Week 11, 2014: skiing!

I knew this was going to be a difficult week. Monday was my day off sport-wise and Wednesday till Sunday I was at a skiing trip. Doing 5 workouts did not seem realistic at all but I could see that even 3 or 4 would be challenging.

On Tuesday the classic: Black Mountain climb. After my good performance there last week I was hoping that maybe I can do even better now. And I did. It was a hell of a tough run but it was totally worth it: I improved my PR on this segment by a full minute (down to 53:34).

On Wednesday the Google skiing trip started. There were two buses: at 5am and noon. The former had the advantage that one could still do some skiing on that day. The latter meant that one could get some sleep that night. To those of you who know me it should be clear which one did I choose. On the flip side it also allowed me to do an easy run before leaving.

Thursday was the only day of activities with Google. Since I didn't ski for 15 years when I was choosing activities I thought it wouldn't make sense to just take a lesson for one day. So I chose snowmobiling instead. Now that I knew that I'm staying for the weekend with a bunch of friends, it didn't seem like such a good choice anymore but it was too late to change. But in the meantime I heard from a bunch of people that snowmobiling is lots of fun and indeed they were right! I was also lucky to share a machine with Ido, who's a pro, so we were just sitting on the tail of the guide's snowmobile and it was lots of fun, including the time when I almost flew to the nearby bushes.

One advantage of choosing that over skiing was that by 3pm I was done and went for a run. I followed a bike path and it was beautiful a path along a crystal clear river, mountains all around... running at its best.

On Friday the day started ridiculously early for my standards but with Ania we had to catch a cab to the cabin some 20 miles away and then still make it for my lesson that was starting at 10am. Given that I didn't ski for so long and even back then wasn't very good I thought that I should start with an absolute beginners lesson. Oh what a mistake it was. I was bored out of my mind and the instructor asked me what the hell was I thinking going to his group. Oh well. Apparently some things are like cycling: you don't forget it easily. At least I did some skiing (as opposed to walking in skis) in the afternoon.

Then some more skiing on Saturday and afterwards I decided that to salvage the weekly mileage I need to go for a run afterwards. It was tough. I didn't feel it much but it seems I was super tired after skiing because running was very painful even though I was about as fast as an asthmatic snail. Which is why on Sunday I decided to just stick to skiing, which was probably wise given that we came back from Tahoe around 11pm (not that running by night would be new to me).

So 4 runs and a total of ~60K. Could be better but I hope the 100+K of skiing also counts for something.

Next Saturday is the Canyon Meadow 50K. It's obvious that I'm not yet in shape for this kind of racing so I only have two goals: 1) not to get injured and 2) to hopefully finish. In that very order. Report coming soon :).

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