Good and bad of a non-existent winter...Yurting trip!

Winter has never really arrived in the valley here in Pocatello. There's plenty of snow above 6,000ft.  I don't have to mow, and I don't have to shovel. Life is good, right?

I like to have snow on the ground in the winter. And I like to see my breath when I walk out to the car in the morning in February. That hasn't been happening.

But it's nice not to freeze my butt off on my way to a dark, early morning swim workout!

If only I was taking advantage of warm lunch hours and running 4-6 miles every day. Then I'd be making some progress towards my goals. However, it seems like there is always something going on at lunch the last couple of weeks.

This weekend is the annual yurt trip! I'm very excited about the trip. But I'm not excited about probable bad snow. And I'm sure I'm not in the aerobic condition of years past that allowed me to cruise uphill with no problems.

I haven't been running in a month, and my biking has been minimal; mostly because I can't recover properly from the swim workouts, and getting up at 0430 every day isn't working very well. And if I did wake-up, any workout would be interrupted for 15 minutes while I change and feed Noah at 5:22 or 5:46 every morning (those are his standard options for wake-up times; very strange that the clock always seems to say one of those times!).

My dilemma is if I go to swim practice before I go to on the yurt trip. I could hit swimming from 8-9 Saturday, and then leave the house at 10 for the yurt trip. That would put us at the lift at 10:30. We take the lift up most of the way to the top, skin to the top of the mountain, then ski down to the yurt to drop our gear, then skin back up about 2,200 feet for another run. If we do that 2,200ft climb three times, we'll be more than ready for bed at 8pm! Hopefully we'll have enough left in us to get in a short night run under a bright half-moon sky.

Yurt details if you're interested: http://www.isu.edu/outdoor/yurtcabin.shtml

Weather in May almost always sucks = Remember to Recover!

The weather in May in southeast Idaho generally sucks. It's a miracle if the wind is less than 10mph. And buy a couple lottery tickets if the sun shines on a day that the wind doesn't blow.

Honestly, last week was pretty nice, with temps into the 70s! No kidding. I actually considered it a bit "hot" when I ran a 10k because I am not used to those temperatures.  I got in a couple long outdoor bike rides, too, so life is good.

Of course, that was last week. This week, rainy and cold and windy...a chance of snow in the mornings just for good measure. And flooding, but nothing serious yet, thankfully.

My point is that you MUST take advantage of the good weather when it comes. I think that includes over-reaching a bit if there are several nice days in a row and you know that a few days of rain are coming. That's what I did last week. I got in some long bikes and long runs while sun was shining; and now I'm really tired from it, and I have to remember to let my body recover instead of going back at it. I didn't swim at all during those nice days last week (who wants to be inside on those days after a long winter!??!?!?), so I have some swimming to do while I recover from bike and run.

Here's wishing some sun your way!

Spring break?

Well, so much for "spring" in spring break. I'm so glad I took the opportunity to ride outside on Saturday. Sometimes you just have to grab opportunities in life.

Incredible Weather for XC Skiing

Spent some time cross country skiing instead of biking and running today….well worth the effort!  We went no-kidding “cross country” for the first half, getting off the trail and heading up a ridgeline as if we were backcountry skiing. Our goal was to hook into our favorite trail for a quick trip home. Total of 2.5 hours skiing.  INCREDIBLE WEATHER! Warm but not too warm to make the snow stick. Sunny and no wind! Living the dream!

 

Feeling committed = SNOW!

I wrote a couple of weeks ago about feeling a bit more committed to my workouts than last year. Today, that rang very true. At 11:00am I ate a large bagel and three brownies that were laying around the office area. Mmmmm...damn they were good! The sun was shining brightly through the window as I wiped the chocolate off my cheek. Then at 11:45, as I was getting my gear ready to run, another storm blew in....and now it was 30deg, windy, and very wet snow falling very fast.  I still ran my regular 10k route....mostly because I just felt like I want to get back into a consistent mode after the last few days.

I always put this type of workout into the "double" group. I would have normally bailed but I went, and lots of other people probably bailed today, too, (or whenever their last bad weather day was). Anyway, I consider this kind of workout getting a double affect of just doing it. In fact, today was more like a triple because I was really tired, the weather and footing really sucked, and I didn't see anyone else out there.........and then I had three more of those damn brownies later in the day!

It's COLD...but sunny and beautiful...Start Phase 2

Most of my co-workers looked at me funny when I went to run at lunch today because it was between -5 and 3 degrees F (depending on who you asked). BUT, it was incredibly sunny and no wind. SOOOO, I definitely went for it, and it was awesome. In fact, I was a bit too warm at times, namely the hills(!). Such a great run; these are the days I'm glad I run at lunch.

