Nothing too exciting here in Mike world..Didn’t ride, didn’t run, didn’t do anything except enter receipts into quicken for the 10 day vacation I was just on and then try to reconcile all the accounts.  Good times.

I don’t know what is going on for this weekend but I certainly need to get out and do something.  Sure, sitting around is a good time, but eventually (2 days) it gets pretty boring.  Hopefully we can take the dog for a walk and tire her out so she isn’t running all around the house for the entire weekend and maybe Kelly and I will get the fit pit rolling and burn some things.  I had planned on renting a log splitter and get the firewood ready for this winter, but honestly don’t know if that will happen.  I have all these grand schemes in my mind and I have a feeling none of them will happen.  But ya gotta love a 3 day weekend….

Both yesterday and this morning I tried to get up early and run.  I set the alarm for 6:45.  The first time I remember hearing it both days is 8.  For some reason, I am just not a morning person.

Yesterday I didn’t do much in terms of exercise.  We took the puppy for a walk to the local water hole and let her play around for a while.  It is about a mile and a half walk total, but letting the dog wipe out her energy supply is way more important some times.  I planned on running when I got home but until we went food shopping then got a chance to eat, it was already 9 o’clock.  Mike’s rule #1 - no running after 9pm.  Its just not going to happen.

Hopefully tonight after work I will get out and do something.  It is rather warm and humid so I might wait till dark, but then that always gets messed up because it is too late to do anything.  It is suck a pickle I am always getting myself into.  I would ride the bike, but all my riding gear is still dirty after the 24 hour race.  Sure its been 2 weeks since the race, but I have only been home for 3 of those days and laundry hasn’t been something that needs to get done. Maybe I should wash something then I could at least ride to work to make me feel a little better about myself.  I must say though , it does feel good going home and not doing anything and not feeling guilty about it because I now have nothing that I really need to “prepare” for.

I originally wanted to write a long post about my trip but to be honest, I don’t have it in me.  I spent the past 4 or 5 hours fighting with my computer to try and get my GPS working right and also my photos uploaded to the site.  Neither of them are currently working properly and I really have no idea why.  So the heck with it.  I have only gotten 4 hours of sleep in he past 40+ hours because of a messed up plane in Denver so I have decided to call it a night.  I will work on the computer stuff later.  Some time when my patience isn’t wearing thin.  I plan to get up early in the morning to go for a quick jog (working on a new training program) but at this point, I don’t know if it will happen.

WOW, it has been quite some time since I made a post and there are some good reasons for that.  First, lets talk about the 24 hour race.

It was one heck of a race.  Starting at noon with a 1k LeMans start (which meant I had to run 1k around a pond in bike shoes) put me in a spot of bother from the beginning of the race.  I haven’t run in quite some time and I never ran in bike shoes with STIFF soles that don’t bend one bit.  My first 2 laps were completely plaqued by cramps in both my quads and hamstrings.  After the second lap, I almost fell off the bike because I couldn’t straighten or bend my legs.  Not such a good time.  Good thing we had a massage therapist in our team camp and she started right away on working them out.  Did it help??  Probably, but I could feel the soreness the rest of the race.

Our team strateragy was simple, I ride a lap, the teammate ride a lap, I ride a lap, he rides a lap and so on and so forth.  This kept me on the bike for about 50 minutes with a 50 minute or so break each time.  Around 2am, we decided to take a 30 minute break between laps to talk things over and give a little rest.  This might have hurt us in terms of placing, but we weren’t out there to win.  With this being our first 24 hour race, we wanted to just be competetive and have a ton of fun.  DONE AND DONE.  Overall, we finished 5th out of  15 teams which was a shock to us.  The team did a total of 21 laps with me doing 11 of them.  Good times for sure and we are already putting together a training schedule to put us on top of the box next year.

After that, I took some time off the bike as my keister was a little sore.  Following those 3 days off, I am now traveling for about 10 days or so.  First I was in Ogden Utah for the Rocky Mountain Xterra Championship, congrats to Jamie Whitmore for winning the women’s race, then it was off to Driggs Idaho to check out Yellowstone National Park (which I thought was a bit of waste of time….nothing to grand in that place to be honest).  I can honestly say I don’t think I will visit Yellowstone again as it wasn’t so impressive.  Way to much of a tourist trap for me.  While driving along, I saw 4 18 wheeler trucks and 2 Budwiser trucks.  Seriously, I saw 2 Budwiser trucks going through the center of Yellowstone National Park.  You know something has become over populated when you see Bud trucks coming through it.  Next will be Grand Teton National Park for a wedding this weekend (one of Kelly’s friends) and hopefully that will be much better then Yellowstone.  Kelly has been taking around 200 pictures a day, so it will be a while until I get to sort through all of those and get them posted.  Hopefully next week when I return I can get that done.

