Settled In

Very few posts lately. Jill and I moved to a new place last week and organizing all our crap has taken up almost all of my free time.

We've been having great Iditarod Invitational training weather. It's been well below freezing for almost two weeks now and more often then not the wind chill has been well below zero.

With the move my bike commute is now 4 miles each way instead of 1.5. I'm digging the longer ride each day. Tonight I was biking home at about 8:00 pm, the temperature was around 10, and the winds were around 30mph. It should have been miserable but instead I was loving it. There's something very satisfying about being all bundled up in my little cocoon of mittens, parka, goggles, neck gaiter, and ski mask. I don't know that I could ever do the amount of winter biking that Jill does, but my new commute is at least helping me see why one might want to do that.

My training's been going pretty well. I was planning to do 20 miles every day last week, but on Saturday, what was supposed to be the last day, I only made it 6 miles. We had received over a foot of new snow and I spent the whole day unpacking stuff from the move. By the time I finally got out running it was almost dark. I was dragging my sled full of gear through all the new snow and I just didn't feel like being out there for 4 or 5 hours to get in the 20 miles. I spent 90 minutes to do 6 miles and then I called it a day.

January was easily the most ambitous month of training I've ever had. I ran about 430 miles in the month as well as 140 miles of biking and 115 miles of cross country skiing. Hopefully all this volume will pay off in a few weeks.

It's now time to begin tapering down and focus on making sure all my gear is dialed in. I still have a few minor things I want to adjust on my sled and I need to get all my food together. It should be below zero each of the next few nights so I might get out overnight this week too.