran on it until he knew it was something bad. Still having to work all summer has led to setbacks in healing, but he finally seems to be on the up and up. It's sucked not having my running buddy most of the summer. I like running by myself, but we really were having fun running together on the weekends. I was so glad we decided no longer races, or many races at all for that matter, or else we would have been very disappointed. We did do the Sunapee Scramble National Championship Races in April. I was pretty happy with both races, but I probably would have done better on Sunday if I had only done one of the races. I finished 16th female on Sunday in the up/down race. I think I was 24th the first day. Although it was short distance, my legs took 2 weeks to recover from the hard effort. Double weekends are going to be a thing of the past for me... so I say.

I skipped Mt Washington for the first time since 2012. I felt so much relief to finally give up on that stupid race. I never liked it, but I told myself to give it 10 years, and I did. No regrets. I didn't miss it at all. 




We managed to get a few runs in before Ryan's injury: Adirondacks, Pawtuckaway, Magalloway. After that we were able to do a few hikes and some bike rides. Ryan got some classic roller skis that he's been getting pretty good at. We both would really like a pair of the skate roller skis, but that's just too much money right now. I also would like a new bike. Haha. My old mountain bike is a piece of shit. It served its purpose when I bought it in 2008 to cart John around in a bike trailer in California, but it is terrible for real terrain. Maybe when I'm earning a better paycheck in a little over a year. Fingers crossed anyway.




















Mother's Day flowers and gifts from Ryan and John.


Ryan hard at work. He's been busting his ass all season.


This whole post is kind of a mess since I lost track of my flow. I don't know how much I'll post after this. Blogs are kind of a thing of the past now. I just realized that this post is so far behind that I've since left Conway Fire. I just don't have time for it now, and when I do have free time, I'm out running or on a lake. I was sad to leave, but it wasn't fair for me to stay on the roster and never show up. I did a few details in June with them, but I couldn't pick up anything else. It actually has reduced my stress level so it was a good thing. I was feeling so much guilt over never showing up. Now, I don't have to worry about that. I still see everyone all the time. I actually ran into a whole group of my former coworkers at Tuckerman Brewing this past Saturday and hung out with them for awhile. Ryan was off on guys' weekend so I made an attempt to be social. Haha. It was fun, but my social limit was hit pretty quickly. 

John has been having a good summer. He's working full-time at Cranmore. He also just got into lifting weights and boxing, too. He's getting really fit. Such a big change. He even wanted to join me at the Whitaker Woods Summer Series a few weeks ago. He has never run more than a mile. The 3 miles was tough for him, but he ran a lot of it until he got a stomach cramp in the last mile. This was so much more fun running with him than my racing. It's starting to become real that he's only 6 months away from being an adult! I can't believe it. How do I fit in everything with him in the next year?! I took him to the Pink Floyd Tribute Band show on Friday which was fun. We can just hang out and do things like that together now. I'm hoping to finally get him to NYC in December. He's never been so we have to go. He doesn't know his future plans yet, but I want to make sure we do all the things we've had planned for so long.


Wearing the hat I was apparently made fun of behind my back for wearing. Haha




Ryan and I took our first hike together back to Mt Potash since our 3rd date. It was a beautiful night that night, and we were so giddy over each other. A photo I posted of us a few days later would end up changing everything. The innocence of our new relationship was ruined by the narcissist through her lies and deceit. She proceeded to crush our reputation in order to build herself up. If I had only realized that she was a narcissist then, I would have handled it differently. You can't beat them. They are master manipulators who will lie until they win. Oh, she takes the crown. I just hope she knows that it's tarnished. I know the absolute truth. I know it's a FACT that she lied. But it will make her evilness smile to know that she succeeded in making this first hike back a little depressing. 



Luckily our 3rd anniversary in early August wasn't able to be ruined by her. We did the same paddle down the Bear Camp River and through Ossipee Lake as we did for our 1st anniversary. This time we used the paddle boards. It was so peaceful on the river and crazy on the lake. Haha. We had a really good time. I could have kept going for longer. I can't believe it's been 3 years already! Life has dealt us quite the hand, but we've just rolled with the punches. I have truly found my soulmate in Ryan. 












I don't know how many people who read this ever saw the weird deck and pool thing we had at our house since my ex-husband and I bought it, but we finally took it down... well, Ryan did. I just pulled the boards off the small deck. He brought home an excavator for the July 4th weekend, rented a dumpster and went to work. It's crazy seeing the whole yard for the first time. We have to wait until the loam pile is ready and the new septic system is in until we can finish up the yard work, but I'm excited to see this place look nice. 













I just went back to proof read and realized I just wrote things I had already written. Haha. I guess it's been 6 weeks since I started this post. I'm going to leave it, though. I am well aware that I repeated myself.

Nursing school starts back in a week from today. The syllabus looks daunting. The only thing that makes it less daunting is knowing that I'm done with the pre-reqs, and I only have to focus on Nursing III. It still seems like a lot, but I know it will fly by, just like the first year. And just like last year, I will be able to get my runs and skis in most days. They won't always be long workouts, but just something is good enough. I'm still working at the ambulance, but I'm cutting my weekly scheduled hours from 48 to 36. I'll pick up open shifts to make up for it when I'm able to. I'll finally be coming off Mondays for the first time in 11 years! 

So I guess that's the recap! A lot of photos and pretty boring stuff. I'm sure I'll write another post again, but I'm not planning to cover almost a year of stuff again. Maybe I'll just do a race post or something. I don't know. See ya.