Thursday, February 9, 2012

Some skiing, some workouts, some random thoughts

In the past 8 days, I've PR'd at the deadlift, the overhead squat and the strict press. If I had any shoulder mobility at all, my overhead squat, and consequently, my snatch, would be much better. But, three lifting PRs in a week at age 50 is the kind of progress that keeps me going.

After my deadlift PR last week, I woke up sore on Thursday. I took two rest days before skiing over the weekend. And, I felt pretty good while skiing. Overall, it was a fun weekend with my students, but it was marred by the death of a skier at Sugarbush. I know that skiing can be a dangerous sport, but when someone that you know dies on a fairly easy trail, it hits home a lot harder. On Sunday, I was extra cautious with the children that I teach, paying attention for out of control skiers or riders, rough conditions, etc. It turned out to be a fairly relaxed day compared to many recent days. It seems that everyone who skis at Sugarbush is a Patriots or Giants fan, and the mountain was fairly empty by late morning, as people headed home to watch the Super Bowl.

On Sunday, I got an invitation to the Pinterest web site. I'd requested it a week or so earlier. And, I've been playing with it some this week. But so far, I have to admit that I'm not really sure what it is. Whose stuff am I seeing? What I am supposed to put on my pinboards? What's the point? I used my Facebook login to set up my account, so I have lots of friends and followers, but I remain a bit confused. Maybe I'll take a picture of all the stuff "pinned" to my refrigerator door and post that.

It's been really busy at work, with a new product in its final days of testing, and we are preparing to release the product within a week or so. I've been glad that I've been able to still get to the gym this week, despite the craziness at work. I'm guessing it will be April or so before things really calm down, and I'll probably need to log on to our systems on Saturday and Sunday evenings after skiing for a month or more. But, it's what pays the bills.

Tonight, I'll do CrossFit for the third day in a row and I'll probably take a rest day tomorrow before the weekend. I've definitely been feeling a bit run down and under the weather recently, but I've been doing well in the gym.

As we approach the mid-point of February, it would be nice to get some real snow this winter. This has been one of the poorest snow years in quite a while. Right now, we have 9 days until the start of the final holiday weekend/week of the ski season, and if it wasn't for man-made snow, we'd have fairly limited terrain. There is one potential storm about a week away, but some shifts in the Arctic Oscillation are putting us at risk for rain rather than snow in that storm.

There certainly won't be any rain this coming weekend. It's probably going to be the coldest weekend of the winter so far, which means hard, fast, mid-winter east coast skiing.

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