"Do what you can, with what you have, where you are."

If you are going to be a Nordic skier you have to live by these words.  Snow is fleeting in most of the world, even the mighty Wasatch.  As we watch it dissipate we realign our training accordingly to find fun and challenging ways to do our workouts.  Surely roller skiing is the closest thing but 6 days a week 6 months straight would be hard to find motivating so we cross train.

            This past Monday I attempted to ski Cascade, a large peak near Provo, with teammate Brett Denney and though we eventually did some time on skis we also hiked and ran a fair amount.  http://app.strava.com/activities/54075722

 

It was certainly fun but a sure sign that summer is on the way!

On Tuesday we rode bikes for nearly 6 hours

http://app.strava.com/activities/54272529

 and finally on Wednesday we did some rollerskiing… 

http://app.strava.com/activities/54347167

We also lifted very heavy Monday, Wednesday and Friday this week and the pinnacle of my favorite Roosevelt quote came on Saturday when our team did a fun local fundraiser to support local education called Running with Ed.  We split 38 miles into 10 segments and did 2 each.  Now having not really run at all yet made it incredibly painful but to try and make it a longer workout we also rode our bikes between each leg.  While I don’t have an accurate Strava I can sum up my own day as such:

9 miles of running about 1/3 trail and 2/3 road with 1200’ of elevation gain while doing about 20 miles of cycling in between.

Adam Loomis tagging me

2nd place out of 170 teams. 38 miles of tough running in 3:49

with Bryan Fletcher, Adam Loomis, Nick Hendrickson and Tyler Smith!