When I concocted the fabulous idea of going night skiing tonight, I didn't think things through quite all the way. Such as, it's a week from the first day of Spring and the day is roughly 12 hours long and that it might not actually be dark until nearly 7. But other parts of my plan worked very well. We left our house around 1:30 and didn't hit a smidge of traffic all the way up. We arrived at Keystone just after 3 which allowed us to park in a $25 lot right at the gondola - for free! We did 6 or 7 runs and even played at the snow fort again and it was relatively uncrowded. The snow was pretty skied up and icy, but that's normal for Keystone no matter what the time. Alex and Adam had fun and I found myself going full speed to keep up with Alex. Adam tried out his new poles and had some successes and some failures. Though we would have had fewer failures if Jeremy hadn't picked the first run to be a bumped out blue. Little Adam hung on but it took a while and then we still had to navigate the icy River Run of doom at the bottom.
The biggest disappointment was that it never got real dark. I was envisioning eerily lit runs so dark that you couldn't even make out the trees with picturesque stars overhead. Instead, the best we got was twilight. The last run was almost night skiing, the lights were certainly needed at that point. And then I realized, we missed our chance this year. Daylight savings time starts tonight and that means that when night skiing shuts down at 8:00 tomorrow, it will be as dark as when we left today at 7:00. So, next year we will try again earlier in the season. Maybe for my birthday :)
Alternatively titled NOTFun with Chinese Medicine or I Paid for This?
Yes, I'm still doing acupuncture. And things haven't been progressing as well as I hoped, though I'm afraid to quit now since I've put so much time and money into it already. But I have to give kudos to my acupuncturist, she called in another colleague to assist her, who recommended this treatment. My last 4 sessions have progressed beyond needles to something in Chinese medicine called cupping, used to draw toxins out of the body (and there is still some needle work too). My previous 3 sessions were not very exciting but today was darn near tortuous. I have been guaranteed results in 2 days so hopefully this was not for naught.
In training news, I had my last track class of the session and I'm not signing up for another but I will probably do some open riding on occasion. My classmate was absent for the second week in a row so it was just me and the legendary Chuck Coyle. We did some hot laps, and the moved into 2 kilometer efforts. I was able to do 3 x 2:54 on these, which was at least consistent. And then we took a victory lap going clockwise instead of counter-clockwise, which was like riding on the track for the first time and adrenaline packed. My legs were tired at track because I ran first, instead of saving it for after I picked up Adam (he's ridden his bike with me the past 3 weeks), since it was supposed to snow today (which it finally did, starting around 3). I really enjoyed working out at the track this winter but I'm ready now to do some outside riding and for spring weather!
Yesterday I finally got my act together and registered for Boise 70.3. And while I apparently surprised some people, it's been in the year long plan all along. See, rather than focus on training for one race for an entire year, I broke my year up into quarters. First quarter - last fall - I concentrated on improving my run by working on intensity. I raced 2 5k and 2 10ks. This current quarter was all about adding some run endurance, cumulating in the Canyonland's Half Marathon in 10 days. April and May will about coming back to triathlon, concentrating mostly on getting my bike back up to speed (har-har). I will probably also race the Summer Open Sprint in May and the Danskin SheRox Sprint at end of June, in addition to the A race of the quarter - Boise. And then, I have the summer to concentrate on the mother of them all, the real down and dirty Ironman training.
And why Boise, you may wonder? Well, I didn't feel comfortable racing Boulder 70.3 only 6 weeks out from Wisconsin. I was pretty sore after last year's race and it took about 2-3 weeks to feel like I was recovered. And I wouldn't want to not race my best because I was concerned about the looming Ironman. So I looked at nearby half-Ironman races earlier in the year and my choices were pretty much Kansas or Boise (or Lubbock in July, but that was never really a choice. I wilt in heat). And it so happens that Boise is the D3 Multisport race of the year so I'll be able to go out with training friends. And that, my friends, is The Plan in a nutshell.
