Monday, January 25, 2010

Fun in the Snow!

This weekend I continued to get out and enjoy the great wintery outdoors here in Alberta!  It was a busy one too, one that required fitting workouts in around life it seemed.  My brother, sister-in-law, niece and I decided on a spur of the moment trip out to the mountains.  Before we could leave on Saturday I had to knock out a one hour run.  So I could get the run done early I opted to run around my neighbourhood.

I’ve mentioned it before, but I am not a huge fan of running the sidewalks around my neighbourhood at this time of year.  Not everyone does a great job of shovelling the snow and often it compacts into a big icy mess.  A light dusting of snow had fallen overnight so I grabbed my Yaktrax.  It was –8C (17F) out, so I opted to wear two long sleeve tech shirts and a jacket.  It was such slow going on the run thanks to me being unsure about my footing.  Yaktrax are great in the snow, but aren’t for running on ice.  Every once in awhile I’d hit a snow covered patch of ice and it would be pretty slippery.  I was a good 1.5 to 2 minutes slower per mile than I normally am.  The run went well despite being really slow though.  I only slipped and fell once!  As soon as I finished running it was time to hurry up and shower and head out to the mountains!

My niece was pretty excited about going out to the mountains.  We stopped off in Canmore for lunch at my favourite brew pub, the Grizzly Paw.  I tried something new on tap, the Unity Brew.  It was a dark rye IPA style beer that 11 microbreweries from around Alberta had gotten together to brew.  All proceeds sold at the Grizzly Paw go towards go towards charity.  Drinking beer for charity?  No problem!DSCN2725

After lunch we headed out to the Ice Magic Festival at Lake Louise.  The festival is a major ice carving competition, with each team getting 15 – 300 lb blocks of ice and having 34 hours to transform it into a minimum 7 ft high sculpture.  This year the theme was Podium Bound - Spirit of the Competition.  I would have loved to see how the sculptures turned out in the end, but it was neat to see the teams in progress too.  Everyone had a sketch so you could see how the finished product was supposed to look.

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It was a really fun winter wonderland kind of weekend out in the mountains.  Good times!  We hung out in Banff overnight, checked out the shops on Sunday morning, then grabbed some lunch before heading back to Calgary.  Once I got home it was “hurry up” time in an attempt to finish off the rest of my workouts though!  I still had a brick and a swim on tap.  I hopped on my bike for just over an hour for a workout with plenty of single leg drills, lots of high cadence and then rounding out with some low cadence sets.  By the time I was done I had to make a critical decision.  It was either brick run or swim time.  I needed to leave the house in 20 minutes in order to make it to the YMCA with enough time to swim.  It didn’t give me enough time to change, run then change again so I skipped the run and just went straight to the Y.  Even still I was pushing it to get my workout done in just under an hour.

The swim was a really good one though.  Angie has suggested that I feel free to add paddle work to my workouts in the warm up or cool down.  I found that concentrating on high elbows with paddles makes me really think about taking that into the rest of my swimming.  I got my 2000 m workout done, showered, grabbed some pizza from Mitillini’s on the way home and that was that!

Talk about one full and action packed weekend!  I hope all of you had a good one too!  I’ll be trying to catch up…I have 275 posts in my Google Reader..!!

18 comments:

RockStarTri said...

Drinking beer for charity? I could be good at that. I'd need to practice much more than I do currently!

Sounds like a great time.

teacherwoman said...

Sounds like a great time! The ice sculptures were wonderful! How cool!

J said...

Wow it looks beautiful there! Such great pictures!!

Marlene said...

Looks like such a fun (and busy!) weekend. Kudos for still fitting in those workouts.

Julie said...

That is so odd you can't run on ice in your YakTrax --- I have a pair (maybe a different brand) and I can run on an ice rink with them. In fact -- the ones I have specifically say they are meant for ice NOT snow...Weird, eh?

Way to go for getting your sessions in when you could -- you are very organized!!

Those ice sculpture pics are amazing -- gorgeous.:) :)

By the way, thanks for the tip about the clinical strength deodorant -- my aero pads thank you as well. :) :)

Keith said...

So there you were, SHOPPING, while the rest of us are sweating our anatomy off trying to keep up with Katie and Chris in spin class. I guess the ice sculpture was a good excuse those, some of them are amazing.

I could get into drinking beer for charity, but if they ever get a wine one going, I'm done for.

Missy said...

Beer for charity..call me next time, will ya. Hey, if it's for charity, can we deduct it from our taxes? OH man, this could be perrrrfect:)

Wes said...

Wow! I lurves ice carvings, and the next time there's drinking beer for charity, I'm totally in...

Lily on the Road said...

LOL@Wes too funny. Sounds like the perfect weekend to me!

kristen said...

If you were on twitter, my message to you today would have been "thinking about @runnerleana as I get ready to run in capri pants!" (and yes, yes, I'm still in ottawa!)

I remember reading about that Unity Brew and wanted to try it.

Which YakTrax do you have? I have the YakTrax pro I think and I've run on the canal here in Ottawa with no problems...

Badgergirl said...

Sounds like a busy, but fun, weekend!

Bob Almighty said...

Nice weekend
Also big fan of paddle work in swimming I use them for every pull set because they are an awesome way to build strength.

Nicole @ Geek Turned Athlete said...

It so looks like you had a great time!! I know what you mean about falling! We have had crap weather here lately. Have you tried little covers for you shoes that have little bits of metal for running on the ice? I use them here in Germany, and they are pretty effective. ;)

Rainmaker said...

Wow, I get excited when my ice cubes come out of the freezer machine and aren't all clumbed together. This is just over the top. Hopefully they'll send some of it over to Vancouver in the next few weeks so I can check it out there.

Unknown said...

I love how you always find a way to combine beer with your active pursuits. I DO hope you'll have a cold beer waiting for you at the IM finish line this summer!

Marni Sumbal, MS, RD said...

Those pics are amazing!! It looks so cold but so beautiful there! :)
Hope your 2010 is treating you well
-marn

Lindsay said...

those ice sculptures are awesome! sounds like a good weekend all around - i probably would've been a little slack on the workouts though... that's how i roll, unfortunately :)

i am behind on my reader like, 98% of the time. no worries!

ShirleyPerly said...

Amazing ice sculptures!!

And I thought the ice I saw last weekend was pretty cool ...