Getting ready for winter...

Today I spent my day getting ready for winter in two ways... Just like every other Sunday, my day began with an over-distance (OD) workout. After breakfast, and as soon as it was light enough to see the trees outside my living room window (something that's happening later and later these days), I was out on the road rollerskiing. This morning I went right from my front door, completing one massive loop around the Anchorage Hillside, returning home just in time for lunch.

Just like every other day, the focus of my morning was training- getting my body in tip-top racing fitness- so that come winter and the start of racing season at the end of November, I'll be ready to ski fast. Today my OD was on classic rollerskis (no r-ski photos, unfortunately), but a few weekends ago I went on an awesome fall mountain run with my teammates. It just happened to be one incredibly photo-worthy workout that I just can't resist sharing (see below)...

Mountain run OD with the APU ladies (and Reese). Thanks Reese for the great photos!

2.5 hours cruising through some beautiful Alaskan terrain. I can't think of a better way to spend a Sunday morning! (Reese Hanneman photo)

Today was not one of the glorious, sunny autumn days of which we've had many. All the same, it was a perfect day for good, long workout! The fall colors that have greeted me on my last few Sunday runs are now gone. And on this particular Sunday- for the first time this fall- the forecast was for snow. Although it turned out to be not quite cold enough for that type of precipitation, it sure felt like winter isn't far off.

With the changing seasons on my mind, a different kind of "getting-ready-for-winter" activity followed my OD. My mom, boyfriend and I smoked and canned wild Alaskan salmon for the winter! Um...um!

My mom came down from Talkeetna for the weekend, and just as we normally do, we created ourselves a project! A while back we decided that this weekend was going to be salmon canning weekend. With 40+ new 2010 red salmon in the freezer from this summer's dipnetting trip and still a ton of salmon from '09 hanging around, we decided that it was time to get out the smokers and canners and get to work.

Last night we sliced all the fillets into strips, made a huge vat of brine, soaked, rinsed, and then air dried the fish to be ready for today's work. This morning we began the smoking process. While I rollerskied around the Anchorage Hillside, my mom took care of the fish smoking, and by the time I returned home we were ready to put the smoked salmon in jars, seal them up, and pressure cook them for 2+ hours.

Three pressure cookers-loads and 41 jars of canned smoked salmon later, we'd made another step towards winter-preparedness. OD down, salmon processing down... Today was a productive day!

Thanks to my super Mom and fabulous boyfriend for embarking on this great project with me! I'm pumped to eat canned salmon all winter long. It's, without a doubt, the fuel of champions!