Got another 4 hours in today and I feel great. I think I may have my nutrition figured out. I tried something new yesterday and today and it seems to be working. Really excited about that since I don't know squat about nutrition. I eat whatever I want and I love good micro-brew. But I did a ton of research, asked a load of questions and tried different things.

I started out riding more forest roads today. Temps were much nicer and, for once, I didn't wake to the sound of lawnchairs being moved around out on the deck. After 3 hours on the forest roads, I noticed a nice looking singletrack that I'd never seen before. I took that and it gave me another hour of fun. I actually did take some pictures today but they are from the camera phone so they might not be the greatest.

the # 30 sucks.

After sleeping in until noon or so, I made my way outside to temps in the high 30's and winds gusting to 30 mph. The plan was to spend some time grinding it out on forest service roads. I thought I might be able to avoid some wind up on Rampart Range with all the trees covering me. But alas...the wind always seemed to find me. The climb from the front door up to the top of the ridge is 7 miles but it takes an honest hour to get up it. For some reason I dig that climb. It started snowing as soon as I made it to the top.
There is a FS road that heads to Denver so I started plodding along in that direction. After about 50 minutes of that, I was pretty frozen so I decided to turn around and head for lower elevations. There's a killer downhill singletrack that bombs back down and puts you 5 or so miles down the mountain from town so I hit that and only dealt with a bit of snow before making my way back up towards home. Of course I had to deal with a headwind as I climbed up to Woodland. When I made it home I had 3 hours and 6 minutes in and felt good. I considered going further but decided to go in and eat and sleep. No school Monday and I think I feel a cold coming on so I better stay home and ride on Tuesday. Hoping to get some decent time in this weekend.

No pictures today b/c the camera phone is horrible and it's a pain bringing the good camera along. Thanks.

Good advice

I knew TK would be the perfect corner man during the preparations for this race. He's been in the game for a long time, he's got a load of knowledge, and he doesn't mind sharing it with open minds. That's precisely why Dan Schmatz looked to him to be a part of the THF crew. Thanks for settin' me straight with my training man. I've gotten back to back 2 hour dirt rides in now and am looking to do the Lost Creek Wilderness detour this weekend.

The Buddha dog

Apparently Dharma is the Buddha dog. She was scheduled for surgery yesterday but the bump on her head has been going away slowly over the last week. I took her in anyway so the experts could look at it. No need for surgery. She fixed it on her own. She's the miracle dog. Now if only she would fix her breath. When I wake up at 2 in the morning and smell her mouth I'd swear there was a seal in the bed.

That's wack

Well after one (count it) one day on my polar trainging program...I'm bailing. Just not sure a mass-produced, PC generated program is gonna get me to Durango in less than a year. It wanted me to do 3 sets of intervals this week and the heart rates it wanted me to maintain were silly. I hit those heart rates when I get up to pee at night. I can't even think about climbing a hill at 128-147 beats per minute.

Huge thanks to my friend TK for being such a big help in this adventure. The guy is so knowledgable about training and he made some suggestions to me that make a lot of sense. So I'll be taking his advice from here on out. We were team mates from long ago and he knows me and my fitness pretty darn well. He also knows a thing or two about doing very well in bike races. I'm really excited about the punishment that's coming.

Windy

Woke up at 6:40 to a strange sound. The first two times I heard it, I thought it was left over dream stuff. Finally pinned it down to the fairly hefty chairs on the deck being pushed around by the wind. One thing I've noticed about Colorado is that the wind always swirls. It's like riding in a friggin' tornado. A 20 second tail wind comes around and almost pushes you off the bike before it comes around and smacks you right in the face. Today when it was a headwind, I was absolutely forced to rely on the "superheroes voice". It's that voice when you grunt and say things like; "Must........keep.......pedaling." "This.......is........gonna..........be........trouble." It's kinda good though b/c it really simulates the long, slow climbing that I know is imminent come July.

My little Polar 4 week plan kicks in on Monday but I'm slowly building up and it usually doesn't take me too long once I'm able to get some good rides in. Four hours on the bike today was a struggle just cuz of the wind though. It's silly to pedal down a mountain and have to stand while pedaling only to have to crawl back up again due to a shift in wind. Really irritates me that I'm out there riding at what feels like a snails pace when I know full well that this is the scene back at the house:



Love that damn dog.

Time to get serious...and stuff

I haven't used a heart rate monitor in eons. I picked up a new Polar CS200 and, I gotta say, this things pretty slick. Over the years of dealing with students and trying to improve their math and reading levels, I've become a bit of a data dork. I'm constantly crunching numbers and can always provide parents with daily numbers that indicate both of those levels. I never really was that way with heart rate but I don't think there'll be much room for error come July 28.

Polar provides a site where you can keep a diary and it crunches data for you and will even spit out a program for you. Today I had it program a 4 week plan for me just to see what it looked like. It seems ok I guess. I don't know. I'm feeling like an idiot. This type of ride is completely new to me.