C-Scape Dune Shack Week Two

This past weekend I had the great pleasure of having Lisa B. a friend and hiking buddy from Santa Fe, NM come visiting. She had been volunteering at a kids camp on the Cape and stayed with me for two nights at C-Scape.

On her second day we walked from the shack to the visitors center, down the bike trail past Race Beach, past Herring Cover to the jetty at Pilgrim’s First Landing Park . It is just over 5 miles from the beach shack, not terribly far, but the heat index was 101 and two of those miles are in soft sand.  The sand was blazing hot and we were pretty cranky by the time we got to the jetty, but as planned we got there at low tide. After walking out the jetty, we climbed down the rocks and looked for critters, specifically starfish.
There were loads of starfish almost immediately. I was really happy. At first I thought our trip was a bust and hated the idea of walking the 5 miles back in that terrible heat. We found starfish, crabs, loads of neat stuff I really did not know what it was. Wading through the low tidal pools, while very stinky was a nice feeling on my beaten up feet.

We walked back via Commercial Street and stopped to get iced lattes. That was a nice invigorator for the walk back. By the time we got home, we were only gone 5 hours, but walked almost 12 miles and we were hot, sunburn, blistered and exhausted. I barely remember going to bed.

I finished eight drawings. I made two drawings of this seaweed. I forgot the name of it and could not find it on-line so if you know it, please post it in the comments. Otherwise I will find out the name the next time I meet up with the ranger.  I could draw this stuff all day as it is really interesting and fun to do.

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S.M.A.R.T. 2016

Hilary at Bald Peak, Adirondack Mountains, NY Dec. 2015

It  turned midnight for my friends in Lake St. Clair, Tasmania, in Melbourne, Sydney and Adelaide. Happy New Year! Yes, of course Happy New Year to all in Australia, but I have friends in those four places and want to make a particular shout out to them.

I do not make resolutions but I do make goals for the year. They are nothing crazy, they are  measurable, reachable goals that involve developing skills and strength through practice.  These goals only make my life more rewarding by having a healthy strong body but they are also really fun and will involve 6 months or more of practice each.  So in particular order:

1. Master the pistol squat. 
2. Get  StrongFirst Certification
   This is not so that I can teach Pavel Tsatsouline method of kettlebells, but to prove to myself that I can develop the strength to do 100 kettlebell snatches, 12kg in 5 minutes. along with perfect form in the
   • Swing (one 12kg bell)
   • Turkish Get-Up (one 12kg bell)
   • Double Clean (two 12kg bell)
   • Press (one 12kg bell)
   • Double Front Squat (two 12kg bell)
   • Snatch ((one 12kg bell)
     There is a 30% failure rate on those that can even make it to  certification day.
3. Race the WhiteFace Skymarathon,
   So when I say “race” I don’t want to just participate and run it, I want to run it hard and do well. Thanks to my new coach, Sean Meissner at Sharmaulta I am feeling really good about this. I have worked with Sean for just 2 weeks now, but I love how he puts together a training plan.
4. Race the Marquette Trail 50 in MI
   Same as #4. Additionally having a coach, I can focus on the work I need to do, running, and not think about planning my run schedule. Plus a coach can see far more clearly when their athlete needs to be pushed or needs to back off. This is hugely important to me.
5. Build a canoe by hand.
   This takes a lot of skill, none of which I have.  I identified two canoe building teachers, one at the Adirondack Folk School,  the other at the Bershire Boat Building School. What I especially like about the Bershire school is that the man who own’s it is named “Hilary.” Many of Hilary’s boats classes are  solo lightweight canoes for easy carry and would be awesome for Adirondack canoe camping.

Of course there are other things I will do, other races, personal bests I want to beat, but right now they are not specific or measurable, two requirements of a good goal, as in S.M.A.R.T. defined as one that is specific, measurable, achievable, results-focused, and timebound.

After being in a boot last year for my broken foot and getting  weak, I am all about strength focus and having fun. Being that my goals involve skill makes them all the more interesting. What are your S.M.A.R.T goals for 2016?

