Dimensionality

As the sun has now set on a rather spotty season of "racing", my mind turns to all the things that winter and the off season have to offer.

Well, I say off season - I did actually take a full week off running, but was back at it in the dark of our early night on Sunday evening.

Making friends along the way.

My ankles - which took a pounding over 43-odd kilometers at Horror Hill and then another 50 at The Beav in a 2 week period - are still calling the shots on when I run. I did manage to get 4 days in a row from Sunday to Wednesday, but took Thursday off running as the right one is still being a jerk.

The sun angle is so low on my lunch runs these days

That's also why I decided against getting my cross-country skis out when we got the big dump of snow last week: I didn't feel like my ankles were strong or rested enough to strap on the boards for the first time this year when conditions were decent, and despite the bitter cold we've had the ski-able snow didn't really last.

There will be time to ski later, and snowshoe as well. There had better be - I've actually signed up for a snowshoe race in early February, and figure I might as well try training for it a bit...especially since my snowshoes are not really designed with running in mind.

If I had this little monster's enormous back feet, I wouldn't need snowshoes at all!

I'm looking forward to taking some time to do the things that fell by the wayside as I pushed to train and race at the highest level of which my injured arse was capable. I've actually made it back to the pool for the first time since May the 8th (!), putting in 1,700y on Saturday and another 1,300y last night in lieu of a run.

I didn't even need the lifeguard to fish me out!

Just those couple of swims have shown me how much I've been missing by ditching my pool workouts. I've come to realise that some of the issues I've experienced this year are actually due to the lack of swim training in the past 6 months - there is just no replacement for the muscle engagement and movement patterns required to swim the four main strokes (front crawl, backstroke, breaststroke and butterfly), and the delicious soreness that has come with the return to the water tells me that I may have made a grave mistake in foregoing the pool in order to try to get more sleep.

I do have a master of the snoozing arts to teach me, if she can find time between naps.

I haven't managed to get on my bike (or my motorcycle) due to the weather, but it's not all about training anyway - it's the damn off season! We're actually going tonight to pick up a pass for one of our favourite local climbing gyms this evening (because SALE PRICING people!), and I can't wait to actually get out and pull on some plastic again. I've kept up with doing some pull-ups on the rock rings in my livingroom weekly in an effort not to lose all of my climbing strength, but we haven't climbed at all (other than a bit of scrambling last month) since the via ferrata route at Parc de la Chute Montmorency back in mid-July.

Oddly enough, I'm also really excited that the local ski hills have started to blow snow in an effort to get their base layer built. I was really disappointed that they all closed for the season long before my ankle was ready to try snowboarding again, and I honestly can't wait until I can strap into my bindings and do some very careful shredding. It might seem strange that I'm amped to go do a thing that hurt me so badly 9 months ago - particularly since I'm still dealing with the effects of the injury - but I've been in love with snowboarding since I was 17 years old. I've broken bones while doing so, dislocated a shoulder (long story), and knocked myself silly trying stupid things in terrain parks years before helmets were mandated for such things. It may not be the safest thing for my clumsy arse, but it's also something in which I find a lot of joy, and I'm stoked to get back out there again even if it does cause me some pain.

Reminds me of some other activities I could name..

Let's just hope I don't do something completely foolish that leads to another year like this one.