It's full on ski season at the moment, so I'm hanging on for dear life. I have managed to get a few easy trainer spins in lately - by lately I mean about one a week. I timed yesterday morning's spin to matching last evening's clinic I was teaching at Liberty to some of our exam candidates.
Perfect snow for night skiing - slightly stiffened granular without a hint of ice anywhere. Yet not slushy enough to suck you down too much. In anticipation of the temperature dropping, I overdressed. I would soon regret that.
Among other things, the instructors I was skiing with needed to put a little juice in their legs and a little confidence in their bump skiing. So... we started with long radius turns with a hop in the middle (known as leapers to you skiers)... then moved onto shortening the radius until we were in full on hops in short radius turns. And we did _a lot_ of them - mileage, mileage, mileage. And then, to top it off, we did them in the bumps.
Someone mentioned the last time they did this their core was a bit sore the next day. My feedback was sooner than that - between all those hopping turns and a morning spin, my shin muscles were sore enough that I could feel it driving home last night. Pushing the clutch in, speeding past the slowpokes. (okay, you guys who know me well know that generally I'm the slowpoke - but 40mph in a 55 zone is unacceptable if you're in front of me).
It's like I'm not 22 anymore.
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Annoying habits...
It's been a busy winter so far, and I've spent quite a bit of time driving to far away places to slide on cold snowy stuff. Thankfully, I've done a lot of this driving solo - but even I'm annoyed at the things I do.
1. Press the scan button. Allow radio to scan for up to 20 minutes. Listen to 2 minutes of a very crappy song to which I can sing some of the words loudly. Press scan again. In north central PA and West Virginia, there are a plethora of country music stations and radio ministries. I don't care for either.
2. Tell myself I'm not going to eat candy. Bring grapes to substitute. Buy candy the first time I stop for gas.
3. Forget to bring my water bottle out of the trunk after having a dead battery - 2 hours of parched-time.
4. Bring way too much stuff. A boot/gear bag, a bag for the other uniform, a bag of clothes, a cooler AND my laptop bag. On the last trip I brought two pairs of skis - like no one in West Virginia would have an extra pair if I broke a binding or something.
5. Leave my cooler in the car, figuring it is cooler out there. Forgetting that even a cooler won't keep grapes from freezing when it's in the single digits.
6. Singing loudly without knowing the words to pop music and hip-hop. Even when it's the third time that hour that the Fireflies song is on.
This week, I'm staying home. The car has a new starter and a new battery. It won't even get to go on my next trip - someone else is driving to Elk next week!
1. Press the scan button. Allow radio to scan for up to 20 minutes. Listen to 2 minutes of a very crappy song to which I can sing some of the words loudly. Press scan again. In north central PA and West Virginia, there are a plethora of country music stations and radio ministries. I don't care for either.
2. Tell myself I'm not going to eat candy. Bring grapes to substitute. Buy candy the first time I stop for gas.
3. Forget to bring my water bottle out of the trunk after having a dead battery - 2 hours of parched-time.
4. Bring way too much stuff. A boot/gear bag, a bag for the other uniform, a bag of clothes, a cooler AND my laptop bag. On the last trip I brought two pairs of skis - like no one in West Virginia would have an extra pair if I broke a binding or something.
5. Leave my cooler in the car, figuring it is cooler out there. Forgetting that even a cooler won't keep grapes from freezing when it's in the single digits.
6. Singing loudly without knowing the words to pop music and hip-hop. Even when it's the third time that hour that the Fireflies song is on.
This week, I'm staying home. The car has a new starter and a new battery. It won't even get to go on my next trip - someone else is driving to Elk next week!
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Playing on snow: December by the Numbers
Ski season started later than it was supposed to. But I put 9 days on snow this month. Unlikely that I'll get back on snow before the new year, so that's probably the final count.
So far I've:
What I haven't done:
So far I've:
- Led 4 new instructors through learning how to teach (in the freezing rain!) and hired all 4
- Skied in EPIC southern PA powder while reminding 6 old instructors how to do their jobs
- Understudied an awesome clinician up at Hunter with 12 PSIA'ers from Virginia, PA, New Jersey, New York and Connecticut
- Studied indoors during 1 of the nastiest, rainiest days at Liberty in a while
- Taught back to back to back clinics (3), squeezing 2 quarters of the Steelers kicking the Ravens all over the place (!)
