Cold for the Weekend

My weekend started out a bit early – after a big night out with my work team to celebrate our product launch, I had to get up Thursday morning at 4:30am to head for the airport. I’m wrapping up my current project with three days this week and two days next week (and diving into my next project next Wednesday – no breaks for me). After two quick flights, I landed in Albany, NY, at 9:30am – in time to catch up with my mom a bit, work from her house in the morning, and then head up to my brother’s house in Saratoga before my brothers and I hit the road for Killington, Vermont. Ski slopes, here we come!

The festivities started pretty early – with wings + beer at 4:30pm. While wings aren’t normally in my food repertoire, it was a good thing I snagged those before we unpacked at the condo – because while our fridge had plenty of beverages, we were a bit lacking in food.

Pretty much as soon as we filled that fridge up, we set to work emptying it. Several card games of “Asshole” later (in which I reigned as President for three terms – the longest tenure of any of us), we made the ill-fated decision to head for the bars. Ill-fated not so much because anything bad happened (though my brothers did accidentally leave me behind at a bar near the end of the night – shame, shame!), but more because we had all already had plenty to drink and really should have just taken advantage of the opportunity to rest up. Friday night, I paid for that decision…

Friday morning, we all got up at 7am to hit the slopes by 8:30am, which was pretty good considering that the lifts just opened at 8am. I did a quick run on a beginner trail in order to get from the ski rental area to the main lodge where everyone else was gearing up – but unfortunately, that ended up being my best run of the day. As we’ve all heard by now, the mountains have really been suffering from a lack of snow, and while we had just gotten a storm the night before, most of the fresh powder had blown off the mountain by early afternoon, when I stopped helping to teach my brother Erik’s friend (an absolute beginner from South Carolina) and went off on my own. The two runs I got in before lunch were okay, though colder and icier than I would have liked – but after lunch, the snow had been skied off so much that I was terrified of an intermediate trail that I’ve done many times in the past with no problems. Ever since my mishap in Colorado a few years ago, I get really psyched out by icy conditions, and Friday was no exception. My poor brother Erik, who had spent all morning going slowly with his friend Jon, now spent his last run of the day dealing with me stopping every 20 seconds to try to assess a route down the otherwise easy trail that had enough snow for me to catch an edge. Meanwhile, temps were now in the single digits (I believe the high for the day was 8°F), and all we wanted to do was get the heck off the mountain to warm up. Sorry, Erik!

But that night, I turned into even more of a downer. The beer drinking again started early – around 5pm – but this time, I was ready for bed by like 6pm. Two days of heavy drinking and not enough sleep were really taking their toll, and I was too tired to care how lame I was being by staying in on my last night in Vermont (I had to leave Saturday to get back for my Athleta run on Sunday). In the lamest move ever that even I’m ashamed of, I borrowed my brother Lars’ oversize hoodie, picked up a cool can of seltzer, and joined my recently pregnant (YAY! Congrats!) sister-in-law on the couch to veg and gossip. Sexy!

On the plus side, it was great to catch up a bit with Andie, and an 11pm bedtime was glorious 🙂 Not so glorious? Waking up on Saturday morning with a nasty cold and discovering that while there hadn’t been good snow on the mountain for me to ski, it was snowing just in time for me to leave and traverse the back roads toward Albany. Yuck! After stopping in Albany to switch to a plane (and then to a train when the storm delayed my flight indefinitely), I arrived home in NYC that night feeling pretty miserable and sick – marking the second weekend night in a row that I chose to rest up and go to bed early.

This morning, I hoped for a full recovery – but while I naturally woke up super early at 7am, I still felt pretty gross. Checking the weather to find out that it was a high of 20°F and a “feels like” of 11°F, I dressed warmly as I set out for Athleta for my 9:30am half marathon training group – and really struggled with my half-mile jog over there. I tried Tweeting a few running friends to see if anyone else might be able to come take over leading the run for me, to no avail… but when I got out there (luckily it was just a short 2 mile run this week), I found that running/coaching actually made me feel better. Go figure! Unfortunately, I wasn’t enough better to justify my original plan for the day of an afternoon 4 mile race ending at a bar for football games… but I do think I’m on the mend. I stayed low-key around the house for the rest of the day (cleaning, unpacking from my trip, packing for the new week), and am now headed for yet another early bedtime. Tomorrow, I fly to Charlottesville for the last time, and then it’s off to Kansas City on Wednesday night to begin my new project. Excitement is in the air!