five things...and snowshoeing

oh good lord.

i've been tagged again.

this is OK, I suppose, since I seem to be going through brief periods of bloggus interruptus, in which I am miserably uninspired. At least, not inspired enough to write on this blog, at this time.

geekgirl tagged me as follows
RULES: list 5 things you're "addicted" to, then bestow the honor on five of your favorite bloggers.

Five "Addictions" - I caveat this by saying they are in no particular order, and I refuse to talk about my crack addiction in a public venue.

1. Training - I hesitate to stick all my addictive love on just running, or just biking, and I'm definitely not fully in love with the swimming since it's my big limiter. I'll just say I'm really hooked on training, my training plan, going out, doing my thing, accomplishing a plan for a day. Totally hooked. It makes me happy!

2. Coffee - It seems obvious that I would like coffee, so I'll just put it out there and admit that me and coffee? we're like this. We are tight. I heart coffee. Good, strong coffee - not that crap that tastes like ground up stir-sticks. I like mine Americano, sometimes straight into the vein. Real dark coffee smells like ashtray to me. Maybe I smoked for that long that I still have the association long after I kicked the smoking, but a really good coffee still smells like an ashtray, and oddly, I don't find it unpleasant.

3. Mountains - I have a healthy respect for mountainous terrain that stems from a bad detour I once took as a teenager, but nothing makes me feel more peaceful and happy than a trip to the mountains. Running in the mountains is just a special gift.

4. Movies - I'm a self-described movie slut, which means I'll see pretty much anything, anytime, anywhere. I'm not picky. Well, OK. I'm not too picky. I'll see chick movies, violent films, film noir, foreign, domestic, arty, indie, thinking films, and a lot of mindless drivel. I just enjoy checking out for two hours.

5. Music - My mother once worried aloud that as a teenager, I was so addicted to music she worried that I'd, er, wear it out? maybe get tired of it? overload? something. I was really into my music thing, and I spent a lot of time plugged into my walkman, which at the time was an issue of concern. While I don't tune out like that now, I do know that most of the time, the right music will only enhance how I'm feeling. It makes a happy thing happier. And, uh, while I'm not super picky on the music thing either, I have no deep love for country or western. I had a friend once tell me that after bearing children my music taste would change and I would learn to love Country and/or Western. That was not true for me.

...tag, you're it!

I'll come back later to write about the Sandia Snowshoe Race, which I did last Saturday.





OK, it's later.

also, it's my blog and I can write whatever I want.

I dragged Mark and Debi along to my annual pilgrimage to the Sandia Snowshoe Race last Saturday. Just like last year, it was my first time in snowshoes for the season. Just like last year, this is my warm-up training for the Quad. And just like last year, it felt unreasonably difficult to do a 5K in snowshoes. This year, the course was covered in thick, broken up layers of icy snow, which felt a bit like snowshoeing on rock in places.

Oh great. More rocks.

This time, however, I paid attention to the suckiness, and I thought briefly, I need to pay attention to this, since I feel seriously out of shape or something because this is just...hard! I was walking where the inclines were runnable - and even walking at a fast pace felt taxing. In snowshoes.

oh yeah, the snowshoes. huh. Do you think that's adding to the difficulty level of this thing?

Halfway through the race, one of the course directors told me that I was about 6th in the women. Until that point, I could have cared less - but suddenly, knowing I was in the single digits, I got invested in the race and looked around to see if there were other women around me.

There weren't.

I was shocked to find that 6th in the women this year earned me 1st in my age group. Oddly, they divided the age groups in a way I wasn't used to, and I fell squarely in the middle of the 35-44 women. Usually that's a pretty competitive group, though I think for snowshoeing, maybe it's not.

When I got back to the computer and downloaded the Garmin data, it all made sense - my heartrate was sky high for the whole race. Average 160 - which is high, considering I finished in 52:54. Yeah - almost an hour for a 5K race. On snowshoes. Maybe it's just harder than I give it credit for.

I think my time's a touch faster than last year, though the conditions were not apples to apples comparable. Last year was more like packed snow, and sunny. This year was foggy - we were running in the clouds.

Mo got 1st in the women, superstud snowshoe runner that she is. Debi did her first snowshoe race and finished not far behind me, and had a great race. Bones got chicked. I thought he did great, and his agegroup was really well represented - he had an outstanding performance for his first time out in shoes, and a great 2nd snowshoe race, with no wardrobe failures.

Mostly, I had a great time out on the mountain with my friends. It really doesn't get better than that. I'm glad I have friends who are willing to accompany me on my crazy mission to do this thing.