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Happy New Year!

Happy New Year from Adventureartist

Happy New Year from Adventure Headquarters. I have my new Christmas present ready to go, I just need some snow. Wishing you a Happy, Healthy, Adventurous 2015! Now get outside and have some fun!

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My Matfield Outpost Resideny

This past week has been quite dreamy at the Matfield Outpost Residency. I feel right at home in the cozy studio working on my Flint Hills Series of watercolors. I love walking from the house to the studio and then settling in to work.

Hilary in studio

Homer and Conrad playing fetch while I cut paper

The best part is having my dogs with me. We spent a lot of time out walking the hills and they stayed close by me when I was working.

It has been fantastic hanging out with Ton Haak and Ans Zoutenbier the Directors of the Gallery at Pioneer Bluff. And the good news is that I will be back in October for my own exhibition with opens on October 4th.

Today I walked just over seven miles at the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve. This place is beautiful and scary. It is part of the 170,000,000 acres of tallgrass prairie. The national park has over 40 miles of trail where you have to cross through cattle and bison fields. While I wanted to see wild bison I am glad I didn’t as I would have been afraid, I was terrified of the cattle, especially being 4-5 miles out in the prairie all alone. Three times I had to cross the path covered in cattle, one time they started trotting toward me and I was sweating like mad because I did not know how to get them to go the other way.

Bison alert

But if you can handle walking through the cattle you are in for a real treat, it is a sea of green for miles in every direction.

Miles of beautiful green

 

 

 

 

I am packing up all my stuff tonight and photographing the last of the work I made. It is to bad I only have my  cell phone camera, my nice Canon A100 (or could be nice) is broken again. This has been the worst camera I ever owned, first I got lens errors, now the shutter will not work, it was an expensive disappointment.

But I have my  cell phone to show you some of my work, these are all watercolor with collage of Italian printed papers, they are 12″ x 16″. I can’t wait to come back, Matfield Outpost is the most awesome place!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Watercolor collage by Hilary Loren 

Watercolor collage by Hilary Lorenz

Watercolor collage by Hilary Lorenz

Watercolor collage by Hilary Lorenz

 

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When not running

When I am not actively running, I think about running. The toughest part about being in my NM hideaway is all the chores I have, like table making, fence building and weed pulling, not to mention my pretty extreme isolation. So to remedy almost all of things I bring you my first Desert Functional Fitness  video:

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Running the Edge

Before I left New York for Michigan I picked two books to take with me, Deep Survial by Laurence Gonzales and Running the Edge by Adam Goucher and Tim Catalano. Being here for a few days now I have to laugh at the perfect combination of my choice.

It is not exactly deep survival driving 814 miles with dogs to spend a few charged holidays with the family, but the trip  requires some risk management.  Deep Survival is far more extreme,  it looks at who lives, who dies and why,  in various outdoor adrenalin induced adventures. For anyone who loves to read about the wilderness, adventure and life altering decisions it is a fascinating read.

Next I am into the first 100 pages of Running the Edge by Adam Goucher and Tim Catalano who were University of Colorado running teammates. You may have read reviews that it is unlike any other running book and it is. It is self-help, motivation, spiritual guidance, deep reflection all rolled into one. But what stands out is the runners common thread to reject the idea of living a normal or average life. It  talks about one’s biggest fear being wasted potential. Wow this book is for me, especially right now in my cross roads of mid-life but always wanting more.

I have always had the philosophy, the fear, and the determination to not have regrets on my deathbed. Growing up, my father  talked about how much he hated his job. We would get in discussions of,  “Why do something that you hate so much?”  I vowed then to never be in that position, that I would never do something that would make me profoundly unhappy. He said he did it,  “because of you kids”  to support us and send us to college. I must be really selfish because there is no way I would “waste” my life doing something that I hated, maybe that is why I also vowed to never have kids.  I am not sure why he hated his job but what was tough to see is how it affected his entire life.   I learned some big lessons from those talks, mostly I never want to feel like I perceived  he felt.