Other than that, I’ve just been “keeping it real” and relaxing while on the road.  I will try to post again (and sort through all the photos) as internet is available.

This weekend was a good weekend for me, both on the bike and off. On Saturday I decided it would be a good idea to get some hill workouts in on the mountain bike. The best hill I could think of that was of decent length was the Red Tail Trail which is usually what most folks shuttle up and pseudo downhill down. Most use some sort of freeride or downhill bike. You can only imagine the looks I got as they came down in full body suits (a t least some of them were wearing them) as I was pedaling up the hill they were having so much fun coming down. The ride was a total of 3 hours. I would guess and say 1.25 of those hours were me in the granny gear/biggest cog combo pedaling up. Of course, it was during the hottest part of the day. Good ride, great workout.

Sunday I took the CB out of my jeep (which will now be for sale in case anyone is interested). A brilliant idea that was. I got into 4 wheeling with it so instead of a little hand held jobber, I have to hard wire a killer cb and speaker for it and all the bells and whistles. Of course I used it twice. Then I installed the sub box for my stereo that I started last year. Remember this project?? Well it is finally installed and sounding good.   I will try to take some pics of it sometime to post on here.  I didn’t mount the amp yet in its permanent spot yet, so some of the wiring is still a little sloppy.  Monday I didn’t ride being I am beginning my tapering down, Tuesday I started to build up the back up bike for the race and tonight I went for a quick 1.5 hour spin just to keep the legs moving. Except for the food I need, I think I am almost ready for this race..

The oddest part of this whole race thing is that since I am doing a 2 man team, I have been thinking about using this as a pre-race for a second 24-hour race that I was thinking about riding solo in the middle of Sept. I don’t want to count my chickens before they hatch, but I think this might be a possibility. I have to see how the body reacts to the first one before I sign me up for a second one. Plus it is only a month after the first. That might be the tricky part. I can’t help it though, as I am pedaling, that is all I am thinking about. I am sure that will change drastically this weekend. The good part is I’m not nervous about the pedaling part. I am just seeing it as another bike ride…….a long ride and I am excited about that. I think I have the sickness.

Instead of riding yesterday, we decided to watch the movie 24 solo.  I must say, it was one of the best mountain bike movies I have seen to date.  It followed Chris through some of his early season races and finished up with the 2006 24 Hour World Championship.  Great camera work, fantastic story, absolutely a great movie.  Certainly worth every penny I paid for it.  I have a feeling I will watch it over and over to get myself psyched up for the upcoming race.

I must say, thinking about doing a solo race and watching these guys is unbelievable.  In the finals, the laps were 8 miles and the leaders did 30 laps.  Unreal.  Then again, it almost killed the winner of the race.

No riding yesterday even though I wanted to.  My mind couldn’t take it. I walked out the door to ride the same 2 trails I always do and my mind stopped me and said “nope….you aren’t doing it.”  So instead, Kelly, myself and our trusty little companion, Campy, took the top off the jeep and went for a cruise to find some water to let the dog splash around in.  On the way back, we spotted a moose hanging out in the water so Kelly needed to take about 150 pictures of it so we sat and watched it eat.  Good times.  When we get some of the pictures off the camera of the moose and the dog, I will post them.

WOW, it is Thursday already. Time flies by when having fun. Onto the workouts. Friday went on a quick 20 mile warm up and did a hill repeat on Cathedral Ledge. Quite the hill. Quick note, before you decide and make up your mind on doing a hill workout, make sure you know the hill. This is the first time I went completely up the hill and goodness….its a dosey. Saturday I did a little work on riding/recovering. Went for a 2ish hour mt bike ride, came home and sat for 2 hours, went for 2 sat for 2 then finished up with another hour of riding. The main goal was to just see how the body reacted to on the bike off the bike and everything went well and as expected. Sunday, I went for a 40 mile ride on the road bike. It was supposed to be a recover ride, but I saw someone ahead of me, next thing I know, my competitive nature took over and I am going 30 mph head down, down in the drops giving it everything I can to catch and pass the biker ahead of me. After that, I figured what the heck and kept up the best pace I could. Monday was a schedule day off the bike to let legs and saddle sores heal up, but I got an email from DEA and a small group ride…..forget the day off the bike, I actually get to ride with someone else. We did a quick little lap that lasted maybe 1.5 hours or so total. Tuesday, completely off the bike so I took the dog for a walk to stretch the legs and keep them moving. Yesterday, commuting and same old loop I always do for about 3 hours on the single speed.

Those were the rides….all good in building up. This weekend I have at least one planned long ride with a good climb, but I am still working the details out on that one. I must say I need to start going on more group rides. Every time I ride, it is a combination of the only 3 trails I really know in the area and most of the times, I do all of them at least twice. It is really starting to wear on me mentally. I think I need to join up with some of the Red Jersey rides to learn a little more of the trail network in this area.