I found out why we do our isometric strength routine early in the morning-- it is to avoid spectators. We have a set of bungee exercises that we do before the isometric strength and I attached my bungee to a tree outside Alan's house this morning to strengthen my poling muscles (grrrr). It's 7:30 am and there was no other movement besides me in the coul-de-sac. Then, halfway through my 4 minutes of double pole, two hispanic guys in a beat-up truck pull up and park about 6 feet from where I’m standing on the curb. I plan on saying good morning when they get out of their truck, but they stay in the cab. They sit there, drinking their coffee. And I spend four minutes kick double poling in place, feeling awkward but not wanting to be cowed into leaving. The longest four minutes of my morning finally came to an end and then, to top it off, I whacked myself in the head with the bungee when I pulled it out of the tree. I left quickly.

Unfortunately, I had done such a good job learning to apply power to my poling that I snapped my skate pole while doing speeds around Green Lake. I came down with a super powerful core crunch on top of my pole, and that was the end of it. Sigh, so much for my sweet racing poles. I guess I've had those poles since high school so they were probably due to break. Skiing around Green Lake was discombobulating; I was on my third lap before I even realized I had been doing laps. I had a hard time figuring out where I was because there were so many people to look at that the scenery changed each lap. I almost missed my car when I wanted to stop, which would have been bad because it's one way skiing/cycling/rollerblading only so I would have had to ski a fifth lap, which is too many laps of any distance unless you are voluntarily a track runner.

On another note, I am thrilled to have HILLS everywhere. The roads here go up or down, seldom flat. And there are legitimate MOUNTAINS in the distance.