A Giant Road Trip

After an awesome weekend at the Birkie I was ready for a more relaxed week last week. I threw good diet and exercise habits out the window and had pizza 4 days in a row. I did get a few days of running in to ease my body back into marathon training, and I still did a fair amount of skiing because the snow in Northfield is quite good right now. At Vakava on Wednesday we did some fun relay style intervals, which are one of my favorite workouts.

One of these things is not like the others - Photo from CROCT Facebook page

Saturday morning a bunch of the Northfield fat bike riders were headed down to Faribault to ride in the Riverbend Nature Center, so I packed up the classic skis and went down to join them. There was a good crew, and my friend Jim had his GoPro along to take some video. It was a bizarre experience skiing right alongside bikers, because they just have a different movement, and brakes that skis don't have. Everything worked out great though, and I was able to stay at a comfortable pace and keep up with the pack just fine. Here is the video Jim took from the ride, I make it on camera a bit early in the ride, but when the bikers rode through a tunnel with no snow in it I decided to venture off on my own.

Snowy fun at the Riverbend Nature Center

Then Saturday afternoon I met my friend Marco for a "long" run. Only 11 miles for me at this point, but I have over 6 weeks until Boston, so I'll be fine, right? Marco is getting better at English every time I see him, but my Spanish is dismal, so I got to practice left (izquierda), right (derecha), and straight (derecho). I had to look up colinas (hills) when I got home so I could explain why I chose the route I did.

Sunday a friend invited me along for a trip up to Giants Ridge. The trails there are super fun and since I am not headed up to race the Pepsi Challenge there this weekend I thought a trip up would be a fun way to spend a Sunday.

Giants Ridge!

I rolled out of bed early and hit the road. There were a lot of runners out around Northfield, which made me feel equal parts guilty for not going running and sorry for those people who were out running instead of going to ski on awesome trails. We made good time heading up besides a slight detour into a snowbank for a few minutes. Luckily some locals helped us push the car out and we were back on our way.

The trails were in excellent shape. An inch or so of fresh snow over the corduroy made things a bit slow, and I had to lengthen my kick zone to get good purchase, but it was fun putting the first set of tracks in the new snow on several sections of trail. The weather was perfect, warm sun, little wind, mild temps. A really great day to be outside. Since I didn't remember to take pictures here are a couple from skinnyski race reports that do pretty good justice to the beauty of the place and the conditions when we were there.

Blue skies and beautiful snow

Finishing up as the sun was going down.

Road trips with skiers are usually pretty awesome because we're typically headed to wonderful trails with good snow and I tend to have a lot in common with other people who enjoy skiing. This trip was no exception and the drive up and back flew by.

In other news my sister successfully defended her masters thesis, so now she is officially the most educated one in the family. Her and my parents are now enjoying some beach time in Costa Rica, so I'm headed up to Wisconsin this weekend to housesit and make sure the cattle have food and water while they are gone.