I felt great during the run. Of course, I took a week and a half off of the normal schedule, so I should have felt great. This morning's bike ride was great, too. Somehow, I could feel some fatigue in my legs from a long backcountry tour on Thursday followed by a full day of downhill (lift-served) on Friday (another great, sunny, COLD day!).

Today also marked the beginning of Phase 2 of my winter plan. The volume is upped once again by adding about 4,000-6,000 yards of swimming. We'll see how that goes.

I'm starting the year at 185 pounds, with a race weight goal of 170. The weight gain now is just a bit more than normal. I usually come in around 180-183 during the dead of winter, depending on how much skiing I've been doing.

My word for the year is CONSISTENCY. No kidding. I also got a great acronymn yesterday from Tera's uncle, whom I called but he was on the treadmill doing what he deemed BTN..."better than nothing." I figure a BTN is also a great way of maintaining consistency, going with the theory that very easy is better than nothing,  which I know is debatable.

Anyway, here's to everyone for a Happy New Year!

Change in the air

The past two months have been incredibly gorgeous days in southeast Idaho. Pure, bluebird skies and 60-70 degrees for nearly every day. September seemed a bit windy, but October has been nearly completely calm as far as winds go. Great days for running at lunch, and I suppose that is keeping my running consistent.  I should have been riding my bike, too, but it simply isn't in the cards of time. I'm not even on the trainer yet, even though I wanted to start two weeks ago....it seems I always burn out a bit on the trainer come mid-March, so I'm not too worried about it. If I get into mid-November without any biking, I'll have to kick-start myself somehow.

That's all about to change. Sunday night and Monday morning, we're supposed to see the first winter storm WITH SNOW!  "You git what ya git and don't throw a fit."  I'll have to remember what it's like to run in pants, jacket, hat, and gloves, I guess.  Embrace whatever weather comes your way. The right gear solves every problem, except the doldrums of too many days without a peak at the sun.

There's a trail run in the local mountains here on Saturday morning. I really wanted to do both of the two that are held each year, but I missed the first one two weeks ago because we had a contractor come by the house that Saturday morning. This weekend on race day, family will be here for Paul's second birthday. Mmmmm....not sure how that's going to work out.  10k over the hills and through the woods (literally!) on a beautiful fall morning is hard to beat.

Book update: I made some final changes required by Smashwords, and it will be available for all major e-book formats after they upload it to those distribution sites. To get a coupon to get it for 99 cents, click on the link at the very bottom of the page (not the bottom of this post..all the way down to the bottom of the page).

Tired legs

Yesterday wore me out, but I didn't know it til this morning. My legs were completely dead. So no run this morning. I bike to work most days in the summer, and I have to go uphill about a mile; my legs didn't like that this morning.

Did a standard hill workout on the bike at lunch. Times were off about ten percent, 9 minutes instead of 8. Very tired.

I'm running an 18-mile leg of the Pocatello 50 mile trail run this weekend, so I need to be careful with my legs. I thought I could front-load alot of the work into Monday, Tuesday, and first half of Wednesday, but that is obviously not working. I was supposed to do a 40k bike today, but that would have really killed my legs. The trail race is for fun, but I don't want to be dead-legs going into it.

And yesterday was indeed really hot. Weather service says it was a record day with 91.

First hot day

First hot day of the year. Yesterday was a "warm" in my book, but today got hot. 92 I think was the max.

Did my first morning open water swim workout. About 1200 yards in 18:25. Kind of slow, but 1:35 faster than yesterday. That improvement is simply from getting in the water and getting comfortable with open water. It was such a beautiful morning! 50 degrees, no wind, sun breaking the ridgeline of the mountains to the east. That's my kind of morning!

Ran 5 miles at lunch and the heat got me a bit. Added 3.5 minutes onto the standard time with the same effort. As the post title says, it was the first hot day, so of course my body isn't used to the heat. That will come in time. I actually prefer to run when it's hot, or early in the morning when it's warm but not many people have woken up yet.

After work I hit the Portland tri sim route for two laps up. My bike computer was on the fritz today, so I couldn't tell how fast I was going or my cadence. I must have done pretty good from a natural feel for it because my times matched pretty closely to what I did last week, which is really nice because my legs were quite tired from the run at lunch...that, and the fact that I was on a bit of a time crunch cuz Tera wasn't feeling well....she didn't have any problems with me going as long as I got back by 6:30, which I missed by three minutes.

I love days like today. Two good workouts and one that wasn't so good but helps in the big picture (running in the heat).