Thursday, July 9, 2015

Recent outdoor adventures

This past month we have gotten out on a few outdoors adventures, a few together thanks to having babysitters or hauling the kiddos along, and a few alone.
A few weekends we set off on our first real hike with two children in tow.  It is quite an accomplishment just remembering everything we might need for both kids, let alone the actual hiking. We hiked up from Aecherli pass  to Arvigrat, and it was quite a steep incline. John has to do much more work carrying Hannah when she is done "hiking", but Elliott is not the lightest these days.  All in all the 3 hour hike when very smoothly, except for me thinking about how sore my legs were going to be for our next adventure that was occurring in just 2 days....


John had to use a vacation day by the end of June that he had carried over from 2014, or he would loose it. Our friend Tammy was able to watch H and E, so John organized a bike ride for us that would go over two mountain passes. He has always wanted to do a bike ride like this together and this was our chance. I did thankfully get out on my bike more than normal the 3 weeks before our bike ride, as I was quite nervous for it. The first pass that we rode was Klausenpass, and it was my type 1400 meters of gradual climbing over 24 km or so.  I really did enjoy this pass, I was tired, enjoyed it.

Then from the top we rode down into the town of Glarus, where we had lunch and I had to decide if I had enough energy to continue or if we should take the train back.  I knew we wouldn't have many opportunities to do a ride like this together, so despite the heat and my fatigue I decided to continue.  The next pass, Pragel was only 1,000 meters of climbing but was quite steep at the end.... I was very happy to reach the top! Then to my surprise the first half of the descent was VERY scary for me, steep, windy, and bumpy.... and my hands were so tired that I couldn't squeeze the brakes too well.... I was just praying for safety!

 Thankfully we made it down safe and arrived in Schwyz with 2 minutes to spare for our train ride back to Altdorf... and of course finished it all off with a beer by the lake.



Our daily view and a perfect spot for a beer after a long ride

Last weekend John woke up at 3 AM on Saturday to ride three passes on his bike, Furka, Susten, and Grimsel... yes he is crazy!  He was getting a good training ride in for next weekend. He will be doing a 3 day bike tour through the mountains, sounds very intense to me!



I also got up early on Sunday, I am trying to get up early 1-2 times per week to get my workout in, to do a good long hill run. It was a 90 degree day, so running at 6 AM was the best option anyways. I did a run partway up the Buochserhorn and made it into a loop totally 1:45 of running, my first longer run since Elliott!  Now off to eat some more ice cream!