Skiing #2

 Next week is going to be all snowed out in the mountains, so I had to get up there this week despite that I was just coming out of a 3-day PEM sickness. This time I stuck to the plan of the 3x8 sessions of even mix of green and blue runs. I was getting tired at the end though and the memory of PEM was still fresh. So I cut it short at the end and only did 6 runs.

Still, I had a terrible leg cramp last night.  I screamed for about 30 sec and probably woke up  everybody in the neighborhood. My calf was sore when I woke up and I'm limping. Other than that, I'm feeling fine this morning. But I'm not going to go to walk or anything.  I don't want to trigger another PEM of 3 days; I'll have to give my body enough to recover before walking or biking. Meanwhile I have enough chores. I'll have to shop grocery and do the laundry this weekend. That should be enough exercises.

Update after 3 days:

I made sure that I don't walk for a few days till I full recover, and post-skiing recovery went by fine. This time, the post-exercise fatigue came the next day though. The last time it was 2 days after. 

It was the same thing last season.  After the first skiing, the post-exercise fatigue didn't happen till after 4 days and then the delay gradually dropped in subsequent skiing. The dopamine spike from Novelty Effect must be fading as the season wears on and it definitely is not as strong this year, just as I predicted. Will it go to zero?  I'm betting that it won't. There is something about snow covered white hills that will always stir some excitement and I may be able to continue to ski 3x8 runs on green and blue slopes and not get PEM. As long as I rein in my penchant to overdo and go up steep hills, that is.

Back at Soda Springs

Aging is brutal. Everyday you wake up, there is one more wrinkle on your face and you are one day closer to death. My memory is getting worse too. Not that it was any good before, but now I can't remember any word in the crossword puzzle that I did the night before unless I make an effort to memorize. It's all downhill.

But then, there are senior discounts and they make everything seem alright again. Take Soda Springs season pass, for example. After the disastrous 5-months long PEM struggle from skiing too much last season, I wasn't planning to buy a season pass this year. I was going to make do with day tickets when they become cheap and ski just a few days like I did in 2018-19 season. But Soda Springs had season tickets for seniors only for $59 and I wasn't the one to pass up that kind of bargain.

How I perk up at the sight of white snowbank. It's the same story: Annoying fatigue and ache all over while driving up, and then they melt away as I walked up the bank to get to the ticket window. Novelty Effect must be still there.

I skied harder than I planned. What else is new, right? But the slopes of Soda Springs are short, so the damage was minimal. The black run was only about 200 meters long, only a fraction of Sugar Bowl's Disney or Lincoln, and I went up there only once. Nonetheless, I totally crapped out on Saturday, two days after skiing. Then I totally bounced back on Sunday, so it wasn't a PEM; it was a normal fatigue from the first day of the season. 

2 days after that, however, I crashed. I went for a walk while charging the car near Land Park. It was a Spring-like day in the 70s and I walked a little further up the park than I intended, for total of 1.5 miles. The next day I keeled over and PEM lasted for 3 days. So, it appears that the skiing weakened me and walking while weakened put me over the top. 

Dunno yet how the season will go. Last season resulted in a PEM struggle of 5 months because either 1) I skied on black runs in the second half of the season, or 2) the Novelty Effect dissipated after a month and I continued to ski without the lift from it. I'll refrain from going on the black runs this season and see how it goes. If I again suffer from PEM in the Spring, then I'll blame it on the fading Novelty Effect. If I manage to avoid, then it must've been skiing the black runs that caused the long PEM last season.

Squat, Still a Killer Exercise

 Last week, I remembered I haven't done any biking this winter. It got cold very quickly in November after being in the 90s throughout October and then I forgot about biking. So I figured I should get back on the saddle. 

I found the bike tires all flat in the garage even though I put the sealant only a few months before. Bummer. The sealant still hasn't congealed and the latex liquid spewed out when I was done pumping the air on the rear wheel and pulled the clamp off the valve. And then, the front wheel wouldn't take the air in at all. Something apparently was blocking the valve. I took out the valve stem, cleaned it back in and pumped. Still didn't work, so I repeated the process a few times before finally giving up after a 10 minutes of squatting and working on it. I'll have to get a new valve and see if that fixes the problem.

The next day I got knocked out. And the day after was even worse. I was feeling so bad, I actually was groaning and moaning.  It wasn't even squat exercise; I was squatting down most of time though I had to stand up a few times to work the pump. It still was a killer exercise.