Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Time to Go Back to Life

Happy new year!  I know you've all missed me terribly these last couple weeks *cough*, but for the Christmas holidays I went on a cross-country trip to see snow for the first time, visit family and have a Griswold-style holiday.  This trip also coincided with the general decision to not really check email, Facebook, blogs, Twitter, Dailymile or any of the other social networking and news site I spend vast swaths of my day on.

So here's the rough schedule of the trip.  Leave on a Thursday morning at 5 a.m., driving 6 hours to Charlotte, NC.  Board plane to Albuquerque, NM.  Upon arrival, rent car and drive hour to Santa Fe, NM.  Spend several days with family.  Drive from Santa Fe to Albuquerque and fly back to Charlotte.  From Charlotte, drive 2 hours to mountain condo family is renting for ski vacation.  Stay for several days, then drive 9 hours back to Jacksonville.  Phew!  We did this all in 9 days.  But....we had a blast!

I've never seen snow (I know, I don't know how I got to be 26 without seeing snow either), so I got to experience my first snow in the mountains of Santa Fe, where we made a snowman.  We had a great time with family and also go to do a little desert site-seeing.  This was my first time in Santa Fe, so it was really interesting to see.

The running joke of the vacation is that I had never seen snow, so now I got to experience every facet of it.  Turns out the "storm of 2010" was hitting Carolina, right where we were going, when we arrived.  This meant lots of snowy, icy roads, a bit of a spin into a snowbank and overall major experience with snow, snow everywhere.  This did make for great skiing though.  

Looking like a dork in my borrowed snow duds
I obviously have never skiied before and spent the first day completely hating it (is it a sign of a not-so-great but well-intentioned instructor when the whole class experiences a pile-up at the end of the group lesson?).  The frustration and hoards of people (and I do mean hoards....this place was packed) really got to me.  Day two I had a little one on one time with my dad's girlfriend, who helped me A LOT, and things started to improve.  By day three, I was actually enjoying it, though the sheer mental and physical exertion had me worn out pretty quickly.  It was a good trip, and great to spend time on both coasts with family.

Santa also rocked my socks with a stocking full of Powerbar Gels, some comfy new slippers for my cold and post-run feet, and a beautiful necklace.

The downside of all this is my training.  To say it has suffered is putting it mildly.  I missed two weeks of running.  And my marathon is in - gulp - 6 weeks.  My longest run to date has been 16 miles.  Oh yeah, and in the midst of all this, I'm moving house.  I'm telling myself I'll be fine.  I had a crappy run Saturday, but an awesome run last night.  This weekend:  18 miles.  Should be interesting.  Here goes nothing!
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5 comments:

  1. Stephanie Y.January 4, 2011 at 10:49 AM

    Yay! I'm glad you didn't have any skiing accidents. I completely understand hating it and loving it. I experience this every time I'm on the board. I continually ask myself, "why am I doing this?" and then in the next instant, "why don't I do this more often?" It's strange.

    Even with two weeks off, I'm sure the legs got quite the workout with 3 continuous days of skiing. You'll be fine on your 18 mile run, I have faith in you! Glad you had a good break and got to see family. Funny that you've never seen snow before this, did you grow up in Florida?

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  2. MegJanuary 4, 2011 at 3:33 PM

    You can do it! Don't worry about only having six weeks - you have six WHOLE weeks. That's plenty of time, especially for someone who's used to long distances in the first place. I'm glad you had such a good vacation!

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  3. UnknownJanuary 4, 2011 at 11:34 PM

    Yay for the snow! And congrats on the patience with skiing... the first time I went, I ended up in a stream, soaking wet and crying. I stuck with it. I don't love it, but it's better! :)

    Don't sweat the training. Look at it as a refreshing break! Good luck with the 18 this weekend!

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  4. JoelJanuary 4, 2011 at 11:57 PM

    I'm with you on the whole freak out thing. I know it's 6 weeks until the 26.2 w/ Donna, but it's actually something like 39 days! And I've missed out on some runs too! ACK!

    Regardless, you'll do great. The really good thing is that there's only 1 hill on the whole race course (but it's big by Jax standards)

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  5. MollyJanuary 7, 2011 at 11:03 AM

    I can't believe you've never seen snow before!!! Don't worry about not running much, you have a fitness base, you'll be just fine : )

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