I haven't done enough. But I have done the hardest part. I started.

What was healed is hurt, what was light was heavy, what was deep flowing breath is shallow, breathy and undisciplined. Welcome back to Ashtanga... It is always fascinating to me to watch my mind want to walk around in that same circle of judgement.

I've been injured enough and healed enough injuries in the yoga studio to know that this, really, for me, is what yoga is. It's not the "getting good" or "getting strong" or the healing, or the fixing, but it is a powerful medicine that brings what is out of balance into balance.

Today, I felt like this. Again. I'm a bit body dismorphic, I know rationally that it's not actually how I look. But the power of judgement makes it almost real. The reality is that I'm ten pounds heavier than I was last summer. That's all. Just ten. And that's normal when you don't train and you drink wine with dinner. And its fixable, at that. By training, just a little. And smiling. And knowing that if I practice, all is coming.

I step onto my mat and feel the thoughts... why did I let my stomach get like this? How did I let myself get so heavy? Why would I do that to my practice? I feel the pressing inertia of those thoughts, like an evil other, it wants me to fail. It is so powerful, the judgement that we all have. I hate the way I look in my yoga pants, the fact that I have to wear a flowy top not to feel self conscious about my belly, and the flowy top brings to mind the fact that I'm thinking of, and judging my body.

My strong, beautiful body.

Which can be stronger, and more in balance than it currently is. Which becomes strong and in balance by doing exactly what I am doing. Standing still at the front of my mat, I am already winning the battle. Just standing still.

My mind begins to relax, and it begins to come into balance way before the body does. It will take a month for me to recognize myself again. But I'm on the path, just breathing on my mat. From a bit of a distance, without attachment, I see the spiral of judgement, I watch myself try to point out all of my flaws. And then I breathe in, and raise my arms over my head, in my own living room, just my cat sitting there, staring at me, and the sound of my roommate clicking away at his computer at the kitchen table.

There is dirty laundry in the basket in front of me. My kids ski boots are laying on the floor behind me. A pile of clothes to wash and fold and prepare for Replay for next season is on the boy's dresser (which they've drug out of their room) next to me.

As I fold in half and exhale, all of the noise fades into the back ground. The noise about me looking at my middle, the judgement about the cleanliness of my house or my ability to practice regularly for the last five months.

None of it matters. Not really. Because the antidote to all of that noise? Its right here. Exhale. Flat back, in hale, exhale, fold. Gratitude, letting go.

My tyrannical diligence in pointing out my flaws flows out with my breath and suddenly there is only the practice.

Chattaranga (the push up position posture where you lower slowly) is challenging, I've injured my left shoulder and I don't know how it is going to heal. The only thing that healed it last time was months and months of daily Ashtanga practice.

My worried mind, my monkey mind turns back on. "You should have been practicing. Then you'd be more healed and more ready for Teacher Training in 22 days."

I answer calmly, like I'm talking to Bodhi when he's losing his shit and thinking life isn't fair. "But I wasn't practicing. And I can't undo that. And here we are now. And the fact that this hurts is a good indication that we are doing the right thing."

"But, But, But..." my mind tries to argue back, begins to want to tell me that I'm heavier than I should be and that's why its too hard on my shoulder. It's my fault, its your fault, you are to blame! Shouts my cruel mind.

I remember feeling like this, just this fall. I like it when my body is strong and lean and light. It makes it easier to float, to run, to laugh, to sleep, to take my clothes off. A truth about me is that I flux through this. I don't always feel like this. I feel like this about a third of the time. And when I make the compassionate choice, that goes up. The result of being in balance is a healthier body. Which also looks good naked. I know I can't chase the physical form for its beauty. I have to chase it for its function, and let the byproduct be beauty.

I remember telling my Cert 2 candidates this year, "Its really hard to concentrate when someone is yelling at you. And if you hang out with someone who yells at you all day, eventually you either become numb, or you begin to believe them. If the person who is yelling at you all day is you, tell yourself that you'll get back to them when you are finished working hard to get better."

