Banff Weekend Adventures!

I love Banff. Yup, I need to move to a mountain town...that's all there is to it! It was hard to leave today after a fun weekend in the mountains! Thank goodness I live only an hour away so it's easy to enjoy an adventure whenever I like!

Earlier in the week I had emailed Leslie's husband Keith...friends I met at Transrockies last year...and asked him if I could join them on a trail run this weekend if they weren't doing anything too intense. Leslie is training for a 100 miler in June so she had a 7 hour run planned on saturday, while Keith is training for Transrockies Bike AND Transrockies Run again (with Leslie as his partner) that are both in August. Whoa that sounds pretty intense eh? Anyhow, he said Sunday was a good day for a run with them...i'm not up to their level of training so I was hoping for something at the max of 2 hours.

What was originally just to be just a trail run on sunday...turned out to me being invited to ski tour with Keith on saturday, stay for dinner and the night at their place that night, and then go running on sunday! How sweet is that? I love Leslie and Keith...they're good people...my kind of people!

I met Keith at Sunshine resort at 8:30 where he told me we were going to be in fact resort skiing today instead of ski touring. He had brought the wrong skis and while he could really go home and get them pretty easily decided the avalanche danger was pretty crazy anyway! Apparently the report literally said "a good day to stay home and garden". Ha! I didn't mind either way, just happy to be out there and going skiing! Keith has been skiing for 30 years and lucky for me used to be a certified ski instructor. It was pretty much his mission to teach me how to ski properly...my own private instructor, wahoo!! It was great and by the end of the day he had me doing stuff I've been trying to do or having trouble with all season! I don't know if I stopped smiling the whole day! :)

Another beautiful day at Sunshine!

By lunchtime it was getting super warm...probably 15 degrees on the hill I'd say. The snow was changing to soft slushy stuff and we quickly began sticking on and slowing down almost instantly even on steeper stuff. It was frustrating and I was getting annoyed. Keither had an idea to take his lip balm and rub it into the bottom of his skis with a papertowel. I was surprised when it worked like a charm! It allowed us to get in maybe another 4 or 5 runs!

Lip balming the skis!

Lip balm ski wax magic!

After our day of skiing Keith and I went back to their place to eat our "1st dinner" around 4pm while we waited for Leslie to get back from her running adventure. After "2nd dinner", we decided to go for a walk up Tunnel Mountain. I've never been and it was awesome! It was only about 20 mins to walk there from their doorstep and another 30 mins to the top.

Check out 3 pairs of sweet sweet Saloman shoes!

After a great day all around and a nice evening hike, we decided to reward ourselves with some mini eggs and Ben & Jerry's before bed. Hello Cherry Garcia! Why have I never had that before? OMG! What a great day! Needless to say I slept like a rock last night!

This morning after a little sleep in and a great breakfast, Leslie took me trailrunning! My first trail run of the season...sigh...it was fabulous! I can't believe I haven't been trailrunning since October. I briefly felt like a newbie again but that quickly changed and we were rolling along some fun trails!

Johnson Lake

Leslie - really...the girl ran 7 hours yesterday...you'd never know it!

Care for a swing?

So yeah, this was a great weekend....sad that it was potentially my last ski day of the season (yet ending it on a really great note)...but super pumped for my first trailrun of the season!!! Huge thanks to Les and Keith for showing me an awesome time!

Spring skiing at its finest!

About a month ago a few of us at work planned on Saturday as being the best day for us all to get together to go skiing at Sunshine! And we couldn't have picked a better day! After the hill getting a ton of snow this week, I knew it was going to be a good day for skiing...and it just happened to be blue bird skies to boot! Here are a few pics I managed to get with my iphone...

Maria, Scott, Miro, John

Me...thinking i'm taking a pic of everyone but only getting myself lol

I think this is at the top of Goat's Eye Mountain

Maria and Miro at lunch chillin on the patio

After a long day of skiing I was pretty tired and spent a nice evening watching movies and cuddling with Logan on the couch! I wrestled with the idea of running on Sunday but after getting 4 good consecutive days of running in last week, I decided to take a day off. I slept in....enjoyed some fun girl time over a late breakfast and a little shopping...and then the rest of my afternoon with this guy...

