Eldora skating

Here are a couple photos from last weekend when we were at Eldora skate skiing with Ava in the towable Chariot bike/jogger/ski-thing. She is warmer and happier than she looks in the photos. Ellen is also warm and happy.

I woke up super early yesterday morning, like at 2 am, and started thinking about PA school and whether I will be be accepted. I am on the wait lists of 2 programs in the Bay Area, and pretty high up on the list of one of those programs, Touro University. I really want to get in, and Ellen, my wife, REALLY wants me to be accepted too. Ellen has been a saint in tolerating my career changes and the 1.5 years of the latest science pre-req classes that have dominated my life. I am committed to this professional path though and love studying again (unlike my undergrad at UNH 1000 years ago) and am psyched for grad school to start.
Anyway, I was thinking about school when I wass awake and at 4 am decided this was a waste of time to be sitting in bed and jumped up and in 10 minutes wss in the cara heading up to Eldora to skate ski. 30 minutes later I had my headlamp on and did a long loop through the nordic trails in Buckeye basin, then skated and herringboned right up the Jolly Jug trail past the top of Cannonball lift to the top of the Eldora ridge. There is a nice groomed wide ski trail and is relatively flat that crosses the top of the mountain for a mile or so to top of Corona and to the West ridge section of the ski mountian. It was freshly groomed from the night snowcat guys made for excellent skating in the dawn light and from a fingernail moon. A great workout at 10k feet! It isnt running training but close enough and skate skiiing only last a couple months near Boulder so you gotta do it when you can...or when you are laying in bed at 2 am.
After 30 minutes of ridge skating I passed a couple snowcats who were headed out to the Corona top of the lift and the cabin. This made for a great ski run back the 1000feet to the bottom of the mountain in 3 minutes, which is super fun in skate skis! Then back to the car for a quick banana and drink then another hour of skating. All told about 2 hours of skating, then back down to Boulder to be home at 8am.
I like skate skiing as cross training not only because it is a blast but also because it builds aerobic fitness, upper body strength, and most importantly core strength. In running the core muscle groups are used more than runners tend to believe, and those who do core strengthening on a regular basis help their running immensely, be it for a 100m sprinter or dirtbag ultrarunner like me.