Welcome back to Gist Rocket. I'm your host, Lindsay, and today's episode, well, it's not polished. It's not pretty, not even particularly peppy, but it's my current reality because I've hit a wall and not the kind that you can power through with motivational quotes or a double espresso. It's more like the kind that leaves you standing there in your kitchen, staring at your ruck and thinking, I don't have the strength to just add one more thing. I'm almost 50. My body feels like it's glitching out, bloated, joint pain, no progress. Even though I'm doing everything right, I ruck solo and lately even I don't wanna spend time with me. Just got back from vacation mountains, good food, great friends, and now that I'm back to the chaos, work is relentless. My personal life, it's a bonfire of drama. And then the farm. My sanctuary is full of injury. And then add to it grief, a loss of a good friend and coworker. And yet I have a 20 mile ruck at Letchworth coming up in just a few weeks. And the truth is the thought of trading. Feels like adding more weight to an already overloaded pack. But here's the thing, this is the part that we never talk about. It's the middle, the messy, the I don't wanna tantrums. And in today's episode, I'm just gonna go take you on another hike. We're gonna listen to the trail underneath my feet and me breathing like a freaking behemoth because I got out there and I did it and I didn't wanna. All right. Good rocking. Morning everyone. Today I am doing a little rock around a pond that's close to my house, DEC lands, and, trying to push it so. Doing a fast 20 pounds is my goal today. Got the dog with me which is slowing me down because everything exciting and she wants to sniff it or poop, and that really slows you down. But I mean, who wants to go rucking without a dog? It's absolutely no fun. And of course they make me keep her outta a leash on DEC property. It's one hand down and I can't use the other hand to like pump up and it's my first time on this trail. Since the storms rage through here, our town got hit pretty hard with two like hundred year storms back to back Fridays. And so far, I've noticed some fun damage in the fact that they had to relay gravel on one of the sections to get here, and it's all loose. And every step I took, I was just sliding backwards the whole time. Holy cow. And I'll come back in a little bit after I get to the top of this drum line. Oh, excuse my breathing. That is one heck of a climb. For those of you that aren't familiar with a adrenaline and what it is, it's, it's like a glacial poop. I've probably said it before. Oh, dog. Come here. Good girl. Split pace. 12 minutes, 31 seconds per kilometer. All right. I slowed down a lot, but in that 12 minutes was there slippery gravel that I was telling you about where I was just going backwards and that really big, hill that just went up. It's gonna flatten out up here. Oh, there we go. Just caught my breath. Sometimes you need one of those quick like gas breaths and then poof. You feel fine. At least I do. I. The climb up the hill just taught me that I need to do some work on my hip flexors. So this is gonna be a goal this week. Do a lot of hip exercises. My right hip is really, burning and hurting right now, and it's my right side that I got injured. I've been doing a lot of work on the knee, but. That, that left my poor hips lacking. So now my knee is stronger and that no longer hurts. But now my n nip, my nips, my nips, my hips are, begging for a little love. So we'll do a round of those, not hip stretches. I actually need to build the muscle in the hip. Everybody focuses on stretching. But today and this week. We'll be adding, Probably a lot of assisted stuff.'Cause I just do not have the mobility, in my hips that I would like. So that's what we're, we're planning on doing. Looks like that was a 2K mark. I might have to do this loop twice to get the three K that I need here before I head on home. And my poor dog just realized that there are a lot of. What the heck is spiderwebs? I'm getting a ton of them. I'm the first person on the trail this morning by the looks of it, because I'm getting mouthfuls of it. All right, guys. I'll check in with you when I get off of this hill and see where I am on my count and if I have to do this loop twice. I am back. So looking at my metrics, I do need to do a second lap. And the good thing about um, this park is the fact that my dog is peeing now. Hi. I swear my times are just terrible because the dog keeps like sniff peeing, anywho back to the trail. I'm on a board rock right now, which is why I can talk. They opened up some new trails. So it used to just be a plain, ordinary loop up the drumlin around the pond, up the drumlin, around the pond, and then they put in three new trail systems on the Drumlin side. So I now can go up the Drumlin, I can go like halfway up the Drumlin and I can stay at pond level the whole way. So we're gonna check out a different trail along the way. Instead Turn left. I'm gonna turn right, which is a really deep, dark tunnel. Holy cow. There's hardly any light in here and we're gonna check this way out. I noticed my pace is getting slower and I have to keep reminding myself. To push it. I can keep wanting to settle into a comfortable pace instead of the rocking pace that I should be keeping.'cause this is a workout, this is an leisure early hike. That's not the purpose of what I'm doing right now. So gotta push, gotta keep moving, gotta keep going forward at a pace that's gonna make me breathe heavy. And that's the key. That's the hard part when you're alone is doing this and. Keeping yourself, motivated to just push forward. We got a white tail trail, woodchuck trail and turtle trail. I'm gonna go with, I don't know what this is. I know there's a set of steps that go up this mountain or it feels like a mountain drumlin. I'm gonna try to find them. All right guys, going back uphill. We'll talk to you later.