I exhale. I don't answer, I just modify as much as I can, reminding myself that appropriate modifications are a sign of a good, evolved practice, it means I'm capable of listening to my body and finding my place of benefit. My cat winds around my legs and nuzzles my face, tickles me with her whiskers. She's happy I'm playing on the floor. And suddenly, I am. And I'm so glad.

I'm glad because now I feel like this. Beginner's mind lacks judgement, and a child's beginner's mind is full of play, gratitude and fun. I identify more with this image than either of the two above. This feels like a picture of purpose, and the result of purpose leans in either direction on the scale of lean and strong to fat and heavy. But the physical result is a continuum. I have choice about the inner story, the inner drive. I chose this.

I don't make it to Navassana (boat) today, because eventually the chatarangas are too painful. I sit on my mat, wondering how I will find Mula Bundah (the root lock) or Udiana Bundah (the fly-up or abdominal lock) again if I can't work on my vinyassa (flow portion between assana or posture).

I remember my teacher Dylan helping me with just this issue last summer, and I am rueful because I've been here before, I worked through this problem once before. I have two emotional choices in this moment, I can be angry at being back at the beginning, or I can remember how it was I solved the problem in the past and get back to work.

I break out of the regular practice and spend ten minutes struggling through an abdominal sequence. I still haven't done enough. I get up smiling. I practiced on my own. For an hour. Plus abs. I know where my shoulder is now, and what I need to do. I resolve to go to Bikram this afternoon for the work out (Bikram has no upper body supporting postures, so it won't bother my shoulder), and for the yoga buzz, and for the community.

I haven't done enough, but what I have done was the hardest part. I started.

Beginning again is not beginning again, it's just life

I've written a couple of posts over the years about how frustrating it is when life derails you. And it seems like life derails you just when you a getting into the swing of things. Just when you've been going to the gym for two weeks, just when you've avoided desert for a week, just when you are starting to feel strong.

You go out of town and you eat like crap on the road. You begin to get strong and you get injured. You begin to develop a routine and you get sick.

But these aren't things that are sabotaging you. This is what happens in life. It's not "Are you going to get interrupted" it's "when are you going to get interrupted, how much does it rock you, and how long does it take you to get back after it?"

It's a lot like bump skiing. You are going from the top to the bottom. You are going to get knocked out of balance at least once. At least one of those bumps is going to be bigger than you guessed it would be, the hole after it will be deeper. But you are still moving down the mountain. What do you do when you hit it? How do you regroup?

Do you give yourself grace? Can you make a compassionate choice in the midst of super-frustrating chaos? Yes, your house is a mess and you have over-committed yourself again. What is the plan to get the train back on the rails?

In my own experience, while I was trying to change my life, to re-become a person who had nutrition and fitness and health as a top priority, every time I got sick, or injured or had to travel, or ate poorly, it felt like the road back to the right path was a difficult one.

I was counting in pounds - they seemed so hard to lose, and so easy to gain back. When I looked at life that way, it seemed next to impossible to gain ground. When I had three jobs and no money for yoga, I felt stymied.

But I finally opened my eyes to the fact that I could go for a walk with my kids, and if that was all I could do that day, so be it. I did something.

I realized, somewhere along the way, that if I just kept starting again, eventually I would just be living rather than starting over.

And I realized the other day, when my head touched my knee in yoga, a position my (excellent and talented) surgeon was pretty sure would never happen, that I had started again after surgery, by waking up from surgery and asking to take a walk. That desire to move, because movement leads to healthy, helped me heal. I put my scale away. I stopped counting my health in pounds.

It is true here that I needed to be willing to listen to my wise friends who had been through surgeries like this before me when they told me, "your job is not to get strong right now. Your job is to heal."

That was a hard thing for me to keep in perspective, it was hard for me to know when was pushing to hard, and when I was doing all I could in the boundaries of good healing. My body told me, and I learned to listen to it, and my friends.

It was a three month practice in patience. And then two more months of humility and more patience. My body would get strong in its own time, if I helped it, if I let it, if I asked it consistently, but didn't push it. I had to let go of my fear of being weak, of losing ground, and just be where I was, doing what I could do.

