<- Left Turns Only!

This winter has been full of snow storms, which is a big reason why I’ve been loving the last couple of days here in the Chicago area.  Seventy degrees and sunny, you can stay for as long as you’d like. 

I did a bit of searching around on the internet, as I was curious as to whether I was just imagining this winter really being this bad, or if there was some truth to it.  The search started after a friend forwarded this link, showing pictures of this odd Frozen Wave Phenomenon, in Michigan…. who knew?!?

Anyway, I was able to find a couple of charts that proved what I’d hoped — I’m not just imagining things, because I’m older and my apartment in Milwaukee actually requires me to help shovel the driveway, sidewalk and when my jeep gets stuck.  First up, the season-to-date snowfall in Chicago - compared to the long-term average annual snowfalls.  As you can see, this year we’ve had approximately 25 inches more than the long-term average, at the end of March.  I am pretty sure we had snow in April… but I’m not looking it up as I am trying to block it out of my head.

This second chart I stumbled across shows the Total Chicago Snowfall, by Season.  Looking back over the 10 years that I’ve been in Chicago it’s easy to see that winter really has been quite mild.  Even during the first year that I was here for winter, 1998-99, it didn’t seem that bad because 20 inches of the snowfall that year occurred on one day.  And I didn’t have to go to work that day! :)  If you look at the big picture though, the snowfall by the end of this March put us in the top 10 snowiest winters in the last 120 years.  If we had 5 inches in April (again, possible but I’m not looking) we’d crack the top 6….meaning 95% of all the winters on record were better than this one.  And here I thought I was just getting old and whining.  (No comments required from the peanut gallery)

Next post will be coming from Disney World!  Heading down to Orlando for work, but looking forward to getting some fun time in on Friday.  Oh, and in case anyone’s wondering, the forecast is calling for 85 and partly cloudy…   

Well, as many of you know there was an earthquake in the Midwest on Friday morning.  The quake was centered in West Salem, Illinois - which is a little over 250 miles south of Chicago.  News on the quake showed that people felt the tremors as far as Milwaukee, Des Moines and Atlanta (nearly 400 miles Southeast).  While I usually sleep through anything, I did wake up on Friday, with my bed shaking for about 5 seconds.  I felt a small after shock a few seconds later.

Regardless of the fact that I live on the 2nd floor of an old two-story walk-up, I pretty much rolled over and went back to sleep.  Here’s a quick pic of home sweet home, in Chicago:

 

I’ve heard of the New Madrid fault line before, and having known about it, this was actually the third time I thought we were being hit by an earthquake in the Midwest.  The first time I was a little more jumpy… got up and looked around outside to see what was happening.  By the third round (Friday) I feel like I’m living in California… didn’t phase me. 

The first two times I woke up thinking there was an earthquake, and the apartment was rocking, it turned out to be construction.  In my neighborhood they’ve been knocking down a lot of older buildings to build three story condos, or huge single family homes.   Here is a pic out the back door of my apartment.  There used to be three condos/rowhouses where they are building these two single family homes (this pic is from March of 2006, the buildings are now complete and occupied). 

 

SPEEDSKATING UPDATE - Not much to report right now.  We are still technically in the off-season, as team workouts don’t start for another 10 days.  I’ve been picking up the pace at the gym, but still nothing that would be considered strenuous - still focusing on light weights with higher reps to build a base for when we get going. 

 Yes, you read that right.  Time to turn over a new leaf.

After 16 years of school, work, and weekends - where in most cases I did not have to be out of bed before 8am… it is time for a change.  

In college I quickly learned 8:30 and 9:30am classes on M/W/F, or 8:40 on T/Th, were not something I had a great desire to attend.  I think my professors learned that too.  You could say that I sometimes spent a little too much time hanging out with friends or roommates into the wee hours of the night (or early morning hours, depending on how you see it).  For the most part, after graduation, the past ten years in Chicago have included a lot of commuting to work.  I prefer to live in the city, but as things have played out, the office has been in Schaumburg or Lake Forest.  Luckily, both jobs let me wait out traffic, and stroll… ahem, report into the office after 9am.  The current routine gets me here more like 10:30 or 11, on a good day.

I’ve been paying the price for it at the rink over the past few years.  How can I put this…. to say that I’m a regular at 7am warm-ups would mean you’d probably have to call everyone else a warm-up addict.  That is going to have to change… the clock is ticking, I’m not getting any younger (so help me if one of you smart asses comments on that) and Olympic trial qualifying times aren’t getting any slower.

The change is in progress.  Today was actually day two of the new routine.  Out of bed, into the gym and done with my workout by 9:30.  We’ll see how it goes… still in easy workout mode.  Physical therapy exercise routine, light weight lifting and a quick spin this morning.  One more week of easy stuff, then slowly start to build the intensity, without group workouts starting on May 1.

 If you haven’t been paying attention, baseball season is under way!  The Baltimore Orioles are in the lead in the AL East.  Mark it on your calendars O’s fans… it ain’t gonna last.  The vaunted Red Sox (3-4) are in the cellar, but leading the lowly Detroit Tigers (0-6) today, 5-0 in the 8th inning.  While the Yanks (4-3) are battling the - again, get out that calendar - first place Kansas City Royals.  To think that the Tigers could be 0-9 at the end of this series… that’s gotta hurt.  We’ll see how The Captain bounces back from the strained quad he suffered last night. 

Over in the NL, the Cubs have bounced back from a shaky first two games (although almost losing, while blowing a 7 run lead yesterday was less than inspiring).  We’ll see if the Cubs fans are once again saying “Next year is the year”… well, I don’t actually think they say that anymore, after 100 years of… being the Cubs.  Keep your fingers crossed, I want playoff (hysteria) tickets. 

Finally, if you’ve got five minutes more to kill… check this link out, pretty amazing.

Although our season training doesn’t officially start until May 1st, today I started my own “spring training” so to speak. Although, it’s the bare minimum… and probably barely qualifies as working out (compared to what we build up to by summer’s end).

I worked on some stretching and flexibility stuff this morning at the gym, also did the strength exercises that I was doing while I was going to physical therapy in Oct & Nov last season. I finished with a very light core and upper body routine (two areas I neglected last season while I tried to keep my knee from barking at me too much) and a slow 2 mile jog on the treadmill. Overall, enough to break a small sweat without doing much leg work.

The biggest part of my prep work for next season is going to be in the change in my eating habits - and the need to follow a more strict, healthier diet this season. I will openly admit that I neglect this aspect more than anything, because for my entire life I’ve never had an issue with food or gaining weight. I also tend to forget to hydrate and drink enough throughout the day. So I stocked the shelves in my office this afternoon, and overloaded the refrigerator in the break room with fruits and vegetables. I’ve been telling everyone in the office that I’m going on a two week “detox”… especially after I’ve eaten pretty much everything in sight while we’ve been off the last two weeks. I won’t list the details, you don’t want to know. Let’s just say there was fast food, Ben and Jerry’s, and Oreos. We’ll leave it at that… now that I’ve gotten it out of my system, it’s time for the detox and to create a better routine going forward.

We’ll see how I manage to get through the first two “tests” - Blackhawks game tomorrow night, Brewers game on Saturday.