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.