Working out

I continue to be amazed at the different ways there are to train my body to be resilient to various workloads. Today I split wood for three hours continuously. All by hand of course with my beautiful splitting axe. I also got the tiller through the sopping wet gardens and mowed the grass around the lakes in our yard, but the real fun was splitting the fire wood.

It helped that the sky was a stunning azure. It was the kind of sky you can use as reference for 18% grey. Lovely. It seems a rare treat. I am not sure how it is that I can take so much pleasure from such qualities, but I do.

The bush is full of water. The heavy work is done for the trail to get the truck back in there to pick up the wood, but the ground is still far too wet to think about driving there and the wood isn't all split anyway, but it's coming. Where I stood to swing my axe today the water was a third of the way up my rubber boots. Fun eh?

I enjoy the intensity of splitting wood by hand. It's like running for endurance. It's a slow burn that can be maintained for quite a long time once one is fit to the task. Wet hands have been the limiting factor since the thaw. Once my hands are wet from handling the soaked wood for an hour the skin loses it's ability to adhere to the flesh. After an hour and a half of splitting with wet hands I have blisters and some tenderness around some of my nails. I've been keeping at it so I've been adapting to the work more and more as I push a bit to try and beat the bugs, of which there will be nightmare quantities of this year if it ever warms up. The mozzy hatch has been slow, but the ponds are squirming with the little devils and some were taking flight today.

The low humidity and extreme drying conditions were such a treat today. It made my day to be in the forest with the air so clean and rich for breathing. The trees have finally leafed out so the wind can be heard rustling them and was the perfect sound track for my day. It was dry! The air itself was dry and I was thrilled. How wet do you have to get to appreciate a truly dry day? Personally, I had to get very wet, but that wasn't part of the picture for me today.

Today, simple as I may seem in this, I was able to take two pair of gloves out with me and always have reasonably dry gloves to work with. I'm feeling like I should be shamed somehow about being so excited about it being dry enough to have a change of gloves every half hour or so, but that's just the way I roll I suppose. I would set a wet pair in the sun, propped up and catching some of the breeze and it was a quick drying time today. Yeah!

I was richly fed this morning and adequately hydrated when I went out. I only expected to split for an hour, but because I could keep my hands dry, I was able to split for three hours. I find it very entertaining to train my body to do something and then, when the opportunity arises, see what potential has been building up, waiting in reserve. It's always with kid like glee that I feel my body warm up and the settle into a great long run or like today, the splitting. Apparently one guy with a good axe can split a lot of wood in three hours.

I was careful to take my gloves off when I was pulling stove length pieces out from under water and my hands are certainly feeling used up rather completely tonight, but I had energy to burn today. I haven't been running as much as I have been, but I've been viewing some of the labour I do as training and treating it like work out time instead of what it is, just plain old work. I'm not fitting into any other crew of people that might view working out like this, but that's OK too. Actually I was canned from one forum thread because I was posting to a "workout" thread and it was deemed that things like three hours manning an axe isn't work or providing increased fitness. I posted other more traditional rundays too, but that seemed not to matter. I just won't travel in straight enough lines for many people it seems. I'm hear to testify that it is work and it's pretty much a whole body experience to boot. I hope I'm able to function at a decent level tomorrow because I left it all out there today.

After a lot of re hydration and fueling, I went out to drag the tiller through the mud bogs my wife calls gardens. The drying conditions were so go that I couldn't help myself and at least try and open up the dirt a bit or to get out and beat back some of the mold and moss beginning to grow on the bogs/gardens. I hope it's dry tomorrow too!

I'll finish the grass cutting tomorrow and then see if I can lift an axe again. I treat it just like running in that I take my warm up extremely slowly. I find this to be one of the most valuable things I've learnt from my running experience. Warming up very slowly seems to prepare me to go to very end of my potential and maybe beyond, more often than not. If I warm up too quickly I lose a lot of pacing consistency. Now I want to train to race again, just for the joy of watching it come together. Or at least I'm getting hungry for it which is good. For now I'll have to be content applying that energy to some long outstanding home projects, like the wood.

The balsam poplar is sweet in the air tonight. Sensual to a fault, and no regrets about that at all.

Went to friends to help celebrate Corny's 50th birthday tonight. It was an old fashioned country folk party. I fit right in for the most part. Maybe that takes training too.