Did you know poison oak has no leaves in winter?

Our second hike was today.....I woke up and SF was beautiful...so I thought I would hike in shorts. If San Francisco was beautiful, Oakland had to be beautiful! Right??????

How much more wrong could I BE? I picked two folks that were driving with me and off we started. As we got closer to the freeway interchange we could see fog...very dense and damp looking fog. I was sure that as we started ascending up the mountain that the fog would be gone....I was wrong! It was getting more dense as we drove up! We finally arrived and I realized "Oh dear Lord, I am going to freeze today!" I got out of the car and immediately started jumping all over the place in order to stay warm!

Did it work?
Nope!
Did I look foolish?
Yep!
Did I care?
Nope!

After a quick role call and name game, we walked down the path, while we played another name game. Once we got to even ground we started stretching, watched a demo on proper poling and then we were all told that poison oak has no leaves in the winter and to watch out! GREAT! Just what I needed to hear...that I have a huge potential to get poison oak. It was everywhere around us where we were stretching....So my game plan was to stay in the middle of the trails and never touch a dog that had been wondering off a leash....a bit crazy, but I know how I get when I get mosquito bites and I sure as heck don't want to experience poison oak at our last hike!

Anyway, the hike started and I broke away from the pack with a few different people. We thought that we would take a different loop back to the car....and boy did we! It was a solid few miles uphill. It was strenuous, and my knee threatened to buckle on me several times (those of you that know me, know that I have a bad knee that I have to be careful of). I kept moving at a solid snail pace...but I made it to the top. It was a bit more difficult then I thought it would be, but I did it.

Today was our last team hike before being in the snow....let's just hope that it snows soon!

Crazy vs. Driven

The question that I am now asking myself is was I crazy last year with my training or was I driven? Sometimes I wonder how the heck I was so full of energy last year with my training. I trained most mornings and the majority of the evenings. How did I do that? Well I guess I could chalk it up to living in the same city that I worked, so my commute was half the time it is now.....Or shall I chalk it up to being down right CRAZY!?

Last year I would get up at 5:30am in order to be at the pool at 6am, would get a mile in, then go home, get ready for work, work a full day, go home and either head back to the pool or I would do another form of cardio...not to mention a few days a week I was strength training. After writing what my routine was last year and rereading it, I now can honestly say that I was CRAZY. I definitely have my Pa's genes in me (for those of you who know me, you know how great that is for me to say and realize).

Already this season I can sense my lackluster to train like I did last year. I am hoping that will change as the season progresses. I have high hopes for myself this season. I want to focus on getting the full technique down for skate skiing....it is substantially harder initially then classic skiing. Learning the balance alone is tough. Along with learning the different ski style, I really would like to go the further distance, but not having the same drive that I did last year to work out as much as I did is a bit disheartening.

I do have a greater number of things happening in my life this year as opposed to last, so I know that my focus isn't solely on training and raising money...as sad as that is....

I keep telling myself...."Once we are in the snow, things will be different..." I just hope that is true. Maybe I am making a mountain out of a mole hill. I just know that I have great plans for myself with this year's team....and I am not about to let life get in the way of me accomplishing them! I just have to figure out a way to make it all work.....I guess we all have that problem though, right? I hope!

Anyway, enough of that....tomorrow is our team's second hike. We are hiking in the hills of Oakland. It should be a good day. Our time hiking has been lengthened....so I am looking forward to a great workout!

I'll let you all know how the hiking goes....here is to hoping that we aren't hiking in the mud (though that might add some entertainment); that the season continues to go well; that we meet our fundraising goal as a team; and that my workout CRAZINESS returns for a second coming! Until next time....!

Similarities between mud and snow!

Hi Everyone! Ski season has started and I am back on the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society Team in Traning team. We are again, heading to Anchorage, Alaska to race through the city. This year, I have returned and am a mentor on the team. For those of you who are new to the team in training thing, a mentor is a person that is put in charge of some new folks that might need guidance with setting up their fundraising page, with fundraising in general, who might have questions since this is a new experience for them, etc.

Unfortunately, this season started off with me getting tonsillitis and potential strep throat! I missed the kick off b/c another one of the mentors threatened me with my life if I showed up and infected the whole team....so while everyone got to meet each other, I was sitting on my booty at home, wishing that the god's had been nicer to me. :)

In any case, I got over the tonsillitis and I never had strep...which is great! And the day of our first hike arrived! The whole team met up in San Francisco, for us to hike along the waters edge, under the Golden Gate Bridge and onward. Mike, the other SF mentor, and I arrived with a crash! He road up over the curb.....and that is how I met the 2006-2007 ski team!

The day had called for rain...we all definitely expected it to rain all day long, since it had been raining since the wee hours of the morning. But the heaven's had mercy on us and the sky cleared up! It was a gorgeous day, a great day for a hike. The first 30 minutes or so were spent doing name games and attempting to memorize everyone's names, then we moved into stretches and then the hike began. It was pretty easy in all honesty....that is until we got to the MUD! We were walking up and across a hill when the mud got really bad.....and we all know what happens in mud.....SLIPPING AND SLIDING! Man was I having flashbacks to last season! Several people were a bit freaked out about slipping and all the people from last season pointed out that this is exactly like being on snow for the first time! You are going to fall....and just like mud....it is soft (that is unless you hit ICE...but we didn't mention that part).

Did we convince people that falling is okay? We were successful in giving people the confidence to do this race? I think so....but I guess time will tell!