Get diggin'!
Everyone seems concerned whether or not this storm has broken any records, I couldn’t care less. Whether it’s 1″ or 24″, I still have to shovel, and shovel I did. Note from the author: we measured the snow here over 23″ and 48″ in some of the higher drifts. My commute home last night didn’t break and records either. It was slow, two and half hours, but I kept my sanity because we were moving. In case you’re wondering the PR for my commute is over four and a half hours… that’s for 26 miles. I could have literally run home faster that evening and I did lose my mind for a short period trapped in what I was certain was going to be my metal coffin. On a drive like that you do what you have to keep yourself entertained as evidence by the three plays I had written performing two of them using rudimentary sock puppets and my best british accents.
Incidentally what was left of my sanity was lost this past summer on a six-hour trainer ride in my basement.
Back to the snow. All told it took two of us shoveling for over four hours. An eight-hour work day was required to move most of the snow from off the driveway and into even larger visual obstructions on either side. We literally carved a space out for cards to pass through.
My car was buried (not a figurative statement) by the drifting snow it had covered the car almost completely. Which is a better fate than those unlucky souls caught on Lake Shore Drive for 12 hours last night. I would bet each one of those stuck motorists lost a tiny bit of sanity cooped up in those cars. It remains to be seen if any award-winning will result however.
Back to training, this is a triathlon blog after all, or at least that’s what the header claims.
Endurance training is not without its tertiary benefits however, my increased fitness allowed me to shovel like a machine without tiring. Shoveling is an aerobic workout, I was sweating like an easy run, mostly zone 1, but hit zone 2 when digging out a trench in the densest drift. I was supposed to run today, an hour running “hills” on the hamster wheel, but not surprisingly the gym was closed. I’m done with winter, I need spring.
I need summer. (Note to self: Remember that statement when your sweating your !@# off in the 90˚ heat)
Not to be as temperatures are supposed to drop below zero over the next 12 hours, the news has moved on from the rising snow to dropping mercury. I run in pretty cold weather (yes I know I have a cold) but subzero temperatures may even keep me inside. I need to kick this cold that long ago wore out its welcome. I’ve been breathing out of one nostril for the last few hours, eventually I’ll be back to two, that is until it clogs the other side and then I’m back to one. It’s like altitude training, without the benefits. I would ride the bike indoors but I killed myself on that last night in a vain attempt to prove I was better than the cold. I wasn’t and crashed and burned on the last set trying desperately to hold my LT for 5 minutes.
I just needed to keep repeating the mantra: It’s still January, it’s still January… then I remembered it was February and the realization that the season will be here in a blink of an eye, and the training and races will be coming at feverish pace.
