Training for a Trek

My Sierra Club magazine just came, with all those tantalizing hikes you can take, led by  experienced super-hikers. I don't know if I'll ever go on one of those hikes---every year I circle all the ones I'm interested in and every year I never get around to signing up---but this year I also checked out the Sierra Club's Web site for more information.

And found this fascinating article: "The Man Who Survived a Polar Bear Attack."  I'm not saying this article will keep me from hiking. Because it won't. And if I don't take that same hike Mike Dyer was on when he was attacked, it will be because I can't afford that hike, not because of his experience.

I'm just saying: Here's how he prepared for that hike: "... he loaded up his backpack with 50 pounds of water, strapped on snowshoes, and set off into the woods for 10-mile training hikes. By the day he left, he was fitter than he'd been in decades."

So, as part of my training as 2014 winds down and 2015 winds up, this is one of the things I'll be doing. Not snowshoes. But long training hikes with a backpack full of pounds of something. For wherever and whenever I decide to make my amazing trek.

Christie

So, I've been writing about a lot of cycling teachers at my gym, but haven't written about Christie yet. Not because she doesn't deserve her very own post but because I guess I have taken her for granted as someone I see all the time at the gym, who is always friendly and helpful and encouraging. She's just plain amazing. Or, as her husband Derek put it on Wednesday, she's "awesome and hard core," and right now she's about 8 months pregnant with their second child, still working with her training clients and still teaching spin classes, water aerobics classes, and I don't even know what-all else.

Olivia, Derek, and Christie

And she had time to send me this picture of the family wearing their Team Sandra shirts. Is this the cutest family you've ever seen, or what?

(I'll post some of Christie's sayings in a separate post sometime soon.)