For me not having a family of my own is my best choice, I can do what I want and I have. I traveled all over the world, almost all of it paid for by an arts organization, the government, or another country’s cultural department. I have lived  in mountain huts, beach shacks, super deluxe houses, monster apartments and single rooms.  I gave talks and had exhibitions worldwide. I am a tenured professor and I am the chairman of a university department.  I have a second home in another state that I get to go to in the summer. I am making the best choices for me, for who I am. That looks great on the checklist of accomplishments but it is no big deal to anyone who has some passion and a little persistence. It is time for something more.  Enters “Running the Edge.”

Running the Edge is about more, better, and never settling, in ones’ running, education, career, friendships, family, and passion. Running, that is easy to never settle to always chase a new PR. Education that is easy too I love to learn and constantly take new classes.  Career is not so clear. I am an artist, I am  a professor. I am not totally keen on where I teach and I want to make it a better and more competitive department with stronger students and better studios. Or is it that I want to move to a place with stronger students and better studios?  Or maybe I want to leave all together and do something new and different or take the risk of only making art? Or maybe as a money job, I don’t “work” in art anymore and I work in physiology, exercise testing? Then at the end of the day I can go to my studio and make art without having to dump the frustration of teaching art to people I believe are less motivated than they should be? Not making the decisions is passive and I find myself passively waiting for a new opportunity to come through the email to point me in a new direction. Wow that is hard to admit, if I had a friend doing that I would scold them up and down to get their ass out there and make a change and tell them how pathetic they are for not being pro-active. Hilary, you are pathetic, get your ass out there and make a decision to change what you feel is not the very best.

Now I feel better.  I am eager to continue reading Running the Edge. I love the stories that are recounted by  Goucher and Catalano, they make perfect sense to me, the risk and the reward.   What a great end of year reading to move into the better, faster, stronger, smarter me next year. Just the planning of it gets me excited.

So this year in talking with my dad who retired over 10 years ago but immediately went right back to work as a part-timer at the very same job he hated tells me, “Sure I still get mad at my job and I work more hours that I should, but it gives me something to do, some place to go, it keeps me active and thinking and engaging with people.” I will still wonder why that place is not what I would think of as more appealing but maybe it is what is appealing to him, plus it is not my life, it is his.   Now the job is on his terms and he is calling the shots. That is where we all need to be, calling our own shots, making everything what we want it to be and doing what we want to do.

Happy New Year to all the Distance Mavens and here is enjoying a relentless pursuit of excellence in everything.

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Holy Dirt

I am back in NYC, and yes, wondering why. That is easily answered with my job, but it seems that New Mexico has so much  to offer, number one on that list is expansive space. This is especially noticeable when my  neighbor’s window is only about 25 meters from mine.

Anyhow I ran yesterday, the first time in 3 weeks since last trying to run.  It felt  good. I did 30 minutes, 1 walking  / 1 jogging without any pain, I will take anything I can get. It was a fantastic feeling and gave me optimism. If only I was in NM, I bet I could run all the time. My dogs could run all over the trails rather than drag me around on the cement putting extra torque on my bones, and I would have 1000’s of miles of dirt. I decided to put myself on the 5 year plan to move there, or if I am lucky the expedited 3 year plan.

Hilary with neighborhood dogs

I often hear the comment that runners are a superstitious bunch, and I am going to add to that. On my last day in NM I went to Chimayo a town famous for  El Santuario where it is believed by many to be the site of a miracle which occurred about 200 years ago. Miraculous healings are believed to have occurred at the site where a wooden crucifix was unearthed. Almost half a million people come every year to this tiny church where you can collect “holy dirt” from a hole (no pun intended) in the sanctuary floor. On the walls are lines of photographs of ill or injured people, crutches, walking boots, prosthetic limbs, all kinds of medical aids. You can bring a bag or buy a little box in the gift shop to collect the dirt and take it with you. The day I was there they had free used up candles from the offering stations. I took one of those, gave a money offering and gathered some dirt wiping off the excess on my hands and arms. I thought it would not be a good idea to stick my hand down my pants to rub dirt on my hip while in the church so I waited until I got in my car. I should note I am not religious and know little about catholicism but holy dirt sounds much more interesting than holy water.