In other training news, our main set at master's was the dreaded 10x100's. Last time I did this set, my interval was 1:45 and I was demoted at the end of a pretty poor performance. Today, the coach set my interval at 1:50 and I consistently came in at 1:35 and got 15 seconds of rest. So either I swim a heck of a lot better when I get more than 3 seconds rest, or I have improved a bit in the last month. I'm holding out that I'm improving.
I have a goal for the half marathon. And I'm going to bite the bullet and hopefully not jinx myself by writing it down here. My goal is 2:05. From my vdot training predictions to general fitness, I think I can do it. But to put it in perspective, the pace I need for a 2:05 is the pace I needed last year for the Bolder Boulder to go under an hour, and I didn't hit it. So, have I improved that much in a year that I can hold that pace for twice as long? We shall see.
Otherwise, I had a good week. Last week I logged 30 running miles and this week it was 29. I still have 2 more harder runs this week, then it's taper time. I did all my training, and I felt that I did it well. On my 2 hour run today, my left knee gave me a bit of trouble at the beginning, but I think it was taking the ligaments a bit longer that the muscles to warm up. I ran 12 miles in 2:06 at a 10:33 pace, but except for the last 15 minutes when I was trying to get home, it was very easy, low zone 2 running.
And for you, Laura. When Jeremy got home from Europe he was telling me he heard a brand new released Lady Gaga song that was BRAND NEW and EXCITING. Telephone. Ha, it's already on my shuffle there, J-Dog.
Weekly Totals:
swim: 5300 yards bike: 3:42, including 28 outdoor miles run: 29 miles
This morning's run workout was one of those workouts straddling the line between flipping-hard and maybe-over-training. I did the same workout as I did last week, 10x800 with a goal of 4:10 (8:20 mile pace). Last week it was not too bad. This week, super hard. I had to bargain with myself. I made myself to 6 800's, then I knew I could do 8. And after that, I figured I had to do all 10. But my legs were dead and it was just hard. In the last 5 days days, I've run 30 miles. For the last 800 today, I had to find a super peppy song to get me through and I scrolled though my shuffle until I found some Lady Gaga. Becky, Laura, I'm linking this for you. You need to watch it. Oh yes, you do.
I bet you thought that I stopped keeping track of all the money I find. Oh nooooo, I just don't talk about it much. And if it makes you feel better, I don't go looking for it as much as I used to, but if I see a penny, even under someone's shoe, I'll still grab it. So to date, since July 6, 2006 I have found:
$183.12 1 5 Afrika Dzonga 1 100 Indonesian coin 2 Canadian dimes 1 Canadian penny 1 Australian nickel 2 RTD tokens
Although, I didn't quite find $183. It's been sitting in a savings account for a few years earning interest, I'd guess (yes, I'm too lazy to look) around $7-%10 of interest. So there you go.
And $183 is very close to $200-$300, the amount that I've been bitching about for NASTAR. But here's the deal. It's not like I don't *have* $300. It's that I can in no way justify spending $300 on snowboarding. It's not the Olympics, I'm not very good and I'm already spending hundreds (thousands???) on triathlon. I've approached Burton as a sponsor and so far our negotiating has led to a possible use of a snowboard for the event. I countered that that would be lovely, but if I don't get a comped entry fee, it's not going to help me much. So if I work something out, great. If not, I had fun racing this year and we've had a hell of a season and it's all good.
Today's long run was another long but not easy run. I had a warm up, then 25 minutes at zone 2, hopefully around race pace, 15 minutes at zone 3, then repeat the two once more. In the middle of the first 25, I hooked up with Marcia, a 52 year old Boulder engineer. We were running about the same pace and decided we either needed to run together or someone needed to run a different way. Except, she was running a bit faster than my pace. I ended up doing more effort than was called for, though the company was nice. We parted ways mid-way through the last 15 minute zone 3, as she wanted to run 18 miles and I did not.