I knew I needed to get strong to make it to the tryout. I lost a huge amount of muscle in the 16 weeks after my surgery in september. I was weak. And flabby. And tired. And in pain. And I had to start again.

But something about this time was different. Maybe I just didn't want to atrophy, maybe it was having the surgery only a few months away from the tryout, but I was motivated to heal. And I didn't have a lot of cash, September and October are not terribly lucrative months in the ski biz. But I got some help from my community, and I looked to people that had been there before me, and I Reprioretized some things.

As soon as I could get a hundred bucks together, it went to the yoga studio. Because I knew that being in the hot room would help me heal. And it became a matter of health that I wish it had not taken a major surgery to teach me. I wish I could have felt permission from myself in my life earlier to do that. To go every day. Because it makes me strong, and healthy, and whole.

Because it gives me energy to play with my kids and do better at my job and it encourages me to fill my body with good, healthy food.

But it took the surgery, and that's okay. And after the surgery, I got healthier. And then I got sick, and I didn't t have to start over. I just went back to yoga after I felt better. I cared for myself long enough to recover and then I went back to the studio. And this time, it didn't feel like a long road back. It took six years to get to a place where I crave exercise. The kind that used to make me groan.

I could get there, after about three weeks of hard work, I could look forward to a workout. To a summit. But I never looked forward to the suffering. And now, the work doesnt feel like suffering, it feels like celebrating, it feels like living, it feels like necessary and wonderful care taking of my body and heart and mind.

And the journey back after a life event (rather than a setback) is just a re entry, not a starting over.
And here's the wonderful part. Now that I've stopped dreading the long journey back, the journey back has gotten shorter. Sometimes, it only lasts an afternoon. And then my routine is so familiar, that my body, in whatever state it is in, healing, healthy, somewhere in between, is just there, and so am I, and we work together to get stronger and more balanced and the journey continues, almost seamlessly.

And it occurs to me that this is not unique to changing fitness, it is unique to changing habit. Whether that's learning to be better with managing money, or time, or anger, or organization, or whatever it is that triggers you to wish that things were different. Change is very hard. It takes diligence, and practice, and grace, and compassion. And a willingness to begin again and again until one day, your beginning is just a continuation.

So stay after it when it feels like you've fallen off the band wagon, or life had thrown you a curve, or your pagan or momentum was interrupted, its going to happen again, thats life, that's living.

Practice starting again over and over and one day you may feel that you aren't starting again. You are just picking back up after the interruption ends, like restarting a conversation. You may need to recap to get back on track, and that's just fine. Welcome back.

Fitness Insanity

On Tuesday, I drove to Vail to have my final check out with Dr. Corenman of Stedman Hawkins. They were really pleased and told me I am fully released, strong and fit for duty!

This meant that I could call Erik at Aspen Crossfit and tell him YES I'M READY!! (Oh, Lord, help...)

The Elements class had started on Monday, but they let me jump in the next day. I went slightly intimidated, because I've heard my friend Monique talk about doing huge Olympic Lifts and squats and all kinds of insane things that super strong, fit people do.

Elements Class getting after it!

I am not a super strong, fit person since my surgery for sure. And I was nervous after my experience carying the 8lb backpack to Highlands and laying on the couch for the whole next day about what lifting weights would be like for me.

We talked a bit about my limitations. Erik is able to modify ANY workout to be suitable, and so in I went.

We spent the evening learning the proper position for some very serious looking exercises, but we did it using PVC pipes. Erik is really specific about how our form is, and I was grateful for that, I have been known to get after it and hurt myslef. So my job is to make sure I'm paying attention and learn good form, and always use it.

I do feel like I'm being set up for success in so many ways, from being protected from injury through the very specfic graduated steps in which we are learning the exercises, to the community feel of the place.

Our first workout was about 10 minutes long, and I was quite sore the next day, surprisingly so.

Scott working hard and loving it.

