Stress Test & Snowboarding

Saturday was my doctor prescribed long run of 4-5 miles, which was to be a stress test for my achillies. Basically to see if it could handle it. FUN!

I was really happy to have a friend that wanted to run with me! Even though it was pretty warm outside, there were still a lot of really icy spots so we decided to meet at the gym and run on their indoor track. 

Neither of us had run much in the past few months so we were both a bit nervous about my goal to run for 50 minutes! But we just walked a couple laps then started running. I wore my Garmin to keep track of time and laps, but I kept forgetting to hit the lap button because we were so absorbed in our conversation! After about a mile I just gave up on keeping track of exactly how far we went. 

At about halfway, we stopped and walked for a few minutes, but we didn't give up! It was so nice having someone there to help me get through this run. Even though 50 minutes used to be a pretty normal length run for me, it was really hard on Saturday! It was also fun to have this older couple walking on the track with us who would say something encouraging every time we went past!

We stopped and walked one more time before the end, but we finished out by picking up our pace so that we really felt like we were going to die by the end! When we had one minute left, I said "One more lap!" But when we got there I said, "15 more seconds!" and she said, "You lied to me!" Haha, oops! But we did it! I hope I didn't scare her off! :)

Even though it was hard, it felt really good to do that run! And my Achilles felt good the whole time, yay!!  But later that day it did start to kind of have this warm, tingly feeling. I don't know if I would even call it pain because it was so slight, but it was just not at 100%. Still, I was able to do calf raises, stretch it and walk around barefoot without it hurting, so I figured it would be ok for me to go snowboarding on Sunday!

This time we put all the kids in lessons. The older kids just took off! George had a hard time leaving me at first, but once he got to know his teacher a little bit he seemed fine. His teacher was really awesome and it looked like George was having a fun time! He kept having George give him high-fives then he would pretend it knocked him over and stuff like that, which I'm sure George loved! There are also some dinosaurs that George got to "feed" out on the Riglet Park that they take the little kids on, and some poles that he would have George grab as he went by. He seemed to do a really good job of keeping him interested and making sure he had fun.

Once we knew George was having fun, Pete and I headed up and had time to do 2 runs by ourselves! We haven't been able to do that yet this year so it was really, really good. I am not in good snowboarding shape yet, and at the end of each run, my legs would be screaming at me! But it was so beautiful and I forgot how awesome snowboarding is! We both had a really good day with no bad crashes. We just carved it up, zooming in out and of trees and going up the sides. It was so much fun! It is so important to continue to do fun things with your spouse! Days like this, we can just feel our relationship getting stronger.

When we picked the kids up, they were all happy. George spent the second hour in the daycare and they also fed him so he was in a good mood. Mindy got to go down the bunny hill 5 times, and Ethan and Elle did 3 runs. They all felt like they understand how to do it better and felt good about the day. Ethan was a little disappointed because at one point in between runs, we saw Elle coming down, looking awesome, so we cheered for her, but we didn't cheer for him because we didn't see him. We did see him coming down while we were going up in the Gondola our first time up, though, and he looked really good as well. I'm so excited for when we can all just go up together and do the whole mountain! 

I iced my ankle when we got home because it was feeling a little bit more of that weird feeling from the day before, but still it wasn't quite painful, if that makes sense. After I iced it, though, it seemed to be worse so I was feeling a bit discouraged after that. I slept in compression socks, and it feels really good today. I would say it's still not 100%, though. It's really hard to describe, but I called my doctor today, and left a message with his receptionist, trying to tell him all that. Hopefully it's ok. I will let you know when I hear back from him...

Today, I had planned on going to spin class, but after George getting up at midnight, then again at 4am, I first changed my alarm from 5 to 5:30. Then when it got to that, I decided I needed to take the morning off and sleep until 7. Who knows if that was the right decision, it's hard to trust yourself at 5:30 in the morning! But, I went in later and had a nice swim so I think it will be ok. I got 2250 yards in before it was time to get George out of the daycare and pick the kids up from school. I did a modified version of the workout that was left on the board from Masters this morning:

400 swim

200 kick

5 x (200 pull with :20 rest, 50 sprint) 

25, 50, 75, 75, 50, 25 kick

100 breast/back

Then I stretched and did some calf raises on the stairs in the water which is my new thing to do every time I'm there. It felt good today so I don't know what's up with my ankle... 

Stress tests are so stressful.