The illness I had a month ago was a doozy. Not the flu, I'm told by an immunization nurse, because I had the flu vaccine. Apparently what I had instead was a nasty adenovirus (google it), which has pretty much the same symptoms as the flu, just not as bad. Thankfully it wasn't even worse because it was bad enough and set me back a few weeks. However, a few weeks is nothing compared to the two otherwise healthy people locally who died from it.
Now I'm trying regain the strength and stamina I lost from two solid weeks of illness. I was able to ski a bit in the backcountry on about day 14 or so but I coughed the entire way up the hill and was more than glad to arrive at the turning around point. Ordinarily that turning around point is just the first climb on a tour. But coughing hurt and I had had enough so we skied down in heavy wet snow that set up like concrete if you didn't keep up the speed. Surprisingly, the ski was actually pretty fun.
The following weekend we went to Whistler to celebrate Randy's birthday. Another couple rented a condo with us at Blackcomb. We had three great days of skiing. I didn't go on the backcountry ski because I wasn't confident about my stamina. Instead I took a skate ski lesson, which was fun but even a couple hours was exhausting. Good thing I didn't go in the backcountry.
I've been going to gym every day to swim or sweat on the elliptical machine while watching daytime tv with subtitles. If it wasn't 44F and raining all week I'd rather walk uphill than face the silly tv. This week at the gym was better than the previous week. The previous week I couldn't believe how long it took to swim 500 yards. This week I felt like I was ready to add another 100 yards.
Today I tried out my stamina on a steep, switch-back trail on the Mt. Baker Highway. Originally my idea was to snowshoe with JodeeDog but the Forest Service website is not updated frequently enough. So I ended up walking then finally post-holing through deep snow for half the hike. Jodee had had enough after 1 1/2 hours and I could hardly make her go forward. She kept turning around looking at me, you're kidding right? She couldn't stay on top of the snow either.
We turned around and about 15 minutes down the trail a young man was making good time on the trail I had broken through the snow. He thanked me for breaking trail but looked disappointed when I told him that I hadn't gone much further up the trail. He asked how deep the soft snow was and I told him he'd be post-holing. Jodee and I continued down, enjoyed the sort-of packed down trail. The snow was still soft but there was less of it as we continued down.
Back at the car I had Jodee watered, loaded, my pack and poles loaded and was just changing into driving shoes when the young man came off the trail. He said he didn't go much further than I did because the post-holing was too hard. Believe me, that was a boost for my ego because I broke trail for at least 45 minutes.
So maybe I'm not as weak as I think I am. Or maybe I still have a ways to go but post-holing in difficult conditions demonstrates something. Possibly shear stubbornness. I drove all that way up the mountain, I'm not turning around until I walk for at least as long as I drove!
Best of all, JodeeDog is sacked out and she hasn't even had her dinner yet. I'll bet she'd wake up for it but for now she's such a tired doggy that she doesn't seem to realize that her left ear is on top of the heater vent. Maybe she will once the heater comes on again.