Snowfall warning

Today was shinny day, and we also had to contend with a pretty decent-sized snowfall. When I was brushing my car off to leave for hockey, the snow was coming down nearly as fast as I was clearing it. A taxi nearly collided with my car as I was coming out of a side street, but then again, taxis are not known for either using snow tires, or driving very carefully.

Probably because of the weather, it was a small turnout, only seven skaters per side and one goalie, so we brought out the shooter tutor. Generally when there's only one goalie we play with the "hit the post, off the ground" rule. The shooter tutor sure gives up a lot of rebounds!

It was not a good hockey day for me. I missed some easy passes and subsequently the guys stopped passing to me. I was wearing dark today, and the other guys on my side frequently play together in some league, so they gel really well, and the rest of us are kind of outsiders. It's not as noticeable when there are more people there. Sometimes I wear white but I try to avoid it most of the time, so I don't have to play with Mr. Red Dog (who now has a new, still white, jersey), the biggest puck hog in the universe.

However, I'm not actually too upset about my mediocre performance, which is pretty cool, because a couple of days ago I might have really let it get me down. Let's count the positives: I got out of the building in the middle of an otherwise blah day, skated hard, had some fun, saw an old friend (a retiree who decided to come to shinny in spite of the weather), scored during warm-up by faking out the goalie (first successful fake EVER), fell on my a** for no real reason which caused some good-natured snickering all around me. It was good to get out and onto the ice, and be with other humans, even with the snowfall warning.

Sprints, day 1

In spite of having a horrible day yesterday, I somehow managed to get on the bike and do a sprint workout, as planned. This was all built around an iPod set on shuffle, so I decided on 2 songs of warm-up (about 8 minutes), 8 Tabata-esque* sprints of 10s work/20s rest (4 minutes total), and a 1-song cool-down. I didn't promise a long workout, just that I would actually get on my bike, which I did, even though I absolutely did not want to.

I note that the original article has subjects doing this workout 5 days/week. This week I will do only 2, plus shinny at lunch tomorrow (assuming I'm not snowed in again...because of course they are predicting 10-15cm of snow for tomorrow), which is quite definitely an HIIT workout, with more of a random structure in the timing.

* The work/rest periods in the original Tabata article are 20s work, 10s rest, but given that it was my first time doing it, and I was feeling completely horrible, I thought I would start with a smaller work:rest ratio and work my way up to the actual Tabata intervals.

Pessimistic

This is totally not a hockey-related post.

I am having a friendship dilemma. 

Not enough hockey

I'm in the middle of a three-week break in my league schedule, AND shinny was cancelled last Wednesday due to a snowstorm. This season has been a struggle for me anyway - I can barely motivate myself to be enthusiastic about games, and it has been nearly impossible for me to get myself to work out at home as an adjunct to my rather sparse hockey schedule.

Snowed in

Yesterday we had a pretty decent blizzard here in Nova Scotia (20-40 cm of snow and winds gusting to 70 km/h). Work and daycare closed up at lunchtime, and actually it was pretty dangerous even getting in for the morning, much less returning home at noon. This, of course, meant that I missed Wednesday shinny hockey at lunchtime. And by coincidence, our women's league schedule has us on a few weeks' break (our "Olympic break", ha ha), so I was really counting on Wednesday hockey to help me maintain my sanity. Currently, hockey is the one thing I do just for myself. With two small kids and working full time, I don't seem to have a lot of time for my other former amusements and pastimes.  

Even though we had known since Monday that the storm was forecast, I was pretty disappointed yesterday, to be snowed in.