Making nice with snow

I have forgiven snow for wreaking havoc on my trip home Thursday. We're friends again. All because I got to go for a wonderful cross country ski this morning. It was my first trip out on my xc skis this year because we just haven't had any snow!

I met my Mom at Pineland in New Gloucester this morning and spent a lovely two hours meandering our way through the rolling trails in the woods, and then I did another 2 hours of faster stuff by myself.  It was pretty icy because of the freezing rain we got yesterday, but they had done a nice job grooming. There was only one steep downhill where it was super icy and I was way out of control.  The snow cover was too thin for them to track the trails for classic skiing, so I was skate skiing. It was a good push to skate, because last year I did mostly classic. And I am sorry to say it running, but skate skiing is absolutely the best workout in the world. I skied for 4 hours and at the end I was as tired as if I'd run 20 miles, but I didn't feel like I'd been pounded into the ground. My lungs were tired, my arms were tired, my legs were tired, but it was a gentle exhaustion instead of the ache that I have at the end of a long run.