Sunday, December 18, 2005

WEEKEND RECAP

Celebrating Christmas with my side of the family this weekend meant getting up early for my run. Even though no one showed up till after noon, I wanted to take Kinsey to dance class (and Katie to watch).

I just kept the pace easy and ran for 60 minutes. That 7 mile run gave me 54.5 miles on 8 runs for my cutback week. I had thoughts of not cutting back for an entire week, but rather cutting back for 3-4 days to see if that was enough of a break for my body. However, with the snowfall and “holiday” I never really put in the effort to get back to 10+ miles per day.

For some reason I have a desire to ski more this year than any other. Maybe it’s because a guy I work with is really into it and he’s got me fired up. He even waxed my skis for a nominal amount. Maybe it’s because I know the running season can be long and if I can maintain/build my fitness by doing a new, fun, exciting activity, it’ll pay off in the long run. Maybe it’s because I don’t want to head into 2006 in great shape and run my best race in February – like I did last year. So while I want to increase my running mileage, if I feel like skiing 1-2 times a week, I’m not going to try to “make up” my miles.

Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that instead of running (this is the first day of a new mileage building cycle) I decided to ski instead. It was 3 degrees with a wind chill of about 15 below with bright blue skies. My hands were frozen for the first 15 minutes and I wondered if I’d be able to ski more than 30 minutes. But by the time I completed the first loop in just over 30 minutes I was toasty warm. I did one more loop and called it a day.

I have a lot of work to do – 10k of skiing in 60 minutes. That includes falling HARD on my right ass cheek twice, face planting once and a few other minor falls. The worst thing is that it took me over 90 minutes to do this workout when you consider drive time.

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