Powder!

There's the running, the riding, the swimming. The three keys areas to train for endurance sports, plus a bit of weight- and strength-training as well. This is why so many distance runners turn to the real dark side of endurance sports and become triathletes...you can't run all the time, so you mix in a bit of swimming and cycling for cross-training days and then you figure, hey, I'm already doing so much of this stuff, why not just combine it all? Next thing you know you're camping in the woods of central California to take part in a bizarre event called Wildflower and/or counting ounces of food you consume as you prepare for your first Ironman. This is why, as far as I'm concerned, "triathlete" is just a four letter word with some extra letters tacked on for good measure.

My cross-training hasn't been any different, aside from the fact that when I swim I resemble some sort of interspecies mix between a manatee and a Britney Spears dance remix...so instead I just do kickboard laps back and forth to minimize the pain and suffering I'm inflicting on everyone else with my thoroughly humiliating breast stroke. But for the most part, swimming and cycling make up the activities on those blissful days when I don't have to run, but still have to train. This weekend, however, presented a whole new experiment in cross-training...an old friend's coming into town before shipping out with his detachment to the other side of the world, and his brother and sister-in-law living in Dillon, CO, with immediate access to four major ski resorts, gave me the opportunity to spend Saturday on the slopes.

Matt and I were in several of the same classes in college. We hung out a lot and became fast friends; we've remained close since our graduation and his departure for the Army. Matt's brother, Ryan and sister-in-law, Jill, moved out here shortly before our graduation and hopped from a loft in LoDo to a house in Evergreen to a fixer-upper in Dillon. Ryan's the town barber in Frisco, scant moments away from Dillon and home to the Breckenridge ski resort, and Jill opened up her dental pratice there as well. These are some of the most incredible people I've ever known...honest, sincere, intelligent, attractive, funny, and above all, down-to-earth. I'd met Ryan and Jill when they first moved to Colorado and when Matt asked if I could come up for the weekend to hang out and ski and hack around with these guys, what could I say but yes, absolutely, I will be there. I mean, who couldn't use a mini-break before the holidays?

Matt is as awesome as he always was even if he is reading the latest Oliver North book, and Ryan and Jill are just as much fun as I remember from a few years back. They and their two dogs, Oscar and Lenny, made me feel completely at home when I arrived following a terrifying drive through a freezing blizzard on I-70 that became much less terrfying once I got Gregory's XTerra into 4-wheel drive. We got dinner, had a couple of glasses of wine and then retired, me and Matt on couches in their living room. I ended up sharing the down blanket I was using with Lenny, which was fine as long as you don't mind a midnight facial moisturizer of drool and sloppy kisses.

Matt and I embarked to Copper Mountain the next day, one of four in the immediate vicinity of Dillon. Arapahoe Basin, Keystone, Copper and Breckenridge were all within minutes of the house and it had been snowing steadily since the previous afternoon, guaranteeing at least six inches of fresh powder on the slopes. Passes and skis in hand, we geared up at the bottom of the mountain and headed up.

Poor Matt, the guy used to be a ski instructor and he was stuck with me, the "advanced novice". I've skied enough to know what I'm doing, but not enough to do it well, quickly, or gracefully. I would gaze with envy at other skiers flying by me, looking as if they were floating over the snow, as I painfully attempted to traverse the slope. After the first few runs, I told Matt I'd meet up with him for lunch so he could go enjoy his day as well. He argued for a few minutes, then gave in, gratefully...for both of us. As much as I enjoyed my friend's company and as much as I missed him, this was his vacation too. I really wanted him to enjoy it.

Without watching for Matt ahead of me and feeling horribly self-conscious about my devastating performance, I actually began to improve. The conditions couldn't have been more ideal with a good six-inch base of fresh powder all over and several feet in soem places. If you're unfamiliar with skiing in Colorado or wonder why the heck people fly all the way out here to do it, you haven't experienced powder. In contrast, skiing anywhere else is miserable due to the heavy, sluchy, often icy snow that forms in most places. Colorado's altitude and desert-dry conditions create the lightest, driest, fluffiest snow in the world, to the point where we classify it into more categories...Steamboat Springs, for example, the hardest-to-get-to resort in Colorado, and also the one you really, really don't ever want to leave once you've been there, boasts its "champagne powder" conditions, which is literally the driest snow you can find. While this may sound a bit batty, you can't judge it until you've tried it...and once you've skied in Colorado you will never want to ski anywhere but powder conditions. We get slushy stuff too, but not usually until late in the season. Winter is really just one massive powder party in the high country, setting the bar for top-notch skiing worldwide. By the end of the day even MY turns were much easier and more quickly handled and I began to feel quite comfortable in skis again, in part due to the conditions, in part due to the skis, and in part due to the fact that I'm not incredibly horrendous and, as this was for me, as much about training as it was about having fun, I put my entire focus on making it a successful day. My knees were infuriated and throbbed with the completely different range-of-motion activities they'd had to accommodate but now, one day later, they feel okay...but my calves are killing me, a spot that never bothers me when I'm running. It was really nice to get away from my usual training and hit the slopes in pursuit of some beneficial cross-training that also reminded me of other muscles that needed to be exercised as well...and of course, to hang out with some of the most amazing people I've ever known. Unfortauntely, skiing is an expensive hobby and one I can't afford, but given that the passes and rental was free (thanks to Ryan and Jill; I owe them a really, really big one) AND I had a fabulous place to stay, this weekend it was the ideal retreat.

Now, home to Roo. Thanks for reading!