01132019 – Bike & Ski

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I was excited to take my new fat tire bike out for its inaugural spin. We haven’t had hardly any snow lately so the tread of the mountain bike trails are pretty much straight ice. I don’t have studded tires but I thought I would ride out and see how bad the trails were. So I rode down the Luce Line and rode fine over some rougher patches of ice. Right before the ski trails cross the Luce Line (right by the mountain bike entrance) I hit a patch of smoother ice and I felt my rear tire sliding. It all happened in slow motion, but I put my foot down and it slid too and as my right side slammed into the ice I saw my bike keep sliding a few more feet. It was a lot of pain, but no real damage to me or the bike – my right hip and knee took the worst of it and I got a good sized goose egg on my left shin.

After shaking myself off I got back on the bike and proceeded on the snowy edge of the trail to take a look at the mountain bike trails. Yup, the tread was icy on everything I could see. Had I not totally just biffed it, I might have been dumb enough to try it! So I turned around and stayed on the paved trail. I rode down to the Cedar Lake trail and then to the river and back home on Plymouth getting about 9 miles in. The paved trail was pretty much ice free except for a few shady spots and I could have ridden a different bike. I think it was still good to get the new bike out and see what adjustments I would need to make to it.

9.4 miles in 56:33

Later in the afternoon we had the kid’s ski lessons. We decided to move them both into Level 2 and we spent most of the time actually skiing and getting some of the hills in. It is funny to see how their different personalities respond to the different challenges of going up or down. And how one wants to really focus on just skiing and felt that the games were a waste of time! I ended up with about 2.4K of skiing during the class.

After class was over I went out for a quick loop with my classic skis. I did the Hidden Lakes trail sections and then up towards the upper stadium. I was still dressed for ski lessons which meant I was way over dressed for skiing at a more aggressive pace. So I was sweating way more than I needed to be. I decided to use the ski as a way to get the car instead of walking back from the Trailhead to the Chalet parking lot so I went down the Drevil’s Drop which I’ve never successfully made all the way down. I made it onto the flat section before falling, I think my ski edge caught one of the tracks. Guess what, I fell really hard on my right side again! Yea, the same spots hurt a lot! This quick ski was about 3.3K in 23:20 on my classic skis.

So that was a lot of work for one day!

01122019 – Ski

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I went out for my first skate ski endeavor. The basic motion came somewhat easily. However, getting up the hills was a struggle! I almost lost my balance several times on the flat, but only fell on the one hill that I usually fall on! I ended up doing just over 5K. I stayed in the Lower Stadium and Twin Lakes area doing a couple loops of the flat in the Twin Lakes and only doing the longer loop once. I need to work on the hills part before I do the full loop!

5k in 40:45

01052019 – Bike

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A rare confluence of events meant that I had a few hours without any obligations during a warm spell in January!! Being that several days previous had also been warm I took the chance that the streets and paths would be mostly ice free and I was mostly correct!

It was a 40 degree day and I dropped the kids off at a birthday party and had 3 hours until I needed to return. I took the opportunity to ride to St. Paul and actually ended up doing some routes I had never been on.  Minnehaha Creek was the worst shape ice-wise that I rode on (though I skipped parts of the Lillydale trails).  And a little section in St. Paul was rough, but overall it was easy riding.  One thing I realized too late was that I was riding out with a tail wind which meant, yes a head wind on the way back when I was starting to feel my overall lack of riding! And feeling squats from the other day!

I saw a decent amount of riders out on a mixture of fat bikes, road bikes, and cyclo-cross bikes like me! In St. Paul I got to ride on the end of the Polar Dash race’s closed roads which was pretty nice.

All in all a great ride.  I stayed mostly warm, I wished I had my foot covers as one foot got a little wet and didn’t stay warm then!

Totals were 26 miles in 2:22.

01032019 – CrossFit

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Finally felt healthy enough to work out! The Influenza A definitely has a long tail of getting back to 100% and I’m definitely not there yet. My last fever was on Christmas Day so it’s been over a week and I’ve still had a lot of congestion, lung mucus, and just being worn out. I’ve taken more naps in the past few weeks than I can remember! 

I decided to do Solcana’s WOD instead of coming up with my own. I might have been better off doing some bodyweight workout, but oh well! 

I had to do some modifications and did 8 rounds of 2 front support holds on the rings as part of the gymnastics/warmup.

Then on to some back squatting. I did the dynamic warmup and put 95 on the bar and did 5, then 125 at 5 reps. Getting to the actual work was a 3 2 1 2 3 ladder with 10lb jumps. I started at 165, then 175 and did 1 rep at 185 and then descended back down. 

The Metcon called for dumbbells and my sister didn’t have any in her gym so I opted for kettlebells. The devil press looked painful and not doable with kettlebells so I just went for swings. I did one armed push press with the kettlebell and switched at 4 reps. I also did hanging knee raises. 

8 minute AMRAP 

8 hanging knee raises

8 kettlebell swings 35lb

8 kettlebell push press 35lb

I was able to finish 7 rounds in the 8 minutes. Not exactly as written but it was still a good challenge that got me moving. 

Here’s a pic of the barn gym:

12142018 – CrossFit

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Ahhh.. another Friday afternoon workout.  It was actually a decent day at work so that was nice! We did a bear crawl, jog, inch worm, and lunges before heading into our tripod stand practice.  It is getting easier to get up into the tripod for sure.

This week was a Clean and Push Press 6 sets working up to a heavy set of 1 Clean and 3 Push Press. I started at 65 and then did 75, 80, 85, 90, 95. 95 was definitely heavy.  Bobby showed me how to widen my grip for the Push Press which should help me to get more leverage.

We ran out of time to do the MetCon exactly as written, we cut the breaks about a minute short for each.  I wanted to try the Platinum, but the last set of Deadlifts would have been 275 which seemed way too close to my max to try at this point.  That was a good decision as the Gold was plenty heavy at 185 for the last sets.  It was a 3 part AMRAP with scoring at each round and the total score was what was recorded.

AMRAP/4

12 Deadlift (105)
12 Burpee Box Jump-Overs
— rest 4 min —
AMRAP/4
8 Deadlift (135)
8 Burpee Box Jump-Overs
— rest 4 min —
AMRAP/4
4 Deadlift (185)
4 Burpee Box Jump-Overs

I finished 48 in the first round, 44 in the second and 25 in the last round. My watch recorded an average heart rate of 141 (including the rest intervals). I was beat afterwards!