Bake Bake Bake!

After the 10k on Saturday I'm taking time off from running for a while. I'm so burnt out, y'all. I don't intend to give it up entirely but I need some other outdoor cardio as a change of literal pace. I still have my plate carrier I bought earlier this year, and this week I splurged and bought myself a fancy GoRuck pack and some weight plates. There are a lot of rucking events that range from rucking around urban areas with a group to tough endurance events in the middle of nowhere. Of course, you know I've got my eye on a something dirty and difficult.

I like having something to train for in my future, and when I started running I thought that one day I'd like to try running a marathon. That helped inform my training from month to month. For rucking, I'm looking at stuff like GoRuck Heavy, or this overnight event in Ocala where you need to go 65 miles, mostly unsupported, in 24 hours. No drop bags or aid stations, but there are five checkpoints where you can refill water, or tap out. I've been interested in military-style physical training for a long time, despite having no actual military ambitions. I've apparently been named a domestic terrorist so there's that. (Not me specifically, just everyone who dislikes the current administration.) My overall fitness philosophy has always been "I'm making myself hard to kill," not that anyone's actually trying to kill me, but you get the idea.

No one's trying to kill me, right?

This will still allow me to get time on my feet, outdoors, and see stuff. I love the little dopamine hit when someone says, "You went HOW far??" I can still do the endurance sports I love without having to grind through another run training cycle. I'm actually really glad I don't have any more races on my calendar right now, especially long ones, because stick a fork in me, I'm done.

Plus I get to buy quasi-military gear. With patches. I love patches. And MOLLE. Lotsa straps. I would say I need attachment points for an admin pouch, first aid kit, etc, but I've got plenty of room IN my pack. I can carry water, a rain slicker, a little blister/first aid kit, snacks, and a towel.

Anyway, this has also caused something of an existential crisis, because I've built so much of my identity around running and road racing. If I'm not running anymore, who am I? Will I get fat again? Will that make me a quitter? Etc. Reasonably I know it's a more or less lateral move, but for some reason it feels like a huge step. I'm probably grossly overthinking it.

I dropped dead yesterday after spending all day doing various food prep tasks. I have about fifteen pounds of pie pumpkins so far and more coming in. I made my first roselle harvest and processed the calyxes and seed pods to make jam, though it didn't quite set so I'll need to reprocess and try adding more pectin. Soy sauce chicken for lunches, a loaf of bread, holy crap I'm tired. AND I made dinner. And cleaned up.

So over the weekend I'll get my gaming and reading posts written up but for now I need to eat a bit and go for a short shakeout run.

I am still enjoying Silksong and I will continue playing, but for now I need to put it aside. I'm getting way too stressed out, and since I usually play in the evenings, that's right before bedtime. I've even been taking my Garmin off when I play because it senses the rise in heart rate when I'm in these arena battles or boss fights. Tonight I'm going back to South of Midnight, which I was playing before we left on vacation. I was enjoying that a lot - good story, good gameplay, very engaging, likable player character, giant talking catfish.

I understand the why of Silksong being as challenging as it is, but I also don't think I need to keep banging my head against it every single night. I appreciate the reasons, and I enjoy a difficult game - I did Hyper Light Drifter at 100%, got most of Owlboy, Hollow Knight's Path of Pain, etc. I need a break :D

In other news, the replacement power box for the tower should be here today. We'll take down the dented one and if everything goes as planned (LOL) we'll only be offline for an hour while we swap over all the equipment. We'll need to run out to Home Depot tomorrow for bolts and anything else we might wind up needing, but with me assisting, it should go pretty quickly.

My neighbor now has one more chicken, making five. She keeps apologizing to me for how they roam into my yard, but I enjoy watching them scratch around, and they aren't hurting anything.

And I have noticed the weather station nearby that was reporting negative amounts of humidity has either been repaired or, more likely, replaced.