Colorado trail

The honeymoon plans are starting to come together. Fifteen days backpacking the northern half of the Colorado Trail in September. Lots of planning involved but once we’re out on the trail, it’s the simple life: The only decisions to make – where do we camp? what do we eat? The inner calm takes hold and you truly feel part of the world around you. I cant think of a better way to start our married life!

I guess this means I’ll have to get out of the saddle and start getting used to moving around on my two feet again. After the Breck 100 of course.

Chalk Creek XC 2010

I had to get some racing in this weekend so I drove on down to Nathrop for the Chalk Creek Stampede.

Got 2nd place in the Cat 1 30-39 race. I was leading at the end of lap 1 when I slowed up to take a drink/gel and two riders blew by me. By the second lap another rider (David Ochs) had caught me but we worked together over the next two laps to reign in Jonathan Davis who was running #2. The three of us were battling it out for 2nd when we hit the double-track section on the final lap. I heard someone groan behind me and I knew someone was hurting .. time to put the hammer down. I attacked and didn’t look back. I kept a 10 second lead over David to the finish. Turns out I was “only” 40 seconds from 1st place but I know I could’ve caught him if I had one more lap. Total time 1:53:30. Went by in the flash of an eye compared to the longer rides/races I’ve been training for.

The course was pretty fun. Basically just fast sandy doubltrack, fast sandy singletrack, one short climb, one short descent and a super fun singletrack along the creek.

7 hours in the car was a bummer. On the other hand, the drive was b-eautiful so it wasn’t too bad.

I could barely climb out of bed my legs were so stiff from saturday’s 4 hour tempo ride. But somehow my legs were able to come around. I feel like back-to-back hard days are really the way to go for big fitness gains. When you train hard for a few days in a row – you can race even harder and recover even faster.

Time for sleep, food, wine and other domestic pleasures. Tomorrow it’s back to work.