Vacation...

is so choice. Today's ride was just a really nice spin with a fully loaded bike and a focus on being smooth in the technical stuff. I only took one picture today because I was having too much fun. Alpha Blondy's Apartheid is Nazism is one of the best albums I've ridden to. I had both earbuds in and, when the trail was wide enough, I was weaving from berm to berm like a kid. This is a pretty easy week for training. That all ends with a nasty session on Sunday. It's a ride that I was having a real hard time putting together with all the snow we have up high but, like most things, I was making the logistics harder than they needed to be. In the end I found the perfect ride for the training plan and.....it was right out the front door the whole time.

Overnighter

This weekend's training called for a brief overnighter. Originally I was going to ride in Leadville but the trails are still buried under snow up there so I went back to Buena Vista. Year's ago when I first started coming to Colorado, BV is where I spent my non-teaching summers and it's where I wanted to live. I was actually offered a teaching job in their high school before moving out here but I simply could not afford to work for that little pay.

I rode up to a ghost town just north of BV. The cabins there were actually used during the mining days of long ago and they are kept preserved. Everybody and their rowdy brother was in the mountains to play this weekend (nothing says the great outdoors like Lynard Skynard being blasted out of 6x9's) so I knew finding solitude would be difficult. I did get a bit of rain off and on but nothing major. Last night I was scrambling to look for a place to camp and finally settled on an isolated spot right at 9. I was up and moving by 7 this morning and got in another 4 hours. I saw lot's of cool things.

Untitled from Chris Neumann on Vimeo.

I also learned quite a bit from this ride. Changes that I made over last year's setup (that I thought would be way better) proved not so much. I ate/drank more than I ever have before and I ate good stuff too so that will likely remain (although I did bring too much food). I also had a lot of time for reflection (particularly today). The kind of riding I did for this trip was different than you find on the CTR. There was no singletrack at all and it was probably more along the lines of the Tour Divide. With the CT, you have to pay so much attention to the trail that you don't do an awful lot of looking around unless you're stopped. On the fire roads, I was able to rubber neck everywhere. I really had a good time. That doesn't mean that I'm not excited about this year's race but it does mean that I think I'm ready for something else. I just need to get the monkey off my back this year for my mind to really go along with that plan because, up to now, considering starting something else before I finish this has not been an option.

Hope you're all well.

Owl update

Well the owl I found the other day actually did have a broken tibia and fibula. That I suspected. What I didn't expect is the second injury. It appears that some A-hole shot the owl.

He got his wing taken care of today and he is eating well. I'm gonna go see him in the morning. I'd sure love to know who shot him.

Tour Divide

It's just about 2 weeks away now. There should be about 75 racers starting in Banff and 15ish starting from the Mexican border. The big concern this year is with regard to snow in the north.

This picture was taken about a week or so ago up in Rocky Mountain National Park. This is not on the TD route but snow pack is about the same in the Canadian sections and into Colorado as far south as Boreas Pass (which is Breckenridge). Banff got more snow this morning. Some racers are actually talking about bringing along snowshoes and I think they're serious. Many sections are being re-routed due to the snow and some people are even changing their travel plans to now due a northbound race in hopes that conditions improve with the extra time.

This picture shows more images of the snow pack (10 days ago) from the Flathead Wilderness section of the route in the far north. Flathead is special place by itself. I believe it contains the largest population of carnivores in North America. No shortage of Grizzlies, mountain lion's, wolves, Black Bear, Lynx, etc. The snow looks to be a deal breaker this year I think.

Cordillera

This book is about ultra-racing along the Tour Divide route. Probably the best thing about this book is that 100% of the proceeds go to a college fund that was setup for a 4 year old girl named Linnaea Blumenthal. Her father Dave was the victim of a fatal crash in last year's TDR that happened just north of the Steamboat Spring's area. Whether you're researching things to make an attempt at this route or you just wanna live vicariously through others that have done the route, this is the book for it.

Order it here.

Tonights workout was just under 3 hours of moving time with over an hour of Zone 4 intervals. I am cooked. This finished up the first 3 week block of training. I'm too tired to type.

Today I found myself being both jaded and bitter at work due to some issues that don't deserve any further duress as I am washing my hands of them. It rained, hailed, and snowed all day long. I was supposed to do interval work tonight and I knew that I would have no problem hitting the numbers with some extra aggression sprinkled in. I actually had a break right at 3 so I busted home, got changed and hit the road. I rode down the pass a bit and then hit my turn around point and started coming back up. My intention was to actually do my intervals on a steep little climb that leads up to Rampart Range Road (just above town). But...I hit Zone 5 pretty quickly on the way back up and decided to let some anger out. Then I decided to just do repeats there. It wasn't the safest setup with wet roads and people coming home from work yakin away on their cellulars and fumblin around trying to light a smoke or read a text but. Intervals 2 and 3 were in nasty rain and the temps were dropping quickly. #4 was the moistest snow I think I've seen. I maintained right at 178 (even saw 180 at times) for all the interval work.

Thanks irritations at work!!

And, of course, the skies are clearing now. Eat a dog turd Mother Nature.