Back to the grind

The team had this past weekend off b/c it was Thanksgiving weekend. Instead of revealing in my downtime, I got my gradually growing smaller booty to the gym while visiting my mom and Grandma. I logged just about 17.4 miles on the elliptical glider. I was more productive then I thought I would be.

We are getting rained out of team practice tonight. Some of the team members are meeting in Oakland to ice skate. Seeing as I have a knee and lower back issue, I don't think that would be such a good idea for me. Instead I am heading off to the gym tonight to log, yet more miles on the elliptical glider. I think tonight I might do 30 minutes on the bike and 30 minutes on the elliptical. Hey, I have to spice up my workouts a little bit. :)

This Saturday is our first snow practice. We have been getting emails on our team distribution list about meeting times, carpooling, etc. I am really excited about getting into the snow. California has been getting hit by a pretty good storm, so we should have some good snow on the trails. Unfortunately, I am missing my nieces 2nd bday party. I am in the middle of trying to figure out how I am going to get there after skiing with the team. We are all carpooling and that is what is throwing the kink into the already mess up pile of plans. I'll figure it out somehow........

What Not To Wear!

Today we had a hike down on the peninsula. The hike was to start at 8am, so all of us that lived in SF had to meet up around 6:30am in order to make it to the hiking location on time. We got there in plenty of time to chat with some people prior to the start of the session. Once everyone arrived.....we were given a tutorial of what clothing we needed for cross country skiing and what not to wear. I thought that I would be pretty well equipped with attire, seeing as I snowboard. I learned I was WRONG! All of the gear that I have now is way too heavy. I need to have light weight attire on...stuff that is easy to remove when we need stripping on the trail. Everything that we will be wearing needs to be able to fit in our camelback (a small backpack that has water and a straw coming out of it for us to drink without holding anything). The information that was given to us was very informative. I would have been out on our first day of cross country skiing with the wrong clothes on, making it difficult for me to move around. I made a mental note to go shopping after our hike today.

As we were standing there looking at examples of what would be good to wear, I was making a mental list of everything that I have in my closet and dresser. I was only able to think of 2 items that I currently own that might work. The coaches are pretty adamant that we steer clear of cotton....when it is wet it is cold, it gets heavy, and it can chafe. At this point I was trying to keep track of all the mental notes I had made!

After the tutorial lesson on clothing, we started our hike. This weeks hike was only to be 4.6miles. There were several spots where one could cut the hike shorter if they needed too. We were told there was a 20% + grade to climb and several close to it. I was thinking, "No problem!" I thought I had this hike in the bag. I had taken care of my blisters the week prior and I am in pretty good shape....No problem climbing that hill. The hike began and we had a few little mishaps....people going the wrong way etc. More than half way into the hike we start descending on one of the steepest hills I have ever hiked on. I was in a small group of people hiking down. As we were hiking down we were passing people that were beat red in the face and huffing and puffing like you wouldn't believe. Talk about having a minor panic attack! We got to the bottom and had to turn around to climb back up the hill. And let me tell you that hill didn't seem like a hill....it was a freakin mountain. All I could think about the whole way up was that my Pa purposely would cycle up and down grades like this for fun.....That is when I realized that my Pa had to have been insane. Who would do this for fun? :)

The long and short of it is that we made it. It took just about 2.5 hours to finish the hike that day for all of us....give or take 20 minutes. I have to say, as hard as that hike was, it was one of the best feelings to get to the finishing point and knowing that we did it. No one got stretchered off the mountain, no one got airlifted....we all did it. Go Team!

Acronym Trouble

Over the last several days I have found that many people are having trouble with the acronym for Team In Training. As some might know, TNT is short for Team In Training. Though I have realized that several people aren't aware that the letter N is used instead of I.........

I have found that whether by speaking to people or having email conversations with them that many will ask me how my TIT workouts are coming along. Now as you might be aware, that is a bit unnerving to either A) open up an email that has TIT screaming out at you (b/c I have notice that the people emailing it are always using caps when typing out the acronym) or B) that someone has actually said that word. My typical response is to laugh....who wouldn't laugh when either reading or hearing someone say that word? When you think about it, TIT does seem like a great acronym for Team In Training....but using that word could be offensive to some, thus the N substituting the I to be politically correct.

Just tonight, I was talking to one of my good girlfriends and we both realized that even though the acronym TIT doesn't work for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, for obvious reasons, it might be a good one for say....breast cancer research.