Now my morning routine included, side leg raises, clams, single leg bridge and rubbing dirt on my groin and hip. Hey, you never know it just might work.

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Reincarnated as a Trail Runner in NM

After not posting for over two months, this is a good one. If you believe in fate, luck, or the universe, this is the story of stories. After a two frustrating summers in a row with injury, canceling my key races and developing a hateful attitude about New York, my job, blah, blah, this is almost unbelievable.

A sleepless last Saturday night I was surfing Craig’s List real estate ads first for the New York Adirondacks and Northern New Mexico. I have been doing this on and off for five years with big fantasies to sell my apt, leave my job, live simply and just make art and train and race in some beautiful place. Reinvent myself so to speak. Why five years? That is the first and last time I went to New Mexico. I was an artist in resident at the Santa Fe Art Institute and after the residency my then girlfriend Lisa and I rented this amazing round stone house in Abiquiu Every house I have looked at I compare to that landscape and that house. That year was a turning point in my artwork and my athletic prowess.

The house we stayed in was built by Pat Frazier and master stone mason Felipe Leyva. Pat moved to NM from California. She was a radiologist who took a vacation in NM; fell in love with it, bought some land. She eventually took a class at the Northern New Mexico Community College on how to build adobe and moved to NM full-time. She met Felipe and they began building houses. Pat gave Felipe 2 acres of land to build his own home which Lisa and I saw the beginnings of it back in 2005.

Back to Saturday night. I am looking through Craig List and I see this amazing stone, what looked like steps cut into a channel on two walls of earth meeting in the center with a sweet little casita. There is a photo of a chapel and kitchen and I am immediately thinking about Pat and the stone house. I read the ad, and not only is Pat’s name there but so is Felipe. It is the house he built for himself completely out of stone and adobe. I almost had a heart attack! I especially almost had a heart attack because I could not believe the price.  I immediately emailed Pat and told her how Lisa and I stayed there and how I want this house more than anything in the world.  I want to live there the rest of my life, dust my ashes there when I am dead.  I want to go there, set up a printshop, invite artists to make prints and my athlete friends who can train at altitude, (6k feet) not only running for miles, but  biking and swimming. The 5200 surface acre Abiquiu reservoir is only a couple miles away and mountains including the iconic view of Georgia O-Keefe’s Pedernal surround us.  Now how is it one can be so lucky as to live in the desert and have a reservoir a couple miles away that you can swim and kayak?

Now the obstacles. I must get all the money in cash, which is definitely not in my savings account. I need to do it immediately, buying it with a leap of faith sight unseen. A deal with another interested party needs to fall through and to top it off, it must all happen in one week. So I offered a little extra money. I emailed Lisa to tell her how she will not believe it. And while it never crossed my mind, when she said, “I love would to own a home there” I offered. Why not? So we will be co-owners. I wired a deposit on Monday, Lisa wired money to me, I took money from my retirement and it looks like I will wire the remaining cash on Friday.  I will fly down in a couple weeks to see our new two bedroom hand build adobe and stone casita. I want to sleep on the roof and wake to the sunrise.

To top it off  I will probably use  the most more than Lisa, staying there during my academic breaks in December, January, June, July and August. So what about all those other times? Felipe was going to move in with his son-in-law who lives a short walk away, but why not let him keep living in the house, care take it and work exchange to build a print studio? This way he keeps living in the home he built. He will be there to maintain it pay the electric and water bill and we will use it when we can.

In 2013 I get my next sabbatical and I have no plans of returning to my job. You will find me running in the mountains, swimming the Abiquiu Lake or in the studio.

