Weekly Newsletter: January 27th - February 2nd, 2025

This week flew by! We checked out a few local restaurants, upgraded some gym equipment, and managed to sneak in a powder day at Snowbird! 🎉

Check out our new posts and videos 🆕 🎥 📝

Lodging on the Camino: From Hostels to Hotels

Keith and I enjoyed the various and inexpensive options for lodging along the Camino de Santiago. Each night was a little different and offered different amenities.

Keith and LindseyLindsey Huster

Keith's continued training efforts 🚴‍♂️🏋️

Keith has continued his consistent training efforts. Each day, he performs a series of physical therapy suggested exercises designed to promote improved knee stability and balance. These include simple exercises such as banded clamshells, hip bridges, banded monster walks, weighted tibialis raises, and calf raises.

Keith has also been spending time on his Stages SB20 indoor trainer. The weather has been very cold and there has been a lot of ice on the roads so it was smarter to stick to indoor training this week. Keith has been continuing to use Zwift as a means for keeping his indoor training sessions challenging and fun.

Keith has also continued with his heavy weightlifting regimen. These heavy workouts are crucial to ensure that his body will be resilient to the demands of the Tour Divide race.

Date night dinner at Mi Ranchito 🌮 🇲🇽

For date night this week, we headed to Mi Ranchito in Orem, UT for some delicious, authentic Mexican dishes. This local Mexican restaurant serves up mouth watering dishes in a fun and festive atmosphere.

Lindsey ordered the lobster quesadilla, her favorite go-to Mexican dish. Keith branched out and ordered the Enchiladas De Mole. Both of our meals were very flavorful and huge! We each had enough leftovers to take home with us for lunch the next day.

Weight training upgrades 🏋️💪

Keith made a couple of important upgrades to our weightlifting equipment this week. Due to Keith's prior ACL injury, it's important that he always train his remaining hamstrings to keep his knee healthy. Until now, Keith has been using the Kensui EZ-Boot MAX for this purpose. This is a simple weighted boot that allows Keith to perform hamstring curls. Keith also uses this boot to perform isometric leg extensions to help build his patella tendon strength.

Recently, Keith has started to max out the safe/comfort loading of this boot. So, Keith ordered an adjustable weight bench that includes a leg extension / leg curl attachment. This will allow Keith to continue to increase the load on both his hamstring curls and isometric leg extensions. This adjustable bench also has the added benefit of supporting incline and decline upper body exercises as well.

Keith also ordered a pair of Balancefrom 55 lbs (25 kilograms) bumper plates and a set of Balancefrom 25 lbs (11.3 kilograms) bumper plates. He found an amazing deal of less than $88 USD for both sets! That's over $150 USD off the retail price. These bumper plates will allow Keith to continue to increase his heavy trap bar workouts including deadlifts, squats, and RDLs.

Sleeper powder day at Snowbird ⛷️ ❄️

Saturday may have been the best day of skiing all season at Snowbird! We knew there was a chance for a sleeper powder day so we left our house super early in order to beat the canyon traffic. The early morning wakeup was totally worth it! We hit powder lap after powder lap until we were both too tired to ski anymore. 😄 We didn't get too many pictures that day due to the heavy snowfall and we were just having too much fun to stop.

Keith also took a major spill on his last run of the day. He was skiing through an untouched powder field near the runout below Great Scott. He had skied this same area earlier that day without issue. This time though, he went a little further left which turned out to be a big mistake!

At the last second, Keith realized that there was a creek/ditch hidden under a couple feet of untouched powder. Keith tried to absorb the impending impact but the depression was far too deep to ski through. Keith ended up double-ejecting out of his bindings, flying through the air, and eventually landing on his head. Thankfully, he landed in a couple feet of soft powder but he still hit hard enough that he was seeing stars for a couple of minutes.

Keith eventually recovered from the initial shock of the crash and began to collect his skis and gear that had went flying during the crash. Special thanks to Steph for sticking with Keith and helping to retrieve his ski that ended up stuck in a nearby tree. Thankfully, Keith didn't have any lasting injuries from the wreck other than a small headache and some minor soreness in his upper back. 😅

Massive crowds and high winds at Snowbird 🌬️ 😞

On Sunday, we were hoping for a repeat of the amazing conditions that we experienced on Saturday. Unfortunately, mother nature had other plans. The predicted storm really fizzled out and didn't dump much snow overnight. The temperature also soared to nearly 60°F (15.6°C) which created heavy, sticky snow conditions. High winds also accompanied this weather pattern change which caused multiple lift closures across the resort.

All of this resulted in massive crowds at the Gad Valley lifts since they were the only operational lifts on the mountain. We made a couple of early laps and then quickly decided to call it a day. Between the poor snow conditions, continuing high winds, and the massive crowds, it just wasn't worth sticking around.

Breakfast at La Barba Coffee 🍞 ☕

After leaving Snowbird due to the crowds, we decided to stop at La Barba Coffee in Draper, UT for a late morning breakfast and coffee. This trendy coffee house serves a delicious assortment of fancy toasts and pastries along with the standard coffee house drinks.

Lindsey ordered the lox with cream cheese toast and Keith ordered the blueberry with almond butter toast. We each also ordered a large latte. The coffee was incredibly smooth and flavorful. The toasts were also quite good as they were served on what appeared to be homemade sourdough bread.

Upcoming posts and videos 👷‍ 👷‍♀️️

Lindsey is continuing her work on the post series from our three-week adventure along the Camino De Santiago, Portuguese Route! Those posts are being published as she has time. We also have several prior trips that we haven't yet shared, so be sure to subscribe to our blog if you haven't done so already.

We hope that you are enjoying our newsletters. Winter is in full swing, how are you spending your winter season? Let us know in the comments section below.👇 💬