I am combining Bikram Yoga daily with Crossfit three times a week to see if I can't get my strength and flexibility back heading into tryouts (should I be invited). I'm training like I'm going, regardless.

(**Update: There are four words you are not allowed to say in the crossfit gym: Can't, Should, Try and Never (I think the last one is never...) anyhow, Erik totally busted me for the above sentence and I gave him a Burpee for it. 

Unreal. Burpee punishment by remote. I LOVE IT. Now if he could only follow me in the bumps and make me do a Burpee for every less than excellent turn, I'd be motivated!**)

The Aspen Crossfit gym is full of all kinds of inspirational quotes, and Erik himself is absurdly positive, a strong, fit force of positivity. You almost can't help but feel like through sheer force of will, you too will get strong, ripped, fit and happy.

I left feeling like "I can do this." and then I couldn't sleep because I was so jacked up.

I hit yoga the next day, after finding myself wishing that it was Crossfit day several times. Friday morning I woke up and thought "Crossfit today! Yay!"

Friday turned out to be one of those days that you can't believe you live through. Kurt and I skied Ruthies all morning, ripping huge turns and working on my wonkiness in my turn to the left. My legs and abs were gassed, and we tuned skis.

Sometimes I'm not so smart...

In the midst of tuning skis, my file slipped and I ripped a big gash in my wrist, all the way to the tendon. But not through it. Patrol was called, I felt like a dumbass, and he told me it was going to need stitches. Bleh! I begged him to super glue it shut, I had to go take a birthday cake to Ethan at his school and I couldn't be late.

We bandaged it up, I grabbed the cake, ran it to school, and we all celebrated Ethans DOUBLE DIGITS! Then Tom and I stopped by Bodhi's class for their holiday party, and then I headed to the Aspen Medical Center where I got four stitches, one over the tendon and three to close the gash. I finished JUST in time to head to yoga.

Kate Giampapa guides us through the Bikram series.

Got there and realized it was hot vinyassa, which means weight bearing postures on the arms. Ow. Sweated my band aid off. Packed up, showered and jumped into less soaking clothes, and headed to Crossfit. There was no way I was going to miss this.

We were learning a press, which requires you to have your wrists bent back, and burpies, which require you to fall to the floor on your hands. Great.

My legs were already toast from training in the morning with Kurt and then standing in Horse stance for about ten minutes in yoga. So the Med Ball Squat Press that we learned was BRUTAL. And awesome.

Another ten minute workout and I got in my car feeling like an athlete again. That only took a week. I came home and at a HUGE piece of fish and almost an entire tub of lettuce and then fell asleep by about 8:30.

If I feel this good, this strong, this sore, this challenged and this excited and happy after a WEEK being back in the swing of things, I can only imagine what four solid months of this will do to my body, mind and spirit.

Thank you Aspen Crossfit and Arjuna Yoga for being so amazing!!

Fit FAST and PAINFUL

Kurt sent me this from the NY times, and I'm gonna give it a try, because my time is SO limited right now, but I'm not willing to sacrifice anything, I need to get it all done AND stay fit.

Does that sound like balance to you? Hmmm... Well, its an experiment, lets try it!


June 24, 2009, 12:26 pm
Can You Get Fit in Six Minutes a Week?
By Gretchen Reynolds
Phys Ed
Getty Images

A few years ago, researchers at the National Institute of Health and Nutrition in Japan put rats through a series of swim tests with surprising results. They had one group of rodents paddle in a small pool for six hours, this long workout broken into two sessions of three hours each. A second group of rats were made to stroke furiously through short, intense bouts of swimming, while carrying ballast to increase their workload. After 20 seconds, the weighted rats were scooped out of the water and allowed to rest for 10 seconds, before being placed back in the pool for another 20 seconds of exertion. The scientists had the rats repeat these brief, strenuous swims 14 times, for a total of about four-and-a-half minutes of swimming. Afterward, the researchers tested each rat’s muscle fibers and found that, as expected, the rats that had gone for the six-hour swim showed preliminary molecular changes that would increase endurance. But the second rodent group, which exercised for less than five minutes also showed the same molecular changes.

