Weaverville Weekend

If you’ve never heard of Weaverville don’t worry, you’re not the only one. It isn’t exactly one of California’s more household names. Nestled in the shadow of Mount Shasta, the town is small—a few baby baskets short of 4000 citizens—but appropriately so. The social temperature is mild and familiar, and everyone everywhere seems to know each other’s names. Most days the place is wrapped in a soft fog that rolls off the mountains like a smoke-white avalanche, suspending the mountain’s taller trees on waves of opaque clouds and giving their images a ghostly likeness to a back alley silhouette. Below the fog line Weaverville is a kaleidoscope of natural color. Everywhere are splatter paints of green pine, yellow aspen, and fire red maple, the artistic blend of which I caught myself admiring more than once. If October is autumn’s last breath then these mountains are surely among the best places to capture it.

Luckily for me, my high school friend and teammate Tom Johnson has lived here the past 5 years. He operates the local golf course with his brother Will and was a more than hospitable host this weekend. While around I soaked up as much of the small town experience as I could. It featured costume parties, breakfast cafes, and televised college football. We ate greasy burgers, drank local beers, and danced the grange hall into submission.

And, of course, I trained.

On Saturday afternoon Tom agreed to show me around the course and help find some tools to work with. After driving around a bit we decided on the following WOD:

1.5 mile trail run

5 rounds of 20 lunges & 20 shoulder to overhead (w/50 lb railroad tie)

1.5 mile trail run

I completed the entire sequence in 22 minutes and think I would do some version of this workout at least once a week if I lived here permanently. A golf course has to be among the most serene settings in the “civilized” world. And this course probably more so than most. I was literally dodging deer while running across the fairway. The railroad tie was awkwardly heavy, making the 100 repetitions of overhead presses very rough by the end. I included a video link below.

Although I had to leave Weaverville behind on Sunday, I did so with the fullest intent to return. I’m told the summer months are incredible, full of clean rivers and lakes, and some unreal hiking. The plan is to be back in May to take advantage.