- Worked a bunch of hours in lab when not many others were there
- Taught 0 members of the skiing public
- Tubed on man-made snow 8 times on Christmas day. In the drizzle. 6 with spins.
What I haven't done:
- Skied in Vermont.
- Blogged much. Only a few here. 1 Diva Ski Tips entry.
- Been ready for Christmas early. Yes, I was wrapping all gifts on Christmas Eve.
- Lost weight. Enormous amount of candy is killing that.
- Gained weight. Not sure how this works.
- 0 Miles. Haven't been on any of my bikes since Reston. Intend to start base miles on the trainer later this week. Or next.
Friday, December 18, 2009
How my goals for cross season turned out
For some reason, I announced my cross season goals on my blog. Perhaps this was an attempt at accountability. I'm not sure that it worked, but here's how they worked out.
Achieved:
Continue having fun. Especially true when I stopped caring so much about how I finished and rode more for myself.
Ride the muddy lines whenever it's smart. There were plenty of muddy lines this year. I have some clothes that may never recover.
Learn to settle into my own pace within the first two laps. Important because, as counted over beers last night, I had the hole shot or was second onto the grass in 8 of 13 races this year. 2 had combined fields with 1/2/3's for the start, so they almost don't count. I checked my lap times on my watch at Taneytown and Reston - I don't slow down, everyone else just speeds up.
Finish top 5 in a 3/4 MAC race. I surprised myself by doing this on the last race of the season. Perhaps the small field and technical course helped, but comments from a bunch of people came in later about how strong I looked, so I'll take it.
Incorporate some weekly core training and stretching. I was a bit more hit or miss about this than I should be, but also included some hill interval running and a few long runs, so certainly better than last year.
On the fence:
Clean my own bike at least once. Shea and I disagree whether I've fulfilled this. In the freezing cold rain at Granogue, I spent at least 4 minutes at the bike wash removing the bulk of the mud. But he's done the cleaning of all the minutia during the week between races.
Get rid of the double hop on my remount. This depends entirely on whether the remount occurs on the first lap or the last.
Keep my training hours as high as they are now for the latter half of the season. I didn't keep a training log. Therefore I don't know. The weather was not conducive to late season road training. If I had to guess, this belongs in the FAIL column.
'Failed':
Win. Twice. Then I won't have to waffle about when I'm ready to go up to the 1/2/3's. I didn't win. After writing that I had a great race at DCCX and took 2nd. But I'm not waffling about going up. I got the upgrade. Next year I'll just have to get faster.
Achieved:
Continue having fun. Especially true when I stopped caring so much about how I finished and rode more for myself.
Ride the muddy lines whenever it's smart. There were plenty of muddy lines this year. I have some clothes that may never recover.
Learn to settle into my own pace within the first two laps. Important because, as counted over beers last night, I had the hole shot or was second onto the grass in 8 of 13 races this year. 2 had combined fields with 1/2/3's for the start, so they almost don't count. I checked my lap times on my watch at Taneytown and Reston - I don't slow down, everyone else just speeds up.
Finish top 5 in a 3/4 MAC race. I surprised myself by doing this on the last race of the season. Perhaps the small field and technical course helped, but comments from a bunch of people came in later about how strong I looked, so I'll take it.
Incorporate some weekly core training and stretching. I was a bit more hit or miss about this than I should be, but also included some hill interval running and a few long runs, so certainly better than last year.
On the fence:
Clean my own bike at least once. Shea and I disagree whether I've fulfilled this. In the freezing cold rain at Granogue, I spent at least 4 minutes at the bike wash removing the bulk of the mud. But he's done the cleaning of all the minutia during the week between races.
Get rid of the double hop on my remount. This depends entirely on whether the remount occurs on the first lap or the last.
Keep my training hours as high as they are now for the latter half of the season. I didn't keep a training log. Therefore I don't know. The weather was not conducive to late season road training. If I had to guess, this belongs in the FAIL column.
'Failed':
Win. Twice. Then I won't have to waffle about when I'm ready to go up to the 1/2/3's. I didn't win. After writing that I had a great race at DCCX and took 2nd. But I'm not waffling about going up. I got the upgrade. Next year I'll just have to get faster.
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