It was mine and Eric’s six year anniversary yesterday and since we’ve been getting so into snowboarding lately I decided to book us a weekend at Sun Peaks!

We headed up there yesterday morning, snowboarded all day, and then came back down to Kamloops this morning.

Unfortunately it had rained on Friday night so the snow conditions were less than ideal. Read: icy, hard snow that was really difficult to carve on. It was still fun, but I just wish there would have been some powder to play in!

Our second run of the day we decided to go to the very top of the mountain.

Pretty, hey?

My favourite run that we went on all day had all these ice covered trees around it. I thought it was so pretty – kind of magical!

Due to the less than ideal conditions we were pretty much exhausted by 1:00 PM. We took a break to relax in our hotel room and go for cinnamon buns (cinnamon buns are a must when skiing/snowboarding in my opinion)!

One day I will own a king-sized bed of my own!

We headed out for two more runs around 2:30 PM and then called it a day. It was really fun but I just wish the snow had been better. Oh well, can’t predict the weather! We will go up again before winter is over I’m sure.

We had some wine when we were in our room (I gave Eric his glass and he said “do we have to clink them?” YES, Eric. We do. And I made him clink for a picture )

We then headed out for dinner. I have to say, I’d heard great things about the dining options at Sun Peaks but dinner was kind of a bust for us. We should have went with our gut instinct and gone for Italian but we decided to be risky.

First, we stopped into one of the restaurants for fondue. It was just OK.

A little action shot of Eric eating the fondue

Nothing else on that menu appealed to us so we decided to head out in search of some appies somewhere else. After a few drinks we were both craving nacho’s like mad but we stopped into four different restaurants and NONE of them served nacho’s.

We settled for mussels and bruschetta instead. Once again, just OK.

Overall, I was not wowed by the food so that was a bit of a disappointment, but the weekend as a whole was fantastic. There is nothing in the world more relaxing than staying in a hotel! I got a solid 10 hours of sleep last night and I’m feeling relaxed and rejuvenated!

And now it looks like this outside (clearly today is the day we should have went snowboarding!)

So I am spending the day inside prepping some food for my vegan challenge (that starts tomorrow!) Tomorrow I am blogging about grocery shopping/meal planning for the challenge and what kinds of challenges I think I’ll face this week. Overall I am really excited about the challenge and can’t wait to try some fun new recipes. I’m also excited to see how it will (or won’t?) change my energy levels. Finally, I’ll be weighing myself tomorrow morning and also next Monday morning (just to see what happens!)

How was your weekend?

This morning I woke up to this:

Not much compared to what some people have got lately, but still a decent amount especially considering I was headed out for a run!

I don’t have the luxury of NOT running in the snow. Even though Kamloops’ winters are mild compared to where I grew up, we still have snow and sub-zero temperatures for 3-4 months of the year.

The coldest I’ve ever ran outside in is -15 C (5 F) and snowing. This morning it was only -1 C (but – 6 with the windchill) so about 20 – 30 F.

Here are a few of my winter running tips:

1. Dress for it!

You’re not going to get cold if you’re dressed properly. This morning I was wearing my sugoi mid-zero running tights (highly recommend these by the way) a sugoi long-sleeve top and my “running jacket” that I bought at Target in October! (I also wore gloves, which I am not wearing in this picture)

You lose a lot of heat out of your head so wearing a toque when running in the winter is very important. And, yes, it’s called a toque, not a hat

2. Get something for your shoes

I have these nifty little grippy things that I bought at Costco for $14. They go on the bottom of my shoes and really help grip when running on snow and ice. They’ve saved me from falling more than once this winter.

Close-up of grips:

3. Be prepared to run slower

This morning I ran 5.75 miles with my new run group and the combination of fresh snow, rolling hills and running against the wind kept us at about an 11:00 min/mile pace. I find running on fresh snow to be comparable to running on sand, it can be really hard to push through and inevitably it’s going to slow your pace down.

Be OK with that! In the winter I just like to keep my base mileage up and have fun with running, I can focus more on speed in the spring/summer/fall when there’s no ice and snow on the ground!

***

By the way, I’m currently enjoying my latest obsession while writing this blog post. Send help!

I’m headed to a Traditional Hot (Bikram) yoga class in 1.5 hours. Today will be class 21 in 20 days for me! I can’t believe there are only 10 days left in the challenge.

Happy Saturday!

Do you run in the snow and cold? If so, what are your winter running tips?

Hello there! Whoa, almost three days without a post? How unlike me.

The last weekend was such a whirlwind of busy, exciting, fun activity that blogging hardly crossed my mind and then all of a sudden Monday afternoon was here and my fingers were itching to write!

I don’t really have my mind together for a coherent post right now so here’s a hodge-podge of what’s been going on:

Snowboarding

Eric bought a used set of snowboarding gear at a consignment sports store on Saturday afternoon so we headed up the mountain for another half-day of snowboarding yesterday. Due to rain on Saturday night the conditions had changed a lot from the weekend before. The snow was sticky, hard and icy.

We had a great time, though and we’re already looking forward to our next time up. We’ve decided that we’ll definitely be purchasing seasons passes next year!

Yoga

Holy man you guys, yoga has literally taken over my life. I spent 11.5 hours in the hot room last week! I did 7 hot yoga classes in 6 days with 5 of them being 90-minute classes and 2 being 75-minute ones.

I missed Sunday for snowboarding (but had done a double-class the Monday before) so I’m on track to finish my 30 classes in 30 days. It’s just very, very time consuming. Even more than marathon training. But I love every second of it!

Running

Running has big-time taken a back seat to yoga. I only ran once last week (!!) so only ended up doing 6 miles for the whole week. However, I am starting a “Run Faster Clinic” this Wednesday night at the local running store in hopes of increasing my speed so I can run a sub 2-hour half-marathon.

I’ll be running with the group on Wednesday nights and Saturday mornings so hopefully that will inspire me to get out there more often. Running is still my first love, yoga has just seduced me a little bit more.

House Hunting

I haven’t mentioned it after “the incident” but Eric and I are still looking for a townhouse to buy. New mortgage rules were just announced in Canada today which may affect our search a bit but we are trying to not be deterred. There simply isn’t much on the market right now but we have a fantastic new realtor working for us and hopefully more things will be coming up in the next few months. We will buy a townhouse in 2011!

Black Swan

I went and saw Black Swan last night and it was a very strange movie. I’m not really sure what to make of it. I kept thinking “this is one of those movies that’s going to come together at the end” but it didn’t. If you’ve seen it I highly recommend reading Caitlin’s Analysis on it, it really helped me understand the movie more!

***

Well, that’s it, that’s all for now. I will be back to semi-regularly blogging the rest of this week! I think I may be a bit more absent than normal during my yoga challenge, so bear with me!

What’s going on in your lives?