01202019 – Ski

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Two different ski sessions, two types of skiing and two times of winter fun!

The first session was solo at 6am with the temperature at -3f. I slipped out and was the first skier to hit the trails on the cold morning. I was working on my skate skiing. I’d go from moments when it seemed to be going well to frustration over not being able to get into the rhythm.  I know it was only my second session so I’m trying to not get too discouraged.  I also read later that colder temps make the snow slower so that made me feel a little better! I spent some more time on the flat sections doing an extra loop and going out wider to get more practice on the flats since the hills are pretty much horrible and I’m walking up them.  I did do the full loop and trudged up all the hills.  I only saw 3 other people while I was out there! 

I ended up with 6.5k total skiing in about 56 minutes. 

The second session was with the kids. I thought they might cancel lessons, but there was no wind and the temp was about 10f and sunny. It ended up being great weather for skiing. I’m not confident enough on the skate skis yet so I used my classic ones. Nadia snapped her pole during the warmup! Caleb didn’t want to give up his poles, but he did when she was struggling on one of the uphills. After warming up we went out and did the normal loop that they’ve been doing and Nadia did great on all the downhills!!

After finishing the first loop we stopped for gummy bears and then the class split into kids who wanted to play games and those who wanted to ski more. Caleb doesn’t like the games so we went for another loop. When we got to the Meadow it was just us and a father/daughter pair so we decided to finish the full loop up there instead of going straight back.  This added some good hills.  I ended the lessons with 5k on the GPS.  So the kids did an excellent job of not giving up and enjoying the downhills! 

01192019 – CrossFit

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I had hoped to run or ski before the 10am CrossFit class but that didn’t work for our schedule and it was cold out! I took the kids to their CrossFit class and joined the 10am group was we waited for 9am to finish up.

Our warm up was 5 rounds of 8 kipping knees to elbow and 3 per arm kettlebell windmills. I got some good correction on my windmill as I wasn’t doing a good hip hinge with it.

We then did a 5×3 Back Squat. It was supposed to be 75% which would have been 150 for me, but when I got to 135, that felt pretty challenging for the day. It was nice to workout with Dan a 5:30am buddy whose kids are also in the kid’s class. We did the squats together. Despite being lower weight than I should have been the 5×3 went well.

The MetCon wasn’t for time, but we did have a 10 minute time cap due to the end of class. It was another hard one!

5 rounds of

5 Strict Pullups

10 Renegade Rows (each arm) 20#

30 Heavy Russian Swings 53#

I had tried the 70# kettlebell because they were supposed to be as heavy as possible, but Coach Rica said my form was too bad at that weight so I dropped back down. I was glad too because the 53 was heavy enough at the end! I think I ended up with 4 rounds in the time cap. I did the first 5 pullups strict and mostly got over the bar, but then I added some bands because I wasn’t getting close enough anymore in subsequent rounds!

I had a good workout and so did the kids!

01182019 – CrossFit

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Finally back at the gym! I had hoped to earlier in the week but forgot to sign up and was waitlisted. I don’t usually look at the workouts, I wouldn’t have skipped this one. I think lots of people did though!

We are in a prep cycle for the CrossFit Open. And a lot of that is doing old open workouts. Mike was the only other person who showed up for the 3:30 class to do 13.1 with me!

This was rough! Here is the RX written workout from the website:

MEN – includes Masters Men up to 54 years old
Proceed through the sequence below completing as many reps as possible in 17 minutes of:
40 Burpees
75 pound Snatch, 30 reps
30 Burpees
135 pound Snatch, 30 reps
20 Burpees
165 pound Snatch, 30 reps
10 burpees
210 pound Snatch, as many reps as possible

That’s a lot of burpees and some heavy snatching! My 1RM is 110 for the snatch. I don’t remember exactly how all the scaling was laid out, but I decided to start at 65 and then jump to 95 and maybe get into the third round. The above also doesn’t highlight that the burpees are to a 6 inch target (6 inches above your arm reach). So you actually have to jump at the top.

Rich Froning completed 7 snatches in the AMRAP part. The most anyone did was 9 and several athletes in the top 20 that year didn’t make it into the last set of Snatches. All that to say this was a hard workout!

At the go I took a nice and steady pace with the burpees. You wouldn’t think jumping 6 inches is a big deal, but it does add time and quickly adds up! After the first round of snatching 65# I was almost half way done with the time. Yikes! Burpee fatigue was definitely accumulating and then I loaded 95 onto the bar for my second round of Snatch. I failed the first one. Got the second one. Failed the 3rd. Coach Bobby quickly came over and helped me drop the weight back down to 65. The bar felt super light on the first one, but the next ones hurt! I had hoped to go 10 at a time throughout, but ended up just doing 5. I ended with 114 total reps!

That was a lay on the floor afterwards workout for sure!

01142019 – Ski

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We met some friends at the Trailhead for dinner, games, and skiing. It was a fun night and fun to see how many people are out enjoying the trails on a week night. There were also a few high school groups which overall were pretty nice. We didn’t have any issues with them in the building or on the trails.

We had 6 kids of varying ski ability and 4 adults. We skiied up to the meadow and skiied around there a few times before coming back into Lower Stadium and playing around a bit. A few adventurous ones did a little more hills before calling it a night. The weather was great for this type of gathering too – not too cold! Hopefully we’ll do it again.

I did about 3.3K of skiing for the evening.

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!