For friends and friends of friends if you are wondering, yes you can rent it.

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Finally Back

My last post ended with my run on the Alter-G and a new stress fracture. Today, three months later, 2 days shy of 12 weeks I am running.  Most days my foot does not hurt, except when I am walking my very unruly dogs who jerk me all over.  All this time off since May 26, the first break, has given me a lot of time to think, to lay on my sofa and be depressed and  be pissed off and think of what I want to change in my life.  Now it is fall and all those races which I thought I would run were cancelled, but I smartly registered for Boston the day I canceled my NYC marathon.

I knew I could write my own training plan, but I wanted to be sure. I was ready to work with John Henwood when I read an article by Coach Roy Benson in Running Times. Something in it make me  call Roy and discuss my breaks and my approach back to racing. I was so taken by Roy that I wanted to work with him, to collaborate, his words, on my training plan. I have never felt such confidence in any coach or any training as I do now with Roy. I started the plan October 19th after clearance from my doc. It began with running a total of 110 minutes over four  days for the week. The plan incorporated my swimming and rowing workouts. I was thrilled to begin again and I just had to trust the plan and that I would come back. My first 25 minute jog  at a 9:00 pace felt like I was pushing a bolder up a mountain. I was not sweating, or heart pounding, it was just that my body did not want to move. In these last five weeks I have seen some  9:45’s  and even 10:00’s when I ran two days in a row. But my longest run was on Sunday, a full 60 minutes. The breakdown was 8:30, 8:40, 8:29, 8:31, 8:00, 7:19, 9:30, 7:53. That 8:00 – 7:19 I met a runner along the way and ran with him, though he left me at the base of the Williamsburg Bridge with a huge hill to climb and tired legs, that is where the 9:30 came in. It was rough, but I was so happy.

From now until the end of January I will be base building, no speed work, no repeats, a few steady state and a lot of general aerobic. I have it in my mind that I just want to have fun in Boston not worry about my time goals. I will leave my time goals behind, expect that I want a PR of course. Some really exciting news is that I will be doing a few long runs in Iceland. In January, I am flying to Reykavik to meet my Dutch artist friend Miek for some big hiking and a day at the Blue Lagoon.  then we are off to the Netherlands and our annual big sea walk, a 7 hour walk along the North Sea. It is Miek’s 65 birthday and I have not seen her in two years. She is a physical power house and I am really looking forward to our big walks. One year we were both guests of the Miskolc Museum of Contemporary Art in Hungary. Every morning we got up at 7:00 am, robustly walked 8k to the hot springs, bathed for 2-3 hours, then walked or jogged back to the studios to work. It was one of the most fantastic summers ever.

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North Face Endurance Challenge!

Finish of North Face Endurance Challenge

I just got home and I am grinning from ear to ear. Today was my first mountain trail race the 1/2 marathon at Bear Mountain, part of the North FAce Challenge Series. There is a five star ranking series on this race, elevation change 4 out of 5, technical terrain 5 out of 5, overall difficulty 5 out of 5 and scenery 5 out of 5. How hard is it to run a trail race as compared to a road race? I looked up the results from2008 the first over all male, Oliver Obagi ran it in 2:15, a 10:22 pace,  the first overall female professional ultra distance runner Nikki Kimball ran it in 2:25 an 11:07 pace. In the 40-49 year old women the first place women, Judy Stobbe ran it in 3:15.  The first place non-prof women was 2:52. This was going to be a hard race!

I do not have trail running shoes and the trail is all rock and rivers. At the last minute I decided to wear my hiking shoes. Heck I have no experience doing thing, I am not sure what to expect besides mud and rocks, and if it took Nikki Kimball 2:25, when her last road marathon was 3:08, I am going to be out there for a while. We were told that there would be 3 aid stations so we needed to carry provisions. OK I am ready.