The potency of interval training is nothing new. Many athletes have been straining through interval sessions once or twice a week along with their regular workout for years. But what researchers have been looking at recently is whether humans, like that second group of rats, can increase endurance with only a few minutes of strenuous exercise, instead of hours? Could it be that most of us are spending more time than we need to trying to get fit?

The answer, a growing number of these sports scientists believe, may be yes.

“There was a time when the scientific literature suggested that the only way to achieve endurance was through endurance-type activities,” such as long runs or bike rides or, perhaps, six-hour swims, says Martin Gibala, PhD, chairman of the Department of Kinesiology at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada. But ongoing research from Gibala’s lab is turning that idea on its head. In one of the group’s recent studies, Gibala and his colleagues had a group of college students, who were healthy but not athletes, ride a stationary bike at a sustainable pace for between 90 and 120 minutes. Another set of students grunted through a series of short, strenuous intervals: 20 to 30 seconds of cycling at the highest intensity the riders could stand. After resting for four minutes, the students pedaled hard again for another 20 to 30 seconds, repeating the cycle four to six times (depending on how much each person could stand), “for a total of two to three minutes of very intense exercise per training session,” Gibala says.
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Each of the two groups exercised three times a week. After two weeks, both groups showed almost identical increases in their endurance (as measured in a stationary bicycle time trial), even though the one group had exercised for six to nine minutes per week, and the other about five hours. Additionally, molecular changes that signal increased fitness were evident equally in both groups. “The number and size of the mitochondria within the muscles” of the students had increased significantly, Gibala says, a change that, before this work, had been associated almost exclusively with prolonged endurance training. Since mitochondria enable muscle cells to use oxygen to create energy, “changes in the volume of the mitochondria can have a big impact on endurance performance.” In other words, six minutes or so a week of hard exercise (plus the time spent warming up, cooling down, and resting between the bouts of intense work) had proven to be as good as multiple hours of working out for achieving fitness. The short, intense workouts aided in weight loss, too, although Gibala hadn’t been studying that effect. “The rate of energy expenditure remains higher longer into recovery” after brief, high-intensity exercise than after longer, easier workouts, Gibala says. Other researchers have found that similar, intense, brief sessions of exercise improve cardiac health, even among people with heart disease.

There’s a catch, though. Those six minutes, if they’re to be effective, must hurt. “We describe it as an ‘all-out’ effort,” Gibala says. You’ll be straying “well out of your comfort zone.” That level of discomfort makes some activities better-suited to intense training than others. “We haven’t studied runners,” Gibala says. The pounding involved in repeated sprinting could lead to injuries, depending on a runner’s experience and stride mechanics. But cycling and swimming work well. “I’m a terrible swimmer,” Gibala says, “so every session for me is intense, just because my technique is so awful.”
Meanwhile, his lab is studying whether people could telescope their workouts into even less time. Could a single, two- to three-minute bout of intense exercise confer the same endurance and health benefits as those six minutes of multiple intervals? Gibala is hopeful. “I’m 41, with two young children,” he says. “I don’t have time to go out and exercise for hours.” The results should be available this fall.

The Phys Ed column will appear here in Well every Wednesday and also in print once a month, in the Sunday magazine. In it, Gretchen Reynolds, who is working on a book about the frontiers of fitness, will write about what the latest science can tell us about how to make ourselves stronger, more flexible, less prone to pain and generally fitter and healthier. We want to hear what you think, so stay tuned and offer your comments and questions.

Thursday, December 14, 2006: ONE and a half years ago this was me.

Here is a blog post from one and a half years ago. I came across it looking for a photo of Tom from when we moved here, and thought, its really important to share the fact that I was overweight and unsure of myself ONLY one and a half years ago. That the struggle back to fitness took years and years. That AFTER this post, in January, I gave up on ever making it back to fitness. Then I started teaching at Bridger a month later, and my life turned around.

