Weekend Fun

This past weekend was my next-to-last teaching weekend of the season. The season does seem to get long at times, teaching for 16 straight weekends most seasons, while maintaining a full-time job as well. Plus, I taught for two extra holiday weeks this year and took a two-day ski clinic. But, as teaching draws to a close, I'm always somewhat sad. I really enjoy the time I spend with my students, even when they are acting a bit crazy, like they were this past weekend.

Friday night after work, my wife and I ran an easy 3 miles outside - my first outdoor running other than sprints in many months. I went home, took a nap, woke up, cooked dinner, ate, and went to bed early. I really seem to be sleeping a lot recently.

On Saturday morning, the mountain was pretty frozen (the intersection of Daylight Savings Time and March skiing on the east coast often means that yesterday's soft snow is bulletproof the next morning). I did some training on some intermediate terrain and found it a bit treacherous. Just before lunch, I did an intermediate trail with the group and it seemed to be solid sheet ice. It's a ski-able surface with the right skills, but no one's favorite terrain. By the time we finished lunch, the sun was out and we found some soft snow for the afternoon. I had a big group this weekend - all ten girls assigned to my group showed up for the first time this season. The reason for that, I assume, was our Sunday plans.

After skiing on Saturday, my son and I headed home. My wife was cooking dinner, so I took a nap while dinner finished. After eating dinner, I watched some basketball and then listened to the Division III women's hockey championship on the radio. The local team won in only their fourth year as a varsity sport - pretty impressive.

On Sunday morning, I met my group of ten girls again. We skied for an hour before swapping our skis for snowboards. Most years, I snowboard with the group, but because of my recent shoulder injury, I opted out this time. But, we had two great instructors and all the girls made great progress in a few hours. This once-a-year snowboarding day is very popular with the group, and I was glad to see them have so much fun.

After skiing, we once again headed straight home, because our poor puppy was spending his longest time ever in his crate. We were too late; he just couldn't hold it that long. Poor guy. But, we got the crate cleaned up quickly for him.

Once again, I took a nap, for about an hour or so this time. It was my turn to cook dinner, so I woke up at 6:00, cooked dinner, watched a little TV, went to bed to read about 8:30, and fell asleep by 9:00. I had a tough night of sleep though. It's been over two weeks since I hurt my shoulder and it seems to be getting worse rather than better. It seemed that every time I moved last night, pain in the shoulder would wake me up.

Luckily I have an appointment to see an orthopedist on Friday, to see what's going on with the shoulder. I can handle a few more days like this, I hope.

Tonight I'm going to lift after work (it's snowing hard right now, so I'm nowhere close to the CrossFit gym), but I have to be careful not to aggravate the shoulder.