Highs & lows

Activity: skiing

A day skiing at Porters is hard work - T-bars don't give you any chance to rest between runs! I hired some different boots & had a much better time in that regard. I think this means my hideous pink boots have finally seen better days. I also demo'd some Rossi Zenith Z76's- lovely on the hardpack, but uncontrollable in the slush that built up on the side of the groomers. Still, it shows that my poor little K2 Omnis really are lightweight skis & I could do with upgrading in the off-season. Oy, my bank account's hurting already.

Got home to find that my car had been run into last night - I'd parked on the street so that R could get out at 5:30am this morning. Tomorrow will be full of calls to the mechanic & insurance company. I'll also be biking everywhere for quite a while I think :(

It'll come to me

Activity: oh, so many

The weekend up at Temple Basin was fantastic - excellent snow & a great party. On Monday I traded my sore & tired legs for aching arms & shoulders following several good climbs.

On a downer, Mum's managed to put an end to her ski season by falling on windcrust at Mt Hutt on Friday, resulting in a cracked pelvis and a chipped humerus, at the shoulder. She had surgery today to reattach the bone chip. She'll be in a sling for about 6 weeks, no skiing, no swimming, no gardening.

Pain vs reward

Wednesday

Activity: bike

Distance: 16km

Time: 50min

Thursday

Activity: bike + climbing

Distance: 16km

Time: 50min

Specifically, the pain of getting back on a bike after several weeks off. No amount of padding in the shorts can make up for just sitting there & toughing it out!

Ah well, another bike ride to work tomorrow, then two days up at Temple Basin this weekend, then another night climbing on Monday. I'm almost an active person.

Lacking the crucial part...

...motivation. Not to do the exercise, strangely enough, but to write about it.

I've recovered (mostly) from my cold, so this last week has been pretty light on the exercise. Swim with mum (short, but with aqua jogging on the end), short run during the week & lots of walks during lunchbreaks.

Climbing went well, with C in Aussie we were down to two, which is always tough on the arms, so P brought her husband along. He proceeded to show us up on every climb we did, using brute strength. Infuriating, but challenging.

I went skiing with Mum & Dad yesterday, and I'm still paying for it. The snow was great, and the crowds very well managed. Lift lines were just long enough to give a good rest! My legs gave out just after 3, which was a pretty good day.

On a different note, I spotted this toy phone in one of those cheap junk stores in the mall, and it made me laugh so hard I had to spend the $2 to get one & take some photos. I suspect I'll give it away to the Girl Guides, along with some more Barrels of Slime.

Day out

On very short notice I managed to cobble together P, K and myself for a day's skiing at Porters yesterday. We've now discovered that P's husband's vehicle is most satisfactory for getting into the mountains - a little fluffing about with a very stiff gear lever to get into and out of Low ratio 4WD and we were set. Though a roof rack may be needed if we want to take four people.

There was snow on the ground from Springfield, and our ambitious early start meant many cries of "I should have brought my camera" from K as we started up into the foothills with an amazing red sunrise. The light cloud burnt off and we arrived in the carpark at 8:45 to find we were about the 10th car - not bad for the first day of the school holidays!

Being the first day of the season for all three of us, we were pretty unfit & sore, especially since we were riding T-bars all day. We soon settled into a routine of 3-4 runs, then a rest break. Luckily the car was in the front row of the carpark, so we'd just sit in there & have a munch.

The snow was excellent, though off-piste was a bit chopped up and T1 got quite shiny by lunchtime. We pushed on up to T3 after lunch and had several runs on the groomed up there before heading round the back way and coming all the way down. We finished early, but we were all buggered and wanted to get down the road before the crowds started piling up behind us (first time driving on the snowy access road - we wanted to take it slowly!)

Being a Canterbury ski area, we all met people we knew, and had many catch-ups with old friends. All in all, a great day, and I'm off to the gym this afternoon to work on my leg strength so that I can cope better next time! What do they say, it's a fine line between pleasure and pain? So true!