I failed to see that this period was NOT a demand: you will now be a victim of your mom body, but that it was a beautiful, natural time when my body accommodated the miracle of the two children that it grew, then nurtured. So eager to get back to feeling like an independent, healthy person, I was impatient with myself to get there. This article was my first step.

This year, I made a commitment that I would race in every Nordic race held at Bohart Ranch, an awesome cross country facility here in Bozeman. My idea was to do the 3k classic (in groomed tracks) and just to finish.

After having ballooned an awesome 80 pounds with my pregnancies, I have, for the last three years, been slowly whittling my weight back down to some semblance of personage I can recognize in the mirror.

Lets rewind a tad. A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away in a land called Truckee, lived a girl named Sue. This Sue was like a sparkplug on redbull. For fun and entertainment, she worked on the back country ski patrol, where, every weekend, she would climb this huge peak and ski down it twice in a day on her teli skis.

This insane bundle of never ending endorphine loving energy would also call me up at nine o’clock at night and say “Hey, wanna go for a ski?”

“Um, Sue, it’s night time.” And I am sitting on the couch eating lasagna and watching a movie with my boyfriend…

“I know, get your headlamp. I’m almost at your house, I’ll be there in five minutes.”

Crap. So I would, much to Tom’s amusement, haul my ever spreading tush off my mother’s couch in the cabin in the woods where we lived, and get my gear on. Then I’d slip and slide my way out to Sue’s car and load my crap in and off we’d go.

Now this part is important: I love Sue. I look up to Sue. I want Sue to want to hang out with me. Therefore it is important that Sue believe I am up for insane crap like this. So I smiled and pretended to be an adrenaline junkie as we strapped on our skis on a full moon night on some fire road out in the Sierras.

We’d take off, my mom’s dog (who was staying with us) galumphing happily along, my headlamp unnecessary lots of times. The night was silent, the moonlight incredible, the snow soft and shushing under my skis. We’d start out together, getting the oil flowing in the joints, chat a bit and then slowly hit our strides. Sue, though a good three feet shorter than me (just kidding, but MAN it seems unfair) is more than three times as fast as I am, no matter how thin or strong I am. She is also a bit like the Energizer bunny. Yes, she keeps going and going and going…

She’d glide away in the moonlight and then return fifteen minutes later, checking in on me, and then take off again. In this way she taught me to love to ski by myself, that my own accolades are enough for me, and that I can do it. I have to do it at my pace, and practice will eventually put me in the middle of the pack, but I can do it.

When we first moved here, I couldn’t get Sue out of my head. I started hiking again, on about 15 or 20 of the over 260 trails in the Bozeman Area, and for a while there, I was hiking about 30 miles a week. I had to start with one. It was hard, slow, and I was out of shape. In a month, I could make it to the fire road at the top of Kirk hill.

A week later, my hiking buddies, Virginia and Liat and I all decided to find out where the fire road went. Five hours later, we emerged three canyons over and called Tom for a pick up. Two weeks later, we doubled that distance without much effort.

So last weekend, I figured, if I can hike 11 miles in a go, I can ski about 2! I got to the race, and found out that there wasn’t enough snow for a classic track, so I would be skating. Now, um, I suck at skating. All my Nordic experience is either in tracks, cutting tracks, or following in Sue’s tracks. And skate skis are VERY different than my little classic skis. Anyhow. Too late now. I pulled on my racing jersey and watched all the seven and eight year olds strip down into their bright red Swix racing suits and warm up. These kids (the BSF Nordic Racing team) kick some serious booty. They are fast, sleek, confident and have great form. I, on the other hand, fell over on my way to the outhouse.

Another alarming realization was that the 1 and 3k were for the kids, and I would need to be in the 5 or 10k. Okay. So now I am in the 5k, skating on classic skis, my giant wobbly mom’s butt jiggling along behind me.

The entire MSU Nordic team lined up on the line. There were about five other women over college age racing, most in the 10k, all in racing suits, all but one about 10% body fat. I lined up anyway. Sue would. She doesn’t care how big her butt is. She just wants to ski.

