Looking back on winter
Apr. 1st, 2011 10:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beige_alertIt may be below freezing on many mornings, plus occasional flurries, but the really wintery, snow-sports weather sort of winter is behind us here, and the Pettit Center closed down the 400 meter oval today, so it's time to look back at winter.
You can be sure that there will be cold and there will be snow in Wisconsin, but you never know how much skiing will be possible. It was a good season overall. I did 150km of skiing. I end up at Lapham Peak a lot, which is both easy for me to get to and also has an excellent set of trails, but I also got to the Nordic Trail in the Southern Kettle Moraine, and to Zillmer and Greenbush in the Northern Kettle Moraine. Greenbush is pretty but a long drive on winding country roads, in, obviously, winter, if I'm skiing. I ended up with an interesting drive back home in heavy snow, but no actual problems. I reset my personal best time on the lighted loop at Lapham several times. I still don't have skate skis, and while I'm not the fastest classical skier out there, I have managed to pass people who were using skate technique. Someone actually told me she thought I was very fast, which was certainly fun to hear. It was only last year that I first started seriously working on going faster, and this year certainly went well.
I put about 34km on the snowshoes in various conditions, including slogging slowly though soft snow 50+ cm deep. That was a fun day. Mostly I explore the area around the Little Menomonee River right across the road from where I live, which is pretty hard to get around in any other way. It's amazing how much parts of it look like back country despite being right in the city. All you need is enough wind noise to cover the traffic noise, or a day with enough snow that there is no traffic, which is what we had on the 50cm day. I went out to Havenwoods once too, a park within the city that was at one time in the past a Nike missile site.
I also did 111km of running indoors at the Pettit Center running track between December and March. I ran in the Instep Icebreaker indoor half marathon, setting a new best half marathon time for myself of 1:47:20, which is an 11.8km/hr average. I later set a 10k time of 48:22, a 12.4 km/hr pace, and just yesterday running outdoors for the third time this spring and the first serious outdoor run, a new 5k time of 23:03, 13km/hr (heart rate: 184 average with a 192 peak).
I didn't do as much ice skating as I might have liked, but it was still a good season. I didn't even get on skates until December. A certain amount of work chaos didn't help. I knew it was going to be a good year, though, when I went out on hockey skates and they felt very awkward, and then on speed skates and they felt very natural. I ordered my own set of speed skates and sharpening jig and stones at the beginning of January. Unfortunately, it takes forever to get speed skates, and I will be getting them tomorrow, just after the ice has been removed for the season. I will be ready for fall, though! It's been fun even if renting skates and randomly switching between different kinds of skates doesn't help. I've gained some speed and strength and quite a bit of skill this year, and it's nice being out with the other skaters. I've had some fun with what I've been jokingly calling Fantasy Speed Skating, either doing a lap with much stronger athletes when they are just warming up with some slow-for-them skating, or if the timing somehow works out being slowly passed by someone just starting to accelerate while I'm already at my full speed. I'll have expensive fancy skates sitting on the shelf all summer and I'll surely be on the ice in September as soon as it's open.
I've been out on the bicycle once and felt very strong, which is very nice. The bike is in the shop right now, having the cluster and shifters replaced, but I'll have it back soon enough, and we've had some rotten cycling weather anyway recently.
Skiing while the snow falls at Greenbush:
You can be sure that there will be cold and there will be snow in Wisconsin, but you never know how much skiing will be possible. It was a good season overall. I did 150km of skiing. I end up at Lapham Peak a lot, which is both easy for me to get to and also has an excellent set of trails, but I also got to the Nordic Trail in the Southern Kettle Moraine, and to Zillmer and Greenbush in the Northern Kettle Moraine. Greenbush is pretty but a long drive on winding country roads, in, obviously, winter, if I'm skiing. I ended up with an interesting drive back home in heavy snow, but no actual problems. I reset my personal best time on the lighted loop at Lapham several times. I still don't have skate skis, and while I'm not the fastest classical skier out there, I have managed to pass people who were using skate technique. Someone actually told me she thought I was very fast, which was certainly fun to hear. It was only last year that I first started seriously working on going faster, and this year certainly went well.
I put about 34km on the snowshoes in various conditions, including slogging slowly though soft snow 50+ cm deep. That was a fun day. Mostly I explore the area around the Little Menomonee River right across the road from where I live, which is pretty hard to get around in any other way. It's amazing how much parts of it look like back country despite being right in the city. All you need is enough wind noise to cover the traffic noise, or a day with enough snow that there is no traffic, which is what we had on the 50cm day. I went out to Havenwoods once too, a park within the city that was at one time in the past a Nike missile site.
I also did 111km of running indoors at the Pettit Center running track between December and March. I ran in the Instep Icebreaker indoor half marathon, setting a new best half marathon time for myself of 1:47:20, which is an 11.8km/hr average. I later set a 10k time of 48:22, a 12.4 km/hr pace, and just yesterday running outdoors for the third time this spring and the first serious outdoor run, a new 5k time of 23:03, 13km/hr (heart rate: 184 average with a 192 peak).
I didn't do as much ice skating as I might have liked, but it was still a good season. I didn't even get on skates until December. A certain amount of work chaos didn't help. I knew it was going to be a good year, though, when I went out on hockey skates and they felt very awkward, and then on speed skates and they felt very natural. I ordered my own set of speed skates and sharpening jig and stones at the beginning of January. Unfortunately, it takes forever to get speed skates, and I will be getting them tomorrow, just after the ice has been removed for the season. I will be ready for fall, though! It's been fun even if renting skates and randomly switching between different kinds of skates doesn't help. I've gained some speed and strength and quite a bit of skill this year, and it's nice being out with the other skaters. I've had some fun with what I've been jokingly calling Fantasy Speed Skating, either doing a lap with much stronger athletes when they are just warming up with some slow-for-them skating, or if the timing somehow works out being slowly passed by someone just starting to accelerate while I'm already at my full speed. I'll have expensive fancy skates sitting on the shelf all summer and I'll surely be on the ice in September as soon as it's open.
I've been out on the bicycle once and felt very strong, which is very nice. The bike is in the shop right now, having the cluster and shifters replaced, but I'll have it back soon enough, and we've had some rotten cycling weather anyway recently.
Skiing while the snow falls at Greenbush:
