Swimming: 3200 Yards of Ugly (and a Skiing Story)

We went skiing for the first time this week, and it was great.  By which I mean it was a little icy, and I bit it a few times, but it's never a bad day out on the mountain, especially under the kind of bluebird skies we saw Thursday morning.

With the kids at the base of the Sunbrook face.

Me and Sally at Mount Snow's summit.

I like Mount Snow because they have the best snow-making in New England.  Snow-making is an absolute necessity out here.  Mid-December in the Northeast saw cold temperatures and plenty of snow, but the week before Christmas brought a brief warm spell and a bit of rain, followed by another hard freeze and several days of flurries.  That turned Mount Snow's base layer to ice, though they did an admirable job of cleaning up afterwards.  At the same time, I had a whole pre-ski season workout plan laid out, but between writing for As For Football, work, occasional night classes, and schlepping my kids all over God's creation, well... I just never put in all the work I wanted.  It didn't help that I've been fighting a little hamstring pull.

So.  We had a good day out on Wednesday despite overcast skies.  We kept it simple and skied all day as a family.  Thursday, however, I decided to hit the North Face, putting in all of two runs on black-diamond runs Olympic and Freefall.  I've done both before, but on this particular day, I was already getting tired when I decided to push myself, and worse, the sun was just starting to set behind the mountaintop.  I fell, of course, on Olympic, but I didn't bite it super-hard until I went down Freefall, at which point I hit a solid sheet of near-vertical ice just at the transition point between full sun and shadow.  Needless to say, I did not see the ice--at all.  I went to cut, my board absolutely DID NOT catch an edge, and the next thing I knew, I was on my face sliding down the mountain uncontrollably.  I must've slid fifty feet before I realized I was going to have to dig an edge and pop up like Spider-Man, or else I'd slide all the way to the chairlift on my face.

With Hannah at the top of the Sunbrook face.

All of which is a very long way of saying that I was sore when I hit the water this morning.  My elbow and knee are bruised from smacking the ice, but mostly my core body muscles are sore from inadequate pre-ski preparation in the gym.

Also: the YMCA pool was a solid 84-degrees this morning.  So like I said, it was ugly.

8 x 100 easy
 -- 4 @ 1:35
 -- 4 @ 1:30
200 kick
10 x 50 @ 50 breathing every 3rd (long strokes)

4 x 200 pull @ 2:50
200 kick

100 easy
8 x 50 @ :45 (every 4th 50 fly)

4 x 50 @ :50 easy cool down


Hopefully tomorrow will be a better day.