The race official yelled “Okay, don’t get lost.” Suddenly, I panicked. Wasn’t the course marked? Was the 10k two laps or one? Was the 5k a different course? Ahhhh! Too late “On your mark, Three, Two, One, GO!” Everyone blasted off the line in a beautiful example of skate efficiency. I polled my way behind them, and after the first thirty feet, was a good five feet behind. I kept going anyway. Sue would.

Long story short, it was a beautiful day. It was great to be out on the snow. And it was good that Sue had taught me it was okay to ski on my own, because after about 2 minutes, I couldn’t see a single living soul.

Eventually, I came across some spectators who were watching the 10kers head back toward the lodge, and I asked if I was on the right track. “Keep goin!” they yelled, and waived encouragingly at me. They probably would have thought I was just out for a ski if it wasn’t for the dead giveaway of the tiny racing jersey stretched over my non-racing body.

“Great, thanks!” I called, and continued on up the hill. After about 20 minutes, the 10kers lapped me. It was great, it gave me a chance to have a little Sue-like company, try to emulate their stride (as I had slowed down with no one pushing me and wasn’t really trying to skate anymore, just sort of doing a fast, sloppy classic to get around), and I got to say hi to my neighbor, Wess, who was doing the 10k.

I finished. And that was really the point. They were pulling up the marker flags as I finally rounded the last bend. The entire field had lined up at the finish line because that’s where they were going to hold the raffle, and as I came into view, people started to cheer. I couldn’t believe it. They called out “Good job!” “Almost there!” “Keep going!” and “Yeah!!” and I put a little speed on it and finished the race, about 20 minutes behind the last 10ker.
:

Name Distance Class Gender Time Place
Gretchen Sellegren 5 J1 F 0:19:41 1
Jenny Kauffman 5 J1 F 0:19:48 2http://beta.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif
Jenna Hjalmarsson 5 J1 F 0:20:14 3
Maggie Hickman 5 J2 F 0:20:20 1
Reesa Pierce 5 J2 F 0:20:36 2
Johanna Rydell 5 J2 F 0:21:03 3
Kara Baldwin 5 J2 F DNF 4
Nikki Kimball 5 M1 F 0:16:16 1

Kate Howe 5 M1 F 0:46:39 2

Grethe-Lise Hagensen 5 M2 F 0:16:14 1
Shaun Dunnegan 5 M2 F 0:20:50 2
Brigitte Morris 5 M2 F 0:29:02 3
Kristin Wimberg 5 M3 F 0:21:43 1
Jamie Woelk 5 OJ F 0:15:43 1
Korie Steitz 5 OJ F 0:16:33 2
Claire Rennie 5 S F 0:15:42 1
Mandy Bowden 5 S F 0:15:44 2
Rachel Goldstein 5 S F 0:16:51 4
Frasier Opel 5 S F 0:16:55 5
Karoline Teien 5 S F 0:17:38 6
Maggie Casey 5 S F 0:17:39 7
Kelan Ramey 5 S F 0:18:27 8
Kalen Stanfill 5 S F 0:18:28 9
Becca Kurdnic 5 S F 0:19:12 10
Laura Tuttle 5 S F 0:20:08 11
Allie Phillips 5 S F 0:20:24 12
Ashley Kirchhoff 5 S F 0:23:25 13
Tanner Wiegand 5 J2 M 0:16:44 1
Akeo Maifeld-Carucci 5 J3 M 0:16:46 2
Jack Harris 5 S M 0:15:16 1
Jay Rutherford 5 S M 0:19:20 2

I drank my Gatorade, and stayed for the raffle, where I won a pair of Ear Bags (ingenious little ear warmers), and felt good going home, knowing I had done what I set out to do. I had entered, and completed, my first Nordic race. And on the way home, I thought, I am so glad I had a Sue. And now I can be a Sue for someone else. And they can be a Sue for someone else. And eventually, we will all be off the couch, and out in the deep snow in the moonlight, enjoying the cold air and endorphins and the excitement of being out and doing while the rest of the world is missing it.

Happy Trails,

Kate