After I was done with the heart rate workouts, I still had 20-40 minutes to run. I opted to run the full 40 to go for 2:20. I'm glad I decided to go the extra 2 miles as they were hard, but in a good way. I ended up doing 13.6 miles at an average of 10:27 miles. My knees are fine, but my feet are sore. I slathered them in body glide and avoided blisters but my soles are still tender.
The kids didn't have school Friday so what else could we do but go skiing? On Friday, we went to Breckenridge and did the divide and conquer skiing with the kids. Jeremy took Alex up the Imperial Chair and they skied all the way down to the base of Peak 9. And for those not familiar with Breckenridge, the Imperial Chair services Imperial Bowl, which is all black diamond runs. And my sweet, loyal husband told me he thinks Alex did better his first time up there than I did my first time. So, yeah, Alex has become an advanced skier this year. He's good in the trees, good on the steep and good on moguls. It's been very cool to watch his progression this year.
While Alex and Jeremy were off doing their thing, Adam and I did some NASTAR racing. Adam really stepped it up and finally earned some bronze medals. He was quite cocky about it, until the ruts around the gates formed, which slowed him down but let me corner faster. Then he yelled at me for cheating and pouted a bit.
On Saturday, we went back to Keystone. Twice, actually. We got there 10 minutes early, only to realize we (really a joint Wendy/Jeremy effort) had left the ski bag with our helmets and gloves back at the house. So then we were really 40 minutes late. But the kids' classes did some laps on the first chair so we were able to connect them up with little stress. Anyway, this might have been our last time ever at Keystone, now that the kids have finished up their ski lessons. It's not that Keystone is terrible (well, it sort of is) but Breckenridge, Vail and Beaver Creek are so much better.
In typical Keystone conditions (unlike last weekend with Devon and Sarah) the snow with thin and icy and the slopes crowded. My darling husband actually suggested spending all day on NASTAR and he himself finally registered. He showed off his mad ski racing skills from high school and earned several silver medals. We ended up doing 10 races and while I got 7 bronze medals, I was unable to meet my goal of sub 30 seconds, with my best time being 30:28. For comparison, Jeremy was doing 23 seconds. And now that I've raced 5 days, I'm ranked nationally at 4th. Out of 6, if you must know. I could totally take 3rd place but one of my days I only did 2 races and didn't do well so my handicap is especially high that day.
Here's a video of me. And I know you can't see the finish, but I totally kicked that 5 year old girl's little butt, by like 3 seconds:
And J-Dog:
When you do 10 NASTAR races at Keystone, you get to mid-load on the gondola a lot. We rode up with some very eclectic groups of people.
- There was the Rastafarian black dude complete with long dreads who pulled out his secret black diary and 12-slotted mulitcolored pen. I was sitting next to him so I was able to see that it was, in fact, a tween girl diary, filled with things like girls' names circled in hearts and lists of important life lessons written in alternating pen colors. He had pulled it out to remind himself to double check the park structures before bombing over boxes and almost decapitating Keystone workers. Twice. An important life lesson and I'm glad no one was hurt.
- The family from Iowa who spent 10 minutes debating the fine points of genetically modified corn seed and the fiscal ramifications of said monopolies. Oh yeah, and the price of fertilizer.
- The group of 20-something boarders who had collectively smoked a pack right before getting on and lamented the difficulties of living with 4 girls in a small house. They also complained of another guy absent from the group who could not stop talking. I was a bit horror struck to realize there could be people who talked MORE than that group.
- A group of big burly men not speaking English. I voted some Slavic language and Jeremy thought Polish. Not that either of us would know.
- A family in which the teenage girl explained that her thighs don't get sore from skiing because of horseback riding. But her calves hurt. And then the mom asked me why snowboarders like riding on the sides of runs by the trees. Taken by surprise, I answered the truth - that her slow ass family was taking up the whole middle of the run and I'm trying to pass as smoothly and quickly as I can without getting in their way.
