On Flexibility in One's Training Schedule

(I have my grownup computer back! Hooray!)

This might possibly be the happiest dog on the planet. His training remains the same despite weather issues. Mine does not. THIS picture is of the road in front of our house in the mountains where we were this weekend, and where I had planned to go for a long run one day and possibly a ride or ski the other. NOT. But I am proud of my tenacity and creativity with last week's training nonetheless.

We were home during the work week and the weather was unsettled, bringing us our first real rain in weeks. I let the Mister take Sporty Spice to school early on Tuesday and headed up Mt. Diablo in attempt to beat the rain, which I DID. I have a goal of seeing the top of the mountain before Wildflower, and it will be the first time since the broken leg. Today there is snow on top of even this low-lying mountain.

Thursday it rained again and after scrapping plan A of riding, and plan B of running outside (it was pouring! and cold!) I did something never before done by me...I ran on the treadmill at the gym for 2 hours. Yes, 2 hours. The only way this was possible was with the help of those little personal tv consoles on the treadmills there.

The weekend brought the flexibility of training-challenge to a new high. We had never before been to our mountain house on a day where there was that much snow and plows not keeping up. This meant arriving after dark Friday night and actually having to send the Mister down the road to shovel us a path inside; luckily we were able to get the car to the end of our road. But this meant we couldn't leave to go anywhere by car all day Saturday, not the store, or the ski trails, no where. So we strapped on our snow shoes and headed out--onto our own road! There had been some plowing before the last dumping and that was really good snowshoeing, just a foot or so of snow. Not feeling this was adventurous enough, we blazed our own trail over the usually "dirt road", snowshoeing through about 4 feet of powder. Now, if one wants a workout, THIS would be it. I managed to patch togfether 2 and a half hours of this and it was actually very very nice. And the dog was in dog-paradise! Which is so wonderful to see, as our boy has been battling lymphoma and having chemo treatments once a week. He had a perfect day, and it made the last 10 weeks worth it all.

The plow came...finally....at 1:30am on Sunday morning, which was one of the oddest experiences the Mister and I have ever had. We both woke up, sitting straight up in bed yelling--we were both totally sure it was an avalanche! It was so noisy and lit up the house!
My workout hopes were high---until I realized it was 20 degrees outside and the road completely iced over. I had to tippy toe my bike down to the main road, but had had the smarts to bring my mountain bike and managed to get in a 3 and a half hour ride down the mountain to Murphys and back on the road. It kicked my butt.

I did manage to get some other things done on my to do list this weekend!! I finally watched, in it's entirety, my new Swim Smooth Master Catch Class DVD--very very informative and I can't wait to try out my new drills.

I finished the Charles Dickens novels I've been reading for Oprah's book club! Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations. I feel so smart!

I planned my garden for the year and made lists from all my seed catalogs.

And I finished all my training totals from 2010! Ready?
In 2010 I swam 256, 350 yards.
I rode 3,851 miles.
And I ran 997 miles (and if you know me, you would know that if I had known this was the number earlier, I would have been out at 11:30 pm on Dec. 31st to get in the last 3 to make 1000.)
Adding weight training, I spent 814 hours of 2010 training and racing.