Thursday, July 10, 2008

Just another week...

It is always tough to go back to work after such an incredible weekend of riding. My road rash from the silly crash on Sunday kept me from sleeping well and Monday was not such a good day. Our after work road ride was okay, not too hard and not too soft.

Tuesday we hit the gym and did chest/shoulders/triceps. After work we went to dinner with Allison's dad so we didn't ride. I have such a hard time making good food decisions when eating out.

Wednesday we did intervals after work (1:30 on, 3:00 off, 2 sets of 3, 3 north and 3 south) on the road bikes. I have been going all out on the intervals and I fade quite a bit after the first few reps. Traffic and stop signs/lights are a total pain when trying to do intervals, the last north bound interval was interrupted by a red light and a right hand turn (crappy). I am starting to think that maybe we would be better off doing them up on SRP but would have to spend a lot of energy to get up there which means less energy to spend on the intervals. So far on these intervals I am only able to get my heart rate up to 179. I am not holding anything back though as I am drooling, gasping, and nearly passing out by the end of each "on" time. My HR profile just seems to plateau just under 180 during these efforts. I think next week we will probably try out some longer "on" time intervals like 3:00 or something to see how we respond.

Tonight we will be doing some dirt miles at Vail. I am hoping to put in some hard efforts, but I will be on the 'Box so we will see how that goes.

I have been pretty frustrated with my replacement frame from Niner. I should have received it last week and I still don't have it. Without a proper race bike I am glad we didn't pre-register for the Rim Nordic Stage Race. I wanted to give this race a go, but it just wasn't in the cards. Instead we will be doing some lift accessed DH stuff in Big Bear on Saturday followed by a training ride on Sunday. Maybe Sunday will be our first road century, maybe not... Allison needs to read her new bracelet!

Vacation plans have kind of taken a back burner lately. I am not sure what we will wind up doing. I was really looking forward to Crested Butte but Allison doesn't seem to really be getting excited over it. Certainly we have to figure it out soon if we want to hit the high country. I think I will try to do some work on our camping gear in the next few days.

I think my big vacation next year will be riding the Colorado Trail from Denver to Durango. I have done some research and I think it would make the perfect vacation. There are some significant challenges around taking on a huge bike packing trip like that. The adventure of it all should be pretty incredible!

No comments: