Smoked Out
· Jul 4, 05:52 PM
I thought of titling this post “July”, but then people might get the idea that I’m only posting once a month! Wouldn’t want to tie myself down to such unrealistic deadlines…
It looks like it’s been a little while since I posted any pictures, so let’s get those out of the way first. A couple from the Elk Lake camp where we wrapped up the on-snow portion of the 07-08 season. It wasn’t exactly good skiing on June 25th, but come on, look at the date, that makes seven solid months of skiing for me!
Since the camp was during an easy week, there wasn’t actually that much training going on. Marshall put up a few pictures over on the XC Oregon blog of some of our leisure activities. I got really good at hitting an empty sports drink bottle with a golf club, but my round came to a premature end when the bottle came apart. I guess I was swinging too hard. Tragic.
Christin and I got away for a weekend on the coast. Only my second ever trip to the Pacific (and my first time seeing the coast in Oregon), so I did dip my toes in the ocean. It didn’t feel much like nice swimming water, so I made do with getting my ankles wet and heading back up the beach. It was nice to get out of Bend and escape the heat, but the driving was long and hot. I’m without A/C right now (the self-recharge kit did not fix the problem) so long drives are a little rough. We stopped in Eugene and took in a little of the Track and Field Olympic Trials scene, which was pretty cool. Skiing needs something like that where 20,000 fans come out every day for a week.
This week has been back to training. I started out a little tired, but have bounced back nicely after settling back into the routine. I ran a good L1 test yesterday (25 seconds faster than my best from last year) and have been feeling good the last two days. I’ve even made it to strength twice this week (we’ll see how that goes for the rest of the summer).
Today Evelyn and I tried to ride a loop up in the Cascade Lakes, but we got turned around by the smoke. The smoke has been blowing up from some fires in California, and we haven’t been able to see the mountains most of this week. Things have cleared up in town, so we thought we’d try. After a few miles of intermittent coughing and real bitterness in our mouths we turned around at Todd Lake and headed back to town. We finished the OD going around the Twin Bridges Loop and then did a traversing ascent up Awbrey Butte. 5 hours, 87 miles, not a bad way to celebrate the 4th.
Happy Birthday USA.
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