A.M. 8 F at the start. 10.1 with Ted in 1:19:05. Ted helped me jump-start Zhu afterwards. Zhu had not been driven in a while, so the battery lost the charge. We had to drive VanGoGo through the front yard which was covered with snow to get to Zhu. Zhu was parked in the other unpaved and not shoveled driveway, and it was not possible to push it out from there on the road. Fortunately VanGoGo has a 4-wheel drive. The jump start was the biggest event of the morning. P.M. Ran 1 mile with Jenny and Julia in 10:26. Jenny had a cough so she ran shorter and slower. Then drove VanGoGo to Jiffy Lube for the oil change and other scheduled maintenance. Ran home with Benjamin, 2.25 in 20:04. Then ran back to get VanGoGo in 16:56. Drove it to the parking lot on Geneva Road. Ran 0.5 to check out the trail to see if you could cross-country ski on it. Looked good. Cross-country skied on the 0.625 stretch out and back twice, 2.5 miles in 19:29, 7:47.6 avg. I did stop the watch on the turnarounds, as those take quite a while on skis. The trail is mildly rolling, and had hard-packed snow with a a couple of asphalt patches that you could avoid by skiing through the snow on the side, only a small loss of momentum. I tried to skate, but there was not enough glide in the skis for that, and pushing off with both arms did not work well either. So I just did a regular running-like stride. Nevertheless, averaging out my time, this is 14:31.7 for 3 K which is a 2 minute PR. Of course, the old PR was set at the age of 11.8, but on a well groomed course, and at low elevation (Moscow, Russia). On the other hand, I suspect the skis I have now (even though I got them for $20 from Paul) are quite a bit better than the wooden skis I had then. I did really enjoy being able to just put my skis in the van, drive, take them out, put them on, then take them off, put them back in the van, and drive straight home. In Moscow I had to drag the skis down 4 flights of stairs, then walk with them 0.1 miles to the bus stop, wait 20 minutes for the bus, ride the cold bus for 30 minutes often standing up and holding the skis the whole way, then walk some more from the bus stop. Then repeat everything backwards when done, except now sweaty. Added another .25 to teach the ESL class at the church and back. Again had to run because it was cold. Teaching ESL can be a lot of fun, especially in settings when you are not allowed to use the student's native language. My student was having a hard time with the Z sound, they do not have it in Spanish. After a demonstration that did not seem to work I finally decided to explain how to say it - do it like a bee, bzzzz, not like a snake - sssss. Turned out she did not know what a bee was or a snake for that matter. So I showed her the snake, explained about different types of snakes with hand demonstrations and snake noises, she got that one. The bee was harder. I explained how bees make honey, she did not know what honey was. I explained that a bear likes to eat honey, and showed her the bear. Still not much progress. Then I decided to cheat a bit, knowing that the Spanish words for insect and flower sound very similar to those in English, and explained that bees are insects that land on flowers and then make honey, which is sweet stuff that you can put on bread. That worked. Then we got the Z sound down. Did the magic stretches later in the evening. |