Logan on the bridge to Edworthy Park, overlooking the Bow River

Winter in the Mountains + Spring in the City = Happy Deb!

It seems that the mountains haven't gotten any new snow in FOREVER. So when Sunshine got 20cm of new snow last monday, I knew I was definitely going skiing on friday! Friday just happened to be my day off as well as my friend Leanne's and she definitely didn't need convincing to go skiing either! As soon as we entered Banff National Park....we had literally driven into a winter wonder land. It was like night and day...it was now snowing and it had been for a while that morning...and continued to do so all day as a matter of fact. I was like a kid on Christmas morning when we parked and got our ski gear ready. I was trembling with excitement...a powder day!! And it did not disappoint...I think it was the best ski day for me all year...i had soooo much fun. I never get to ski in powder...sigh. Here are a couple of pics from our day...

Leanne, not falling...but just deciding she needed to give her legs a break and have a little lie down

Happy skiers!

Me...enjoying some snow angel time!

Back in Calgary, a chinook had blown in and we came back to 14 degrees C!! What a difference! The rest of the weekend was quite nice but pretty windy and not as warm as Calgary has been used to lately. I still managed to get in some pretty good runs...a 14km on Saturday and a 22km on Sunday...although it felt like no matter what direction I ran, I was always fighting with the wind.

Running has been going well and my foot seems to be dealing well with the added mileage...last week I ran 49km total which is the most i've been able to do in a really long time. So i've been pretty happy about that...especially as my long runs will continue to get longer and longer from here on in. Did I mention that I signed up for the Rock n' Roll Seattle Marathon on June 26th? It's official! I'm excited and i'm really looking forward to it. I've never been to Seattle either and have always wanted to go!

Aside from the running and skiing lately, i've been spending some good quality time with my dawg. We've been going on some pretty massive walks after work and hopefully going on many more dog park visits too at night now that it'll stay lighter longer in the evenings!

I LOVE my new skis!!

Yesterday Andrew and I went skiing up at Sunshine and I got to test out my new skis!

They had about 30 cm of new snow in the last week so I was excited! My skis are wicked and it was definitely one of my best purchases to date :) I've never owned a pair and the thought of not having to rent anymore either makes me super happy!

Aren't they beautiful?

Anyways, i've already skied more this winter than I think all of last winter and I can tell that i'm already getting better. Hopefully that means at this rate I should be significantly better by the end of the season...then on my way to some sweet backcountry skiing next winter :)

We had a great day yesterday and I even skied some shorter black diamonds...I know, retarded right? I'm usually terrified of the harder stuff but it always looks easier to me when there's lots of powder...i.e. softer landing if(when) I fall...and the powder slows you down which is nice since I get a little freaked with speed sometimes! I just hate feeling out of control!

We had the gondola all to ourselves on the way up!

I like skiing with Andrew...he's a really good skier and I find i'm more likely to get out of my comfort zone and try some harder stuff when I go with him (lucky for him he grew up close to Marble Mountain on the west coast of Newfoundland, and some pretty good skiing.)

I'm super pumped as this is my week with friday off (I work a compressed work schedule to get every second friday off) and a bunch of us are heading to Lake Louise for some skiing :) It's great when you get to go during the week as there should be hardly any lift line ups! My friend Leanne only gets one friday off a month with her work so it's sweet that we're both off at the same time this month!

On the running scene...my foot is feeling better and I've been able to go the whole day walking around without pain like I used to get. I've been waking up many mornings now with little to no pain in my foot which is shocking as usually it's at its worst for the first steps after getting out of bed! I bought the Strassburg Sock last year when I went through plantar fasciitis and while it's kind of a pain in the ass to wear when you're sleeping, i've been making myself do it each night. Seems to be helping! It's a weird little thing but the theory behind it makes sense...pulls up on your toes in order to keep your foot flexed all night and therefore lengthening out your fascia...

Anyhow, that's about it in news for now! 3 more days of work till another ski day :) Then I have tickets to the Banff Mountain Film Fest on friday night...saweet! Have a great week!