Alpine training and rentry

While Amanda was being a dutiful granddaughter and flying across the country to see our grandparents (I am going in March/April), I was being a decadent newlywed with the husband and taking an impromptu trip to Austria.  We had cashed in all of our American Express points and got two tickets to Vienna, which for me, is the city of joy.  It's purely subjective, but "to me, it is perfect," to crib off of "Love Actually."  Don't get me wrong, I love New York, and London, Paris, Saint Petersburg, are all fantastic, but Vienna has this strange combination of being a manageable size, not too crowded, aesthetically beautiful, filled with history, and the music is right up my ally.  I'm a huge classical music nerd, from Opera to symphony, to string quartets (in Mozart's house, natch) and solo piano, with a bit of ballet tossed in for flavor, it was all within walking distance from our hotel.  Heaven!

The hillllls are alive!

And it isn't like I couldn't get all of that in NYC, but you just don't, because wherever you live in your real life, you're too busy doing all the things that accompany real life (work, laundry, family obligations, social obligations, TRAINING), but when on a mini vacation, you can! So we did.  And it was perfect! I would do runs around the Ringstrasse, around the Opera House and Hapsburg palaces by day, with some museum-ing after lunch, and then shower, nap and music in the evening.  This is why it is my city of joy!

One thing that put a bit of a damper in my Viennese jaunt was the fact that after a few days in Vienna we were scheduled to go into the Alps for skiing.  Skiing is my nemesis.  I stink at it, am terrified to death of it (hence the stinking, and then therefore more fear, etc. etc.), and the knee on the leg that I broke a few years ago has always been a bit wobbly.  It's never given me any problems running, but it is just a bit unstable when it comes to sudden side-to-side movements or something, and will pop out and then pop back in.  It hurts like crazy, and can happen at the weirdest times (once it happened while I was jumping up during a funny picture), and so I was skittish about it happening on skis with the IronMan on the horizon, as one day, it is going to pop out and not go back in.

I love these babies!

But when we got to Saint Christophe, the conditions were insane! And they don't groom their slopes in Europe, and after 3 days of non-stop, white-out snow, the hubs said that it was going to be way to hard for me to ski...he could barely manage, and he's good! So we went snow shoe-ing, which was AWESOME! The Alps are so gorgeous, and this way, I could actually enjoy them instead of sweating buckets of fear, AND get a good cardio workout in the process! The snow was almost up to my waist, so snow shoeing was quite challenging, and also the lack of skiing meant I would just hang out in the "Fitness Center" and do runs on the treadmill (shorter ones, since the altitude would kill me after about 5K), and then lots of pushups, squats, lunges, and knee/joint strengthening exercises, and the like.  I was as sore as a mofo afterwords--and by the end, my lungs felt strong!

When I got back to NYC/sea level, I went for a seven mile run and felt great, despite being on a plane for the entire day prior, and now it is back in the saddle for real.  I had essentially one last big romantic trip and now my main relationship will probably be with my bike for the next eight months. And one thing this did reinforce for me is to keep up the "dryland"/strength training for the ol' joints on the side in addition to focusing on the aerobic base.