All night I watched the thunder and lightning but by 9:00am race start it was just raining. A total  308 people, 234 men and 74 women,  lined up, I was standing with my friends Rachel, Claudia and Les. The horn went off and we ran, no walked, ran, walked. Hey, what is going on? It was a  crowded and the first mile as it went up hill people were already walking! To get around them and find some space that mile was a big chuckle taking  just under 12:00 minutes to complete. Wow if they are walking already it is going to be a long day. In no time though I found some space, I lost my teammates, one ahead two behind,  and I was just out for a trail run. I came across the first aid station and on to my first 1000 foot climb. Piece of cake, this really feels good. The pace got much quicker and I fell in with a group of dudes. From running cross country I know I can always kick their ass on the uphill, but they can kick mine on the down hill and that is how it went most of the race. But at one time it just got a out of hand. There was an 800 foot direct downhill of  rocks, suddenly the dudes were flying down the hill and falling, taking out each other like it was a bowling alley, sliding down the wet mud, hitting the rocks. It was a too much. I decided I need to run away from them which I did. I moved forward and fell into a group of older duded that I ran with most of the race. Now when I say older, most are still under 35. It seems that trail racing is a young guys sport, there were only 14 women in my age group. At New York road race there are often 300+. We had some big steep climbs, at certain points there was a string of men about 8 deep all walking. The trail was extremely narrow so I just fell in behind them and walked, took the time to eat a gel and drink my water, the pace was down to 14:00. But the time we got to the top, they were ready to rest so I motored on. One of them  emerged about one mile later and passed me.

A very happy Hilary running the trails

I was smiling whole race. It did not matter if it was up hill, down hill, running though shin deep water, over a mile of sharp rocks. Okay the rocks did really hurt, in this particular spot there was 4 miles to go, I had a major blister under my left bunion and the rocks were killing it. But I got off the rocks, and onto a beautiful wide path and running all alone in that last three miles, I managed to clock some 7:30’s. I took it easy, I never felt stressed, never tired, never frustrated. It was beautiful the whole way. Early on I got my fall out of the wall, tripping on a rock or my feet on a downhill. I rolled up like a little pill bug, did a complete left to right should hip roll and came right back onto my feet. One women that I did see early on, immediately asked if I needed help, the dudes just kept going. I am glad I ended up beating them all, HA! It was around mile 4.5 that I fell because my shoes were already soaked and they got very loose. I stopped after that to tighten them up. This is probably one of the downsides of running in hiking shoes, but they  protected my feet, that and my crew style wool socks. With my skinny legs and short black socks I looked like a little old man but the knees down.

I am checking out my GPS, I had 5646 of ascent and 5730 decent. The course was changed from last year and made easier, I mean faster.  My friend a 5X iron man, runs every intense race and tri across the country and many in European races said this was by far the hardest course she had ever run. It did take me a long time, 2:39, but I am totally happy. Out of 308 runners I was very middle of the pack, 172. Of the women I was 30 out of 74 and of the 14  40-49 year old’s a solid 7th.Judy Stobbe who won my age group last year with a  3:15 ran a 2:29 this year and came in 5th. She may be more experienced this year, but most likely this was a  reflection of the course change. The majority of the women, 32 of them were 21-29. Of the 234 men, 95 were 30-39. There were only 2 men over 60 and no women. At 44 years of age I am an old timer in this crowd. Was it slow, sure, but I had a great time.  I was not racing, I was experiencing. I was learning how to trail run, what it is like, and let me tell you. I may never go back to the road again. This was a blast. I love being covered with mud and dirt and smelling like some god awful swamp creature. I am wearing my scraped leg and bruised write like a badge of honor. I had plenty of energy to run hard the last couple of miles, and picked off 5 guys in my last mile. It took me an hour longer than it would have taken me on the road, but it was so much more fun you can’t imagine. I honestly was not ready to leave the woods, I would have ran it again. Speaking of that, next year I am doing to 50K. That is in preparation for the Trans Rockies, a 6 days, 113 mile multi-stage race through the Colorado Rockies. I got an email just last week from a women asking me to be her partner – you bet I could easily get used to this.

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