High altitude - about 8,500. Plan was 1:45 long run. I knew my paces would be shot, and was afraid my only option would be a windy hilly highway. Well, highway 150 was my only option, and my only option was to go downhill first, but the great news is that it was only snowy for one mile, the grade was only 1-2% (my eyeball estimate), there was a decent shoulder, and there weren't many cars. So I ran 4 miles downhill (in the 7:30ish range), then 4 uphill (more like 9:00), 1:07 at this point, then got a drink and a bite of a banana from the cabin, then ran another 4.6, half downhill and half up. It was so freezing, probably single digits, face frozen, hands frozen. I hit 1:45 exactly and called it a day. EXCEPT: then my family was waiting for me, I got ready for snowmobiling as fast as I could. When we started (around 9:30), it was about 17F, way too cold for my tykes. We had a two seater and a three seater. Paul started with the two little guys, and they would poke his back to tell him to slow down, or that they were cold every couple of minutes. So Paul was stopping a lot. We had about 13 miles to Mirror Lake, and we switched drivers, so now I had the two little kids. I told them not to tap me to stop unless it was an emergency. So they didn't tap me at all, we got there in about 20 minutes, I got above 50mph, but when we got there the two little guys were hysterical, apparently they had been crying the whole time, and I couldn't hear them, they were feeding off each other's misery, but they didn't tap me because I told them not to. We spent almost an hour in a warming hut, massaging their cold extremities and their psyches. They had alot more fun after that. I am not the most sensitive mother :/ I got stuck in the snow with Benji twice when we were off in the powder. Once we dug out on our own (with our mitted hands), once we were about to call for a dig out when my husband found me, and with his strength and good driving skills he was able to get us out, no problem. It takes a lot of chutzpa to snowmobile. I normally freeze when I am fearful, and that doesn't work well with snowmobiling because you have to keep your cool and keep up your speed. It was exhilerating, though. Driving up a hill, not knowing what is at the top, but keeping up speed to make it up. Crazy. I think I like skiing better. Evening. I did an ab workout again. My SI is still a bit sore, but pain level 1, nothing like Wednesday. One shoulder hurts when I do one of the ab workouts, though. Annoying. Anyone see Johan Olsson's performance last night in 30km cross country skiing? His early move was gutzy and I was so happy that he fought to hold onto a medal when he had so many hungry athletes upon him in that last stretch. | 