Amanda and I recently took a week off from work to go home and spend some time with family and while I didn't intentionally plan to unplug it turned out that was just what I needed. Now, I didn't lock my phones and computer away for the week but I did find that I spent a lot more time engaging with people and experiencing things then I did scrolling Twitter or Instagram.
I still spent some time on social media but I didn't find myself reaching for my phone every few minutes like I normally do. Maybe that's because we were in a different surrounding, or maybe it's because we were spending time with family we don't often see. Heck, maybe it's because I spent chunks of time driving the car to New Hampshire, Maine or Massachusetts. I'm not sure of the reason, but by week's end, I really believe it helped me feel refreshed.
A few things that made this possible, I left my computer (read: work computer) in my backpack. Save for one or two things - i.e. ordering lift tickets - I didn't turn my computer on after the first three days. I had planned on doing some blogging but since it didn't feel like we put ourselves in many time-wasting situations, I was okay with not writing.
Number 2, Do Not Disturb. Perhaps the greatest invention of our time. I put my work phone in Do Not Disturb for days at a time. I have an unhealthy habit of checking my phone all the time, to the point I feel phantom rings. It was massively reliving to forget about it for a few days.
Third, reduce the aimless scrolling. Often times I'll finish a run and grab my phone to upload the run to Strava while sitting on the steps. It's not uncommon for me to sit on the steps for 10 minutes scrolling Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter. While on vacation I tried to limit that. I still checked in on Instagram every now and then but I kept those sessions short.
The one overriding thing that really helped me with this though, was trying to be more present and actually spend time with people. Whether that was my Dad, my brother or Amanda. Focusing on being engaged with the people I was around made unplugging easier and unplugging left me feeling refreshed when we got back to Georgia.
Here were some of my favorite things from our trip home...
Skiing at Loon
I finally got my day on the slopes. Danny, Amanda, and I drove up 93 to Lincoln, NH to spend a day at Loon and it was awesome. Despite gray skies in the morning, it was bluebird day by lunch. Amanda and I ended up renting skis, which while slightly expensive was definitely worth it. I love my old K2's but having freshly tuned equipment for a change was nice.
We hit the road promptly at 6 am and were on the first chair at 9. Danny and I ended up squeezing one last run in just before they shut the lifts off, so my goal of first chair, last chair was a success. I stuck my GoPro session on my helmet and then spent the flight back to Georgia playing with the Quik app to make this fun video of the day.
Running with Friends
I don't get a lot of chances to run with people while doing regular training so I was excited to get a chance to catch up with my former roommate Joe Reynolds for an awesome 11 miles in Portland, Maine during the trip. We ran at Bradbury Mountain State Park over the summer but with the snow on the ground in Vacationland, we opted for a road route from Rising Tide Brewing in Portland's Back Cove out to Portland Head Light on Cape Elizabeth.
The lighthouse is pretty awesome. It's a very postcard-friendly spot. The best part about this run thought was having Reynolds tell me random historical facts about Portland the whole way. Did you know that it was commissioned by George Washington himself in 1787? True story.
The Olympics are over...sad face emoji
I am apologetically an Olympics guy. I'm a big fan of both the summer and winter games, but I think I enjoy the winter Olympics more. That sounds like it's probably recency bias, but I like getting a chance to see some of these different events that you really only get a chance to see once every four years and it seems like the winter games have more of that. I could do without a figure skating event every night though.
While the time difference made viewing this year's games a little tricky, I still found myself watching a lot of the prime time coverage and I really enjoyed being able to use the NBC Sports app to watch event replays on things I missed. I know that overall viewership was down and there are a ton of factors that go into that, but I think having access to live streams and full replays have really improved the overall experience of viewing the games at home. It's nice to not be beholden to what the prime-time broadcast has deemed as interesting.
Favorite Moment
Jessie Diggins & Kikkan Randall win gold - This was an incredible moment. Not only was it the first medal (and first gold) for US women in Nordic skiing, but it came at a moment when everyone had kind of written off the US team. There was a lot of talk about how the US was underperforming. Some of that was probably warranted, but in my opinion, much of that was due to NBC's expectation building and the fact that we were relying on a lot of older athletes like Shaun White Lindsey Vonn and a lot of very young athletes like the Shib Sibs and Chloe Kim.
When American's are billed as gold or bust and they don't win gold we have a tendency to look at it as a letdown. It's kind of how we are wired, but it stinks for some of these athletes that only have a chance to make a mark on the general public once every four years. I was so happy for Diggins and Randall to win gold and put a real stamp on what had been a strong performance for them. I'm enjoying their tour of all the morning shows and hope they're success cross-country skiing a little boost.
