Great Weekend

Friday night, I did a slightly modified CrossFit workout, with the goal of not hurting my shoulder at all, and not leaving me too tired for skiing over the weekend. The workout, as scheduled, was one of five workouts being used by the serious CrossFitters to qualify for the CrossFit games, which will take place in July. In reality, these workouts qualify people for regional championships and those regionals pick the people who go to the Games. But, my goals are much different, so I scaled the workout:

Scheduled:

18 minutes, as many reps as possible

15 Box Jumps, 24" box

12 barbell push presses, 115 pounds

9 toes-to-bar

I did the following:

15 box jumps, 15" (I normally do 18", but with over 100 reps, a lower height made more sense)

12 hang cleans, 65# (to protect my shoulder)

9 Abmat sit-ups (again, to protect the shoulder)

I did 8 rounds and 20 reps with a nice steady pace. I was pretty happy with the result, and I was pretty sure I'd be fine for skiing over the weekend. For once, this was the case.

On Saturday, I arrived at the mountain a few minutes later than I would have liked. At home, we'd had 3" of snow overnight, but the mountain had almost a foot of fluffy snow at higher elevations. I led a 45 minute training clinic before work, focusing on tactics for the snow that had arrived overnight.

And then, I went to pick up my group, and only two students showed up. I had a problem with an iPhone upgrade on Thursday evening, and my phone was dead on Saturday. I was sure I had all kinds of messages from kids and parents, but I couldn't get to them. So, I went out with the two students, and figured I'd meet others at lunch, which is our default for late students. While skiing, I found two of my students skiing with a friend who was visiting for the weekend. That left three students in an unknown status. And, at 11:30, when we went in for lunch, I found all three of them. By lunchtime, a lot of the powder was chopped up, but we spent the afternoon in the trees, looking for untracked lines. I was very impressed with my daughter, who seemed to find and cruise the untracked snow almost effortlessly.

As a really fun day ended, we knew that Sunday would be a lot different. Overnight, it got cold, but the high temperature for Sunday was supposed to be near 50F, with bright sunshine. Because the long range forecast is for very warm temperatures, we assumed that some parts of the mountain would be closed by next weekend. This includes a section called Castlerock that is all natural snow and rarely groomed. So, we spent most of Sunday on the steep, somewhat wild terrain of Castlerock. We skied steep trails (two of the toughest at the mountain), easier trails, tree lines, and finally, we were beat. After a couple easier runs on a different lift, we were done for the day. It had been a great day of spring skiing on soft snow.

Today is a long work day for me and a rest day. Tomorrow, I'll go to CrossFit, but not push too hard. On Wednesday and Thursday of this week, I'm taking a two day skiing clinic, with the goal of earning a certification called "Children's Specialist 1". Approximately 70% of all ski lessons in the U.S. are taught to children, and the governing body for ski instructors in the US has added two levels of child-specific certification. Because I teach children almost exclusively, it makes sense for me to attain these two certifications. So, I'll try to get the first level this week, and then hopefully get the second next season.