- A younger couple who backed my idea of trying to throw a snowball out the gondola window without standing up. I missed and it splattered Jeremy, to much amusement. Then we had a discussion on whether it's gondola or gondolier. Jeremy and I were pretty sure we were not boating down the middle of Venice.
When we picked the boys up, we confirmed that Alex had not in fact been to visit the giant snow fort yet. So instead of loading up and going home we went back up to the top and let the kids play. It's very cool, but looks like a lawsuit waiting to happen. There are all these precipices with 10 foot drop offs with kids in ski boots swarming everywhere.
Here's Alex sitting on the ice throne:
Climbing up to a precipice:
Coming out of a tunnel:
Jeremy, for scale:
Now Adam's on the top:
Adam, climbing the rope ladder:
And in full disclosure, not only did I help in leaving the ski bag at the house, but I also left my credit card at Stone Cold Creamier (what, your family doesn't eat ice cream in February?) and almost left my purse at Carlos Miguel's. It's like I'm turning into Jeremy.
After snowboarding hard yesterday and a two hour session with the boys this morning, I was SUPER excited to tackle my long run. And not just a long run, there was a workout in there too. I did 2x30 minutes of high zone 2, 2x12 minutes of zone 3 and 1x10 minutes of zone 4 (but really a high zone 3). There was a warm up and cool down and recovery involved and my total time ended up being 2:16 for 12.5 miles.
I had an unusual occurrence today around the one hour mark. I realized that I was going to need a bathroom, and not in the way I can fake it with same camouflaging bushes (though with the snow and the 20 degrees temperature, I wouldn't need too much privacy). I had chosen to run on the Boulder Creek path since it has a higher plowing priority than my own street. And it's also very scenic and fairly isolated, for running straight through the heart of Boulder. I was at 55th street going around the industrial park when I realized that I really couldn't wait until even the East Boulder Rec Center. I cut through the industrial park (very public restroom free!) and somehow managed to take the longest possible route back to 55th street where I had to run about 1/2 a mile to a gas station. I made it, but just barely. And while I was very uncomfortable, I was also distracted from my normal running aches and worries and I was surprised to see I was already 1:25 in.
The rest of the run went very well. It's so much more pleasant to run when you aren't worried about explosive diarrhea at any moment. I didn't get any new blisters and didn't have any acute pain, but my knees are a bit stiff now. I have another 2:20 run next Sunday and then 2 hours the following week and then some tapering.
Weekly Totals:
Swim: 8000 yards Bike: 1:45 at the track Run: 27.6 miles
For already riding 15 days this years, we've managed to have a whole lot of mediocre ski days. I try to put a positive spin and say we are just keeping in shape so when it snows, we are fit and ready to fully enjoy the day. Like today. Sarah and Devon joined us at Keystone for some legendary skiing and riding.
After an ungodly long wait in for the Outback lift, we had another wait to ride the snow cat:
For only $5 a person, you can avoid a 30 minute hike to the top of South bowl. Jeremy felt very vindicated when after a 25 minute wait, we passed people hiking that started when we got in line:
And here's the top of South Bowl with Breckenridge in the background:
I've heard of that Breckenridge place:
Getting strapped in to make fresh tracks in some serious powder:
Fresh, soft, deep powder!
Devon and Sarah:
We only made about 10 turn before we hit a serious tree run. There were pits of powder so deep, than when I fell, my arms sunk in up to my shoulder when I tried to put my hand down to get up. And then, a mellow run out:
And the day kept getting even better. After killing our legs on a couple of serious bump runs, I headed over to the NASTAR course. I'm not sure if it was because of less icy conditions due to actual snowfall or my freshly sharpened edges, but I managed to shave a few seconds off my time and get not one but TWO bronze medals. Alex's ski instructor registered him today and Alex got a bronze medal too. Is it too early to start grooming Alex for 2022?