I think I've seen the video clip of the end of that race seven or eight times and it's given me goosebumps every time. Chad Salmela's call was incredible. He really captured the emotion and excitement of that moment. Even if you weren't aware of the history being made, it was impossible to not feel the emotion and weight of the moment while he's screaming "Here comes Diggins!"
Awesome.
Worst Moment
Olympic Athletes from Russia - Why did they even bother with this? Russia was banned except for 160+ athletes - and still had one of those athletes test positive - they only real punishment was that they didn't get to display the Russian flag. For some reason, they were allowed to compete in team competitions. That I really didn't understand. I can make peace with allowing athletes with clean bio passports to compete.
I can accept that, begrudgingly, but how can a group of those athletes compete in team events? At that point, they are no longer Olympic Athletes from Russia. They are a Russian team. If that's going to be allowed, then just call them Russia. Which is exactly what happened. NBC billed the USA vs. OAR hockey game as the USA vs. Russia with clips of 1960, 1980, and 2014 games playing during the run up to the broadcast. That defeats the purpose of the ban, doesn't it? This isn't a USSR/Russia thing. Those are essentially the same countries. They were OAR because Russia wasn't being recognized, except they were.
On a less frustrating note, the alpine skiing team event was awesome and I hope we put our best skiers into it next time.
What I've Been Into Lately
Norway is dominating these Winter Olympics with a unique approach to sports // USA TODAY
This article from USA Today was pretty intriguing. It came out in the middle of the Olympics as Norway was on its way to winning both the overall and gold medal counts in Pyeongchang. It's an interesting story about Norway's approach to youth sports and developing young athletes.
Unlike the U.S., where we keep score of everything all the time, Norway puts kids in sports but doesn’t let them keep score until age 13. The idea is to make sports part of their social development so that the motivation to stay involved is to have fun with their friends, not winning. Eventually, of course, the Norwegians introduce competition and the most advanced sports science techniques they can develop to pump out their medal-hoarding biathletes, skiers and ski jumpers. But the idea, Ovrebo said, isn’t to have the highest-ranked 10-year-old athletes in the world but rather the most mature adults.Weekend Getaway // Territory Run Co.
I talked about Territory and their Runners of the Wild club/team a little bit in one of my last blogs. This is one of the reasons why I was drawn to join ROTW. They do an excellent job of telling stories that align with their products and share their mission. This short story serves as an ad for a new hoodie they've released but instead of just sending an email with a few photos of the shirt, they tell a story around some local runners and their weekly weekend run. It highlights the inclusiveness of this community and encourages others to develop something similar. I've talked a little about my enjoyment of this style of marketing in the past, but I really do like when companies create something that stands on its own, with or without a call to action to buy something at the end. I am much more likely to spend my money with a company that story tells around its gear like this.
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| Photo courtesy of Territory Run Co. |
I caught some of this New Hampshire Public Radio show on our way home from skiing at Loon but ended up downloading the podcast to listen to it in its entirety a few days later. Hosted by Laura Knoy, this hour-long discussion show featured Andrew Drummond of Ski the Whites (and my last blog) and Tyler Ray, president of the Granite Backcountry Alliance, talking about the growth of backcountry skiing in the White Mountains. It was really interesting stuff. I especially enjoyed Tyler's revelation that skiing in New Hampshire got started when the CCC went town to town building ski trails and that one of GBA's goals is to try and resurrect some of those trails to turn them into glade skiing. I'm a big CCC nerd, so I thought that was pretty neat.
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| Photo courtesy of NHPR |
This is an epic 40-minute film about cold weather surfing north of the Arctic Circle in Iceland. I'm not a surfer - there is no way that I'm cool enough to be a surfer - but I've seen this while scrolling through Netflix a few times and have been wanting to watch it. As luck would have it. I had a 90 minute flight from Indianapolis to Atlanta the other night and Delta had it in their in-flight lineup so I decided to finally watch it. It's quick but impressive. The scenery, shooting, and surfing were awe-inspiring throughout the movie. It made me want to try this out until I saw how quickly everything froze when they got out of the water. Nevermind. I'll pass.
Under An Arctic Sky - Official Trailer #1 from Chris Burkard on Vimeo.
What's Poppin' On IG
The Ginger Runner is releasing his Gary Robbins Barkley movie for download in five days. I'm really looking forward to checking it out.
We always had colorful birds in our front yard growing up. Mostly cardinals and blue jays, but whenever I see a colorful bird it reminds me of my mom and being at home.
It was great to see the outpouring of support these two got on social media
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