Last week and the view out the windshield

So as advertised, not much training going on last week. Work early in the week and then Anders, Alex, Judy and I went out to Park City for four days of snowboarding. Unfortunately the snow was very poor and our much anticipated Heliboarding trip was cancelled. We did get out and board each of the four days but my legs were real beat up from having to deal with alternating icy and slushy/grabby conditions. I only ran once while I was there as I just decided to embrase my down week.

Stats for the week:

Swim: 2500 yards
Bike: 93 miles
Run: 10 miles
Snowboarding: 13 hours
SBR time: 7:48

I'm now up to NYC for 3 days of meetings so still difficult to get locked back in. I did get up early, beofre my train, and swam and rode my trainer so that was nice (and overdue). with any luck, I'll be able to run tonight along the East River. The weather is nice and I hope to be able to hit several big days come Thursday....

The lack of training is a bit of a set-back and I'm a bit heavier than I'd like to be but all-in-all this is nothing to worry about given the March timeframe. The weekend after next, I race both a triathlon and I have the cherry blossom 10-mile run so that will be a good test and a solid training experience. I don't have high expectations but am eager to jolt my system a bit and give myself a clearer picture of where I stand. One thing for sure, I'm motivated to train hard now, am relatively injury free and just need to be able to find clearer calendar space to get after it....I wouldn't mind hammering out a 25 hour week just to do it--maybe the 1st week of april.....we'll see.

Longer term, it does look pretty certain that in mid-June I will participate as part of an 8-person relay team in the Race Across American (RAAM), a coast-to-coast bicycle race. I'm part of a team of CEO-types who are racing in support of the CAF (challenged athletes foundation). We have a CAF athlete--an Iraq Vet who lost part of one leg--participating on our team. while not anything like the challenge of a solo RAAM effort, I should get 400 or so miles of riding over the 5-6 days it'll take our team to ride across the country. More on this later.

Also, anders and I are trying to lock down on a post Christmas alpine expedition--we are looking at either Aconcaugua (largest mountain in South America) or Vinson (largest mountain in Antartica). The complicating factor is Ander's HBS schedule. We hope to get this locked in at some point this month. If I were to do one of these it would give me a pretty bang-up end of the year to look-forward to:

9/29: SkipJack Long Course (1.2/66/10)
10/13: Kona
11/18: Ironman Arizona
12/26-1/?: Mountain Expedition

Many miles necessary before those 4 and I hope to put some of those in over the next few weeks.....