I hope everyone is having a nice Thanksgiving vacation.  I am home visiting the family.  My parents have been hosting our family’s Thanksgiving holiday since I was a kid. Food was great, tons of Turkey, meatballs, briscuit and of course some sweet potatoes. I did get a 3 mile run in before dinner.  It helps our when you take your second helping of apple pie.

So I am in the market for some new ski gloves this year.  After roughly 12 years I feel it may finally be time to replace my Reusch Racing gloves.  I love my old gloves, full leather and they held up forever as you can tell.  I may go with another pair of Reusch but I have been looking at the Hestra offerings.  Anyway, check out this review on the Hestra Heli 3 Finger glove, raw, uncut and unedited.  Enjoy!

These gloves are just crazy. I use them for skiing but they would be great for snow boarding because you get the pointer finger unlike mittens but they are way warmer than gloves. The hestra people are just genious! So what you look like Yoda, you will stay warm and alot of people think these things look sick (like me). I’m only 13 (well I’m 14 now but when I was using them I was 13) and when you’re younger your hands get colder and my hands got cold only once on a chair lift going to the very top in Utah when it was crazy windy but seriously, any grown man would still be warm. They are really long which is good because when you bite the dust, you won’t get snow in your gloves. The leather palms are really nice and really really tough and pretty grippy. These are well priced for the quality but blowing 100 on gloves can sound crazy to some people but these were sooooo worth it. These are all you need unless your in like the north pole. haha well I love these things and anyone and everyone who skis or snowboards should just buy them.

Saturday was a lovely fall day.  Mel and I went for a day hike up to the summit of Westkill Mountain in the Catskill Mountains.  We left early in the morning as it was almost a 2 hour drive.  When we left there was a thick fog covering downtown Albany.  By the time we got to the trailhead the fog was gone.

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Mel and I enjoyed a great day down in Woodstock, New York.  We started off the day with a hike to the summit of Overlook Mountain.  This is very fun hike, it’s about 5 miles round trip so it’s not too long.  It’s also not very difficult, basically fire roads almost all the way up.  At the summit there is a working fire tower which you are allowed to climb to the top.  You can enjoy terrific views from the summit as you are above all the trees.

Check out my previous post which shows a video I put together.  Below are some pictures from the day.  I will post more of when we were walking around town.

View the full gallery.

NOTE:  If you want to skip the story you can view the images here.

I completed my second Tinman, half an Ironman distance, triathlon yesterday.  The race took place in Tupper Lake, nestled up in the Adirondacks.  The events for this triathlon include a 1.2 mile swim in Raquette Lake (odd that it’s not Tupper Lake), 56 mile road ride and you finish with a 13 mile run.  I completed the race in 6 hours and 5 minutes.  This is slightly slower than my time two years ago and slower than I wanted to finish in, but I ran into a few issues on the bike (more about that below).

My goal for this race was to complete the race with roughly the same time from two year’s ago.  I didn’t know how realistic this was as I did not train as long or intense as I did the first time around.  Work and other stuff seemed to get in the way this Spring.  One major bummer was that the East Greenbush YMCA had their pool closed from February until June 22nd for repairs.  That meant I would have to go to a nearby pool to do workouts, which honestly didn’t happen.  I actually only did 4 pool workouts for my entire training.  Two in February and two the week of the race.

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This past Sunday I participated in a race I have not done before, a six hour mountain bike race.  Basically the race consists of you hoping on your bike and riding as many laps as you can in six hours. The race was hosted by Heather Rizzi, a pro rider now riding for GT Bicycles.

The race was at the trails in Schenectady’s Central Park. If you have not ridden these trails recently you really should get out there and give them a spin.  A full loop is about 5.5 miles.  At a race pace, the really fast riders can do it just under 30 minutes, I was able to ride a loop around 35 minutes.

There are lots of fun technical features on these trails, you get to experience bridges, logs, skinnies, and a small jump you can take which gives you a nice advantage over the easier but longer ride-around.

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I registered for my first race of 2009, the Tupper Lake Tinman.  I have plenty of time for training, as the race is June 27th.  It’s a half iron-man distance.  That breaks down to a 1.2 mile swim, 56 mile bike ride and a finish of a 13.4 mile run.  I completed the race two years ago and I had a blast.  Granted I will say the training gets pretty serious for a race of this distance in the final stretch, but it’s worth it.

I am currently just doing some pre-season workouts.  I will be putting together my final training program within a couple of weeks.  It will probably turn out to be around 15-16 weeks in length.

2009 is here, and that means resolutions and fresh starts for many people.  I have made a few goals for myself for the upcoming year.  I was dissapointed with myself for not doing any competitive triathlons or races this past season.  I know why, I was busy focusing on several large projects at work.  I was still able to keep active, I just didn’t maintain my race conditioning from the previous year.

kiwi

For 2009 I am getting back to racing.  I will be updating my race schedule within a week or two once I plan our the year.  Next week I start my pre-season training schedule, that means trips to the gym 4-5 days a week and watching my diet.

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