Actually, I was thinking something slightly more profane for about 30 minutes this morning while swimming. D3 is setting up a women's triathlon team and in honor of the occasion, I swam with them this morning. Optimistically, I'll be swimming them with them every Friday morning, if I recover from today.
Clearly, I have been slacking at masters. Sure, I've been bitching about my pace slowing down since Christmas break and actually this week was the first week I felt back to where I was. But in general, when I swim I'm not praying for lighting strikes or heart attacks. (Digression - on my birthday swim, I was telling the coach that I could probably move up a lane but I'd have to draft like crazy and work really hard. And plus, there were 5 people over there and only 2 in my lane. And he told me he just went to a talk by an elite runner who was talking about suffering - how he prayed for lighting strikes and heart attacks during hard sessions. How the human body can tolerate a whole lot of pain. And I said, "Is this supposed to be a pep talk???")
And today, I was kind hoping for a big brown floater or something to close the pool. The workout was HARD. Our main set was 9x150 on 2:30. Just 2 weeks ago, I was doing 150's on 2:27. Today my first ones were 1:18-ish but they got progressively slower until they were 2:30 and there was no rest. Our total workout was 3000 yards, which is on average 500 more than I usually swim in an hour. And I'm not sure how I feel about all this.
For one thing, the D3 coach was telling me I need to breath every other stroke instead of every 3 when I'm doing fast sets. I've worked my ass off this winter getting comfortable swimming 3. I'm pretty proud of myself. I see the argument for both cases and I'm confused. On one hand, you get more oxygen breathing every 2. But on the other, you end up with muscle imbalances and symmetry issues. I fully plan on racing every 2, but should I revert back in practice too? Just for the speed work? It feels like cheating. This is what you get when you work with 3-4 coaches, which is what I'm effectively doing with my Rally master's classes.
The D3 women's team officially starts in mid-March and then there will be group runs again, in addition to the weekly swim. I'm super excited to explore my pain tolerance some more.
We had a record smashing track class today, and alas, I did not smash any records. We first worked on "hot laps" just 1 lap all out. I made 9.473 seconds, and did not break the 9.23 record. We made 4 attempts (it's amazing how much recovery you need in between 10 second all out efforts) and then moved on to the kilometer - 7 laps. I made a personal best of 1:18.5 but was still 8 second over the 70 minute record.
My class buddy Janet kicked butt. Her birthday is the day before mine and I would have sworn she had just turned 45, but no, she's 55. She broke her age group record in both events. Her lap time was 10.082 (she strong, but is a bit more cautious than me, something about not wanting to break bones) and her kilo time was 1:18.9. And now, glory on the white board:
And after careful inspection, there is NOBODY to beat in the how-many-laps-in-an-hour category for our age groups. I'm tempted to ride it. Sure, I'd get on with 200 laps, but all the male records are 300 laps and above. Which means you have to be moving at a pretty fast clip for 60 minutes. Aside from the fear that I'd get severe motion sickness, what could go wrong?
And since it was record breaking day, I ran after class instead of before. That meant after class, I had an Adam. Rather than go all the way to Rally's for daycare I put him on his bike and he kept me company, rather like a slightly untrained dog:
My workout was a 10 minute warm up, 8 x 30 second efforts and a 10 minute cool down. I did the efforts back and forth on a less crowded part of the bike path and it worked out perfectly. If only Adam would stop talking so much, I'd consider doing this more often.
It's what I've been anticipating for 2 weeks. What I dedicated my last two snowboarding days too. What I've poured my heart and soul into. And yet, it's a bittersweet day. Yes, I qualified for NASTAR nationals in the female 30-34 snowboarding division. So did, as far as I can tell, anyone else who completed a race, but that's not the point. I qualified. Me. But the big downer? The national race entry is $199 PLUS lift tickets. And as awesome as I am, I don't have $300+ for this endeavor. (Although, I've looked at and not bought 2 track bikes, which kinda makes me feel like I've already saved $500...)