All joking aside, it is pretty humorous to hear people stumble over themselves when they start to say that 3 letter word. So I guess for now I need to get used to people asking me how my TIT training is......Should I correct them? Or should I allow them to go out into the world and tell others that they know someone that is training for TIT? That is the question of the hour.........

Pesky Blisters!

I am going to back up and briefly chat about our hike in Richmond. We hiked anywhere from 2-6 miles depending on the person. As we were nearing the end of the hike I noticed that my feet were bothering me. I didn't think much about it until I got home. When I arrived home that afternoon I noticed that I had developed 2 huge honking blisters on two of my toes. All I could think in my head is NICE you retard...is this forshadowing for the season? For the last several days I have been babying my poor feet b/c of these dang blisters....Oh well...such is life I suppose. Just when you think everything is going well....BANG you develop a blister.

I decided to take Sunday off from working out and I chilled out with some friends. Monday rolled around and it was back to the grind, I swam that day on my own. And today, November 15, was the teams first week day practice. This morning I trained with my trusty personal trainer who was happy to step things up a notch and kick my booty! So you can imagine that by the time that evening rolled around, I was exhausted and not really looking forward to working out again. I had to dig deep to rally myself up for the extra workout.

After we all finally found each other at the track, we did all the warm up exercises that we had learned on Saturday prior to our hike and then we walked/ran the track at Kezar Stadium. For those football fanatics out there, Kezar is where the 49ers played prior to getting Candlestick...a long time ago obviously.

To be honest, I am grateful that I train so much on my own, b/c these session didn't feel that helpful for me. I am going to blame my personal trainer on making me a snob when it comes to training. I know that the training is going to get harder with intensity, so I suppose I should reveal in thinking that things are easy right now.

We must have been a funny site for all the runners on the track tonight. At the end of the session we were stretching. Some of the stretches were to balance on one foot...so many people don't have balance so they were bouncing all over the place...they sort of looked like pogo sticks! I am sure that it was pretty funny looking down on us. We keep getting reassured that the people that are having issues with their balance, it will improve b/c balance is key for cross country skiing. The leader was demonstrating one stretch that apparently is so important b/c our skiis have potential of separating while we are climbing a hill. My thought, and to my embarrassment it was a thought that was outloud and not in my head, was that great...my biggest fear is to do the splits on accident and pull something. I can see the newsflash now, "Woman can't finish ski event b/c she pulled her groin muscle!" As embarrassed as I was that I had spoken that outloud, at least I got some laughter from it. And not just the regular sort of laughter, but the sort of laughter that was a nervous laughter....so I knew that my fear wasn't just my fear, but it was shared by several other newbies to cross country skiing!

While we were stretching, we were talking about the fundraising aspect of things. We are all getting geared up to fundraise the money for our ski event...and can I tell you that I am super nervous about fundraising that much money. Some people just don't want to part with their money, no matter what the cause. I just hope I don't run into any problems along the way with raising the money.

That is it for now....I have more to share after our hike this Saturday.

Training Day...Feels like the first day of school!

Well today was our first training event for the ski team. Several of us strangers met up to carpool and dodge the bullets as we headed to Richmond to hopefully have a good hike. The car drive was interesting....getting 3 completely different personalities into the car made for an interesting ride. We all chatted about why we were doing this event. It appears that the general motivation behind the event is to get in shape. While that is a good motivational tool, my main motivation was b/c my cousin (who might I add is only about a year younger than I am) was diagnosed this year with Lymphoma. She has recently been able to lift her arms up and do the Rocky victory dance that, as of this moment, she has survived the disease.

When I received the email about the ski team I had an immediate response that I REALLY wanted to take part in this. I know that the next 4 months will be full of pain and suffering, but no more than my cousin and millions of people who suffer from leukemia and lymphoma suffer from. Why do this? Simply stated if everyone helps just a little then we might be able to cure this disease.

Back to the day of training....The three of us, practically strangers arrived in Richmond to a crowd of people milling about, some with clip boards yelling to sign in, some yelling to pick up our jerseys, and still others walking around with a dumbfounded look on their face (I am not excluded from this last group!). After about 20 minutes we all joined together to hear about what the next 4 months would entail and just how serious we need to be. As our main trainer started to speak, my jaw dropped (in typically non-couth Patty form). He looks exactly like the guy that I have been interested in. Our trainer called me out on my staring at him when we broke to start the hike. Talk about an embarrassing way to meet your trainer, with your mouth dropped down to your chest and a look of pure shock on your face. My thoughts at that moment... Am I going to embarrass myself all season? Time will tell I suppose!

More to come later......