Looking Up

The off-season is looking up a bit, because my "week totally off from exercise" is done, and I got to skate twice last week and will be skating again today.  Last Wednesday and Friday I went to the Roller Dome--for those who aren't lucky enough to live in Minnesota and may not know about the Dome, we have inline skating at the (formerly) Metrodome from November through March, including an inline marathon (I believe the world's only indoor inline marathon), which happened to be yesterday. I've done the marathon four times or so, once the "solo" version, and the other times the "team time trial" version.  It's a blast--70.7 laps around the concourse, music blaring, no hills, no wind.  I went to watch the Team Time Trial part of the race yesterday, since several of my inline and long track ice friends were skating in it.  It made me wish, momentarily, that I had signed up for it--but skating a marathon is not exactly what the "off-season" requires!

My skates at the Dome last week were a bit more laid back; 40 minutes easy, listening to the '50's and 60's rock and roll that happened to be playing and talking to friends I hadn't seen in a while.  I ran into Alaska Boy, a very talented masters long track ice skater who is also a very talented inliner, and who lived in Minnesota a couple of years ago and had just flown back into town for the marathon (which his team ended up winning). He's one of the skaters who had tried to convince me to move Heaven and earth to attempt to fix my "bunny on crack" technique, even if it meant abandoning hard workouts for a while and focusing all my energy on technical skills.  I was delighted to tell him that I had, indeed, been able (at least partly--there's still a ways to go!) to banish the bunny and start skating like a real skater, and I gave him partial credit for making me think about spending time working on it (although I was lucky enough not to have to sacrifice hard workouts to do so).  So that was fun.

Today, the Hubster and I are going to a trail near my sister Energizer Bunny and her husband Sherpa Boy's house, where we will skate a few laps with them and a couple friends, then go back to their house to grill.

Yes, inline skating and grilling.

In Minnesota.

In March.

What is the world coming to?

So in general, things are looking up.  I still haven't heard back from the cardiologist, though; I was expecting to hear from him by the end of last week, so I'll call tomorrow and see what's up.  And in both of my Dome skates, I had a lot of what I assume are PVC's...like one every 5-15 seconds for the first 15-20 minutes of skating.  If they are PVC's, they're not dangerous--but that many will certainly affect my ability to skate much harder than the laid-back pace I was skating, so I hope they go away before the hard-work season starts again in April!