Hi everyone! I feel like I’ve been neglecting this blog so much lately. I’m having all sorts of feelings about keeping up a blog about running when I haven’t been able to really run in a few months. I’ve found a few new workouts that I’m able to do completely pain-free, and I find myself moving further away from running than I ever have before. When I’m not constantly training for races I’m free to do things that I never would have had the time or energy to do before, and I’ve been having so much fun trying new things! So while I’m actually a lot happier about my running injury situation than I ever have been, I’m just feeling kind of weird about blogging about everything except running on my running blog. I think a blog name change may be coming in the very near future (and if anyone has tips for that please let me know!) so that I can better represent who I am right now.
On that note, my current workout obsession is playing in the snow! We’ve been having some pretty cold weather here in Anchorage recently (as I write this, my phone is telling me that it’s -11 outside!) but I don’t even care because we finally got a really good layer of snow on the ground! I love snow. It’s one of the reasons we moved here, and the fact that we had barely any snow the last few years has been so disappointing. So I don’t care how cold it is, I’m going outside to play in it whenever we get some! The snow started falling on Thursday and by Thursday night there was enough to go cross country skiing. I’ve mentioned this before, but I love XC skiing because it doesn’t aggravate my SI joint and I can still get outside for a few miles on the trails. My friend bought a pair of skis from my coworker and was excited to try them out for the first time. We headed out to the Hillside Ski Area behind Service High School. Neither of us have been there before, but we knew that the trails were lit and also color coded by level so we could find one with as few hills as possible. We got a little lost, and I definitely fell going down the first hill, but it was so much fun being out there!
On Friday it snowed all day and we had even more snow to play in, so we went right back to Hillside after work! This time we did a new loop with much more gradual hills, and I was totally nailing it out there. We got the chance to practice our form a bit more and I could tell my balance was getting much better. I still have no idea how to handle the steep, tiny hills that end on a turn – how on earth do you get your skis to turn when you’re going that fast? I ended up falling at the bottom of one of those tricky downhill turns, but I was able to actually get back up to standing position without taking off my skis first so that was a win!
On Saturday it was in the single digits, but I wanted needed an epic adventure instead of staying inside on my warm sofa. So we headed out to one of my favorite places, Eklutna Lake, to ski again. Because it’s a multi-use trail, my husband was allowed to bring Ridley too!
This area is so incredibly gorgeous, and I kept tripping over my skis because I couldn’t stop looking around! We were only outside for probably an hour because of the cold, but it was so amazing. The trails are not groomed at all for skiing, so it was a bit tricky sometimes. I’m definitely looking forward to skiing this week because I know that the trails are going to be looking pretty good around town and maybe I can finally get myself on a groomed trail!
How did you spend your weekend? What is your favorite snowy activity?
Mom in the Mtns 
I spend my weekend car hunting and working. Because I got myself a job where I have to work from 4:30pm onward, I don’t get to run until very early at the weekend….
As for snowy activities: I don’t really like snow, so non.