But I'm doing to put a positive spin on this. I'm not giving up (Olympics 2014???). I'm going to race a few more days and try to shave down my time enough to win a time-based medal. All the OCD at a fraction of the price.
Our family has an age old tradition (which we foolishly broke last December) of not skiing on holidays. And as luck would have it, it snowed 22" this week in Breckenridge, and about 12" of those in the last 2 days. We must keep reminding ourselves it was worth missing the snow to avoid the confluence of President's Day/Valentines Day/Mardi Gras. It will snow again, right?
So instead, we headed over to the Broomfield Rec Center for some swimming this morning. Unfortunately, we were not the only ones in the metro Denver area to have that idea. It was our first trip there and it's a really nice rec center and the pool is pretty cool. It looked like this, only with people packed in like sardines:
There were also two big slides, a body slide and an inter-tube slide. Ariel conning JJ into taking her on the inter-tube slide about 47 times. And don't let the placid water fool you, there was danger lurking beneath the surface. Both Ariel and I cut our toes and required bandaids. We are so going to sue.
We swam for almost 2 hours and left just before everyone imploded. We stopped at Del Taco for lunch and in our hunger-crazed stupor we made some poor nutrition choices:
Drinks??? French Fries??? I'm not sure why Ariel looks so surly, she enjoyed her cheeseburger kid's meal with churro desert. I couldn't believe we ended up spending more than we would at Chipolte, with a significant decrease in quality.
After our crazy morning, we had a quiet afternoon with the boys watching Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone and Ariel napping. And I had the rare treat of going to the grocery store all by myself. After Del Taco, I was very inspired to buy some real food.
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And if you watch Lost, check out this recap blog. I loled. A lot. (Thanks Bonnie!)
Well kids, we are starting to get into the serious endurance training. I knocked out 2 hours at the res today, which handily is 2 laps. Today was all about time and I had to hold myself back at the beginning and push a little at the end. The last time I ran out there was the long course, and like the long course, I spaced my walk breaks on the uphills. I ended up doing 10.65 miles at a 11:17 pace, which brings me to this cool training tool. When I plug in my time for my 4 mile race yesterday, I get a vdot value of 34.85, an indicator of my fitness. This website is cool because it has a chart showing how that fitness level would preform at different distances. Hypothetically, yesterday I could have also run a 27:04 5k and a 56:14 10k.
The other chart has training level paces. Presumably, I could run a 11:19 mile at 70% of my max heart rate, which is my easy long run goal. So today I was pretty happy to hit 11:17, especially since I was running in 2" of snow in my yak traxs in 20 degree weather, while keeping my heart rate in zone 2.
In general, I really hate seeing my mile pace above 11:00. But going back to the vdot page, in theory I can still race the half marathon in 2:04:40, which is very much not 11 minute miles. I think I'm going to set my Canyonland goal to be sub-2:10 but the closer to 2:00 I get, the happier I will be.
And in closing, long runs are still really hard. I got a blister in on my right arch (ski sock related?) and my legs got pretty tight and sore at the end.
Week Totals:
Swim: 5800 yards Bike: 2 hours at track Run: 25.5 miles
Today, Becky, Rachel, and I raced the Loveland 4 mile. It turned out to be a fairly difficult course. The first 1.5 miles were downhill with a tailwind and I was lulled into a false sense of my abilities. I did 2 miles in 17 minutes. And the last 2.75 miles were uphill into a fairly serious headwind. At any rate, I got a PR! Ha, I've never raced 4 miles before. And really, it was challenged to figure out how hard to go, not as short as a 5k but much less than a 10k... I also got a heart rate PR. My last two races, I have averaged 176 bpm and today I hit 177 bpm. Averaged. My last 15 minutes were around 183 bpm, which is not a very comfortable place to be. And a 10 year old girl beat me. My watch time was 35:18, which placed me mid-pack of the women 30-39. I ran the same pace I ran for Rudolph's Revenge 10k back in December.
