Most people work 9am- 5pm jobs five days/week, but as my friends, family, and neighbors can attest, my "work" schedule is nothing of the sort. I train roughly twice/day, 6 (but occasionally 5 or 7) days/week, 13 "skier months"/year (1 month=4 weeks), for a total of 52 weeks/year. Like I said, that is an approximation. That doesn't take into account the atypical weeks, such as the huge training blocks on the glacier in the summer, the "recovery weeks" post-glacier block, or the occasional rest period, such as the one I find myself in presently.
Since I returned home from the World Cups, I entered a training period while the majority of the ski world is in racing mode. I've had some stuff to figure out. My body wasn't responding well to training or racing, so it was back to the drawing board. I've also been experiencing some breathing trouble, cold/exercise induced asthma and/or vocal cord dysfunction, after the cold racing in January, which has persisted and continued to impede training. Nonetheless, this weekend marked the end of three solid weeks of training in Anchorage, as well as some asthma "field testing" to figure out how to alleviate my breathing problems. Having made good gains in this short period, now it's time for a little rest.
My life is ordinarily very scheduled, so it's weird not to be racing right now. Equally as infrequent are "rest" periods like this. Right now I'm in both situations- not racing and resting-and to top that off, the weather in Anchorage at the moment is a little odd as well. While I've been home it has gone from no snow (Chinook), to snow and good skiing, to really cold, to really, really warm (currently in the high 30sF). The skiing was excellent yesterday, but it's feeling dangerously warm, and the wind is picking up, an ominous sign of the continuation of the vicious cycle of good skiing, bad skiing conditions.
So for two days I'm in a period of recovery, designed to let me rest up, absorb the training of the past three weeks, and get energized for the next period. Down time is good, but it's also a little strange. It leaves me time to do errands, clean my house, take care of chores (like taxes and bills), and go to a movie with friends, but what I look forward to the most is some uninterrupted baking time. (I know it's not ski-related, but it's the other thing I really like to do.) This is what I've been up to...
Valentine's Day cake, part of the dinner I made for my brother.
Today I baked bread...almost all day! I can easily spend an entire day baking bread, starting the biga and soaker a day or two before, and then baking for at least a whole morning. Today it was overcast and grey, which made it a easy for me to spend time in the kitchen experimenting with recipes from Peter Reinhart's book Whole Grain Breads. Someday I'd like to make all the breads in his book, but for now I've found a few I really like and am continually adapting them, incorporating new ingredients. A link to the recipe I modeled this bread from can be found here. If your looking for the best 100% whole wheat sandwich bread and, like me, have some down time to make use of, I'd recommend this. The only problem is that you're likely to resist going back to store-bought bread. This weekly endeavor is a goal of mine outside of skiing... while at home I don't purchase bread. I wish I took note of when this began, but it's been at least a year now.
Next on my outside-skiing-goal-list... take better photographs of my creations. I'm continually inspired by some of the food blogs I read, and so much of what makes them great are the beautiful photographs. After I'm done skiing I'd really like to go to culinary school, and I think it would be good to document a little of what I've done, despite the amateur nature of my projects. So here's to a little well-earned rest! I'll be keeping you posted on the skiing front, as well as the baking front...
No comments:
Post a Comment