Okay. Guess what? Remember how I told you I should find, I was trying to find stairs. Well, I found them. If anybody cares around the wood truck trail. Oh boy. That got me breathing heavy. There's quite a bit of'em'cause the side of a drumlin is very steep and they just built a stairway to the top, which is kinda awesome. I signed up for a mammoth march coming up here soon and it's in Letchworth State Park, which is FYI, the number one state park. Voted by USA today. So thank you all for making State Park the number one state park in the United States. But anywho, I am going to Fisher Path. We're gonna go back down this wing on a switchback. The park has a lot of steps in it and it's a lot of up and down'cause it's a gigantic gorge. Holy witch hobble. I'm gonna have to pay attention to where I'm stepping and, practicing for 20 miles of up and down rugged terrain. I'm very thankful that I have this tiny park in my backyard to help mimic, the trails over there. So that I can make it a full 20 mile. I think right now, my only concern with it is, my hip, which has always been my knees. It's wild. That is my hip right now. The one pain that I had in it has subsided, and now I just feel, the majority of the pain in like the ball area of my hip. Which is more of an annoyance and probably signs that at some point I'll need hip surgery. But to prolong that as much as possible, as I said, just start incorporating, uh, hip exercises into my workout routine. Split pace, 12 minutes, 30 seconds per kilometer. Okay, a little slower. But, uh, as I said, went up a big hill and that was also part of my dog peeing and that, so I was doing 11 minutes almost even without any struggles, just on the flattish trail. And the trail I'm on right now is just tons of roots, a lot of technical stepping while trying to keep a fast pace. So try not to, trip and fall and break something out here, that would be dumb because if I fall down, I'm falling in poison ivy. Holy poison ivy. They should have signs that say danger. You're gonna get very itchy if you touch the ground here. And I just got off of prednisone and I wanna be back on it, and I got on on it because of my dog. So I will have to make sure. She gets a good hose in washing when I get home to get all the, uh, oils off her so I don't end up with poison ivy again when she jumps in my lap. That was 4K, so, my full trip is gonna be well over the 5K that I'm looking for'cause I ended up doing two laps. It'll probably be five and a half, probably six K by the time I'm done, I'll check in at the end.

Uh, the walk home down the driveway. All right, so I've been out here for. Oh my gosh, I love it. 69 minutes. I'm just gonna, I should stop it right there. That's a bomb. But, uh, looks like by the time I make it back to my house, it'll be a nice round,, six kilometer. So two loops and back is a six K for me, which is perfect. I am a lot slower than I wanted to be. It looks like I averaged about 11 minutes and 40 seconds per kilometer, which is slow, but uh, it is under over uneven terrain Hills dog and whatnot, so I'm not overly unhappy with that. I would expect to be, sub 10 minute if I were on the flat, so, okay. Not feeling too bad, not feeling bad at all. Now I just gotta make sure I keep this up so that I am ready for race day and that I'm in good shape and health to be able to do it. And this ruck this morning has definitely helped put me in a right mindset to handle the workday, because it's been a little, uh, depressing at the office lately. Just put it that way. And a lot of, uh. Emotions going on. Nothing to do with work. All has to do with, uh, the loss of a employee. But, uh, split pace, 11 minutes. 28 seconds. Yeah, 11 minutes, 28 seconds. Is that one? That was my split six. So there's my six k. I still got a little ways to go to home. So little over nothing bad and just happy to have been able to get out. Feel privileged to do so. And you guys have yourself a rocking good week. Welcome back everybody. All right, time for next week's challenge. So I want you to do something I did, even if it's just something simple. I want you to choose the smallest version of the one thing you don't wanna do. Go walk a mile, maybe rock with no weight, get outside for five minutes and breathe. Or you know, do something crazy and try to do a speed ruck with 20 pounds over six kilometers. I mean, whatever. It doesn't matter. But I want you to get out there and the one thing you've been putting off, go do it. Don't give an excuse. Get up, walk out, get outside, put the media down and just listen to yourself. Breathe and your feet move. And remember, we're not just carrying a rock every single time we go out, we're carrying responsibility, heartache, aging bodies, and unpredictable lives. So if you hit a wall and I'm standing there with you, palm's pressed breath, shallow eyes looking for the next foothold, let's climb that one together. Let's ruck it away because life is rucking wonderful. Even when it's rocking hard.