Adam's class foregoedforewent skipped the classic Valentine's party and instead celebrated the Chinese New Year at Tibet's Restaurant. Because, I supposed, Tibet is part of China, though the restaurant serves (excellent) food from Tibet, Nepal and India. And also, the owners' children go to Creekside, one girl in Alex's class and one in Adam's class.
We enjoyed a fun filled bus ride to Louisville and then had the restaurant to ourselves:
The owner, Kandu Sherpa (yes, Sherpa!) serving tea in the background:
A little Tibet culture. I don't think the Chinese revere the Dali Lama so much:
Alas, we were not served yak meat, though it's on the menu. I would have tried it:
Adam chowing down on chicken tiki on the bone. Guess we aren't vegetarian anymore:
We had a fabulous brunch (ok, it was a bit hard to chow down at 10:00am) of chicken masala, spinach saag and choi mein. We were served way to much food and I started the trend of asking for take out boxes. I scored us dinner too.
And now, I am all field tripped out for a good long while.
Today I had the pleasure of joining the second grade class on a field trip to the Museum of Nature and Science. I use the word "pleasure" loosely.
Our first order of business was attending a class classed "You've got guts." The intrepid teacher went over the digestive track while the class wiggled and waited for the real highlight - a real frog dissection:
None of the kids vomited and only one ran out the the room crying, so I'd say the frog was a success. And speaking of frog dissection, we've move well beyond the dark ages of my 1988 7th grade biology class. We were assured this frog grew up happy and lived a long life on a farm and died of natural causes before being preserved for science. I'm not sure what qualifies as natural causes these days, the teacher found a beetle in his mouth. Perhaps he choked?
After the class, we had about 20 minutes to explore the museum before our IMAX show. I was in charge of 3 kids - Alex, Zach and Luke - who apparently thought the museum was a parkour course. We bounded and leapt through the space exhibit before the movie.
Disappointingly, the movie was Wild Ocean, which Alex and I had already seen. I believe my review was "less talking, more feeding frenzy." But I still like the gannets diving bombing into the ocean after the sardines. Next we had lunch and then 30 minutes of museum time. It was Alex's turn to pick so of course we had to go see the puffins. It was nice to hear Luke finally say, "These birds are cool, I see why you like them so much, Alex."
And then, the wildly fun bus ride home. I really don't know who I respect more after this trip, second grade teachers or bus drivers. They are saints and martyrs and have my eternal admiration.
... the NUMBER ONE NASTAR ranked female snowboarder aged 30-34 in the state of Colorado. Out of an esteemed and competitive list of... 1. Ranked 2 out of 3 at Breckenridge, 1 out of 1 at Keystone. I'm dedicating February to becoming the number 3 ranked 30-34 woman in the NATION. All I need is 3 more separate days of NASTAR races and the spot is mine. Winter Olympics 2014???
So mark your calendars for the NASTAR national championships in Winter Park, March 25-28. How can I not race? And where can I acquire a skin suit?
Just a snowy day, not a snow day. We probably got about 4" in Boulder. Lilianna came over for a playdate and we kicked the girls outside. They were ok with that:
Ariel showed Lilianna how she makes snow angels:
Then Ariel throw snow in Lilianna's face. Lilianna took it pretty well but Ariel was reprimanded:
And then they spent about 20 minutes making slush in the heated bird bath until their mittens got soaked and they came in for hot chocolate.
I'd say that was the highlight of the day. Ariel and Lilianna played a bit together inside before it was time for us to pick up Adam. Then we had lunch, went to the grocery store (where Ariel made the biggest doughnut mess I've ever seen) and then she and Adam played until it was nap time. Ariel started getting grouchy around 2:00 and when I told her it was time for a nap she got near hysterical and uninvited me to her birthday party. Given her reaction, I think I made a good decision regarding napping today.
I'm a stay at home mom to Alex (8 1/2 years old) and Adam (6 years old) and a middle of the pack triathlete. I completed my first Ironman in Wisconsin in 2010.
