Hometown Days
For some reason this fall ended up being pretty busy. I guess that’s because I’ve got a busy job combined with a predisposition to always be doing stuff. Being on the road every weekend for a month racing ‘cross was super fun and pretty productive, but I’d been looking forward to these last two weekends at home in Bend for a while. And look at all the stuff that got done! I won't bore you with photos of how organized the garage is. But here's one of how rad the new garage is gonna look someday!
The main project is obviously building on my decent fitness in the last month to be even more ready for Nationals next weekend. This has been difficult. Sometimes November brings sun and 50’s and rad mountain biking in the desert. Sometimes it’s brings temps in the teens and a fair bit of snow. We got the latter, starting when I returned home from Colorado. Oh well, I can run, ski, ride the trainer (which I kind of hate) and ride outside in pretty abysmal weather to stay fit. Or rested at least… The plan seems to be working out although the last week has been tough, it’s a good thing I’ve got Bart and Brig over at the Rebound SPL to keep me slightly motivated to do workouts inside or things might have gone completely by the wayside…
Brig getting things set up for a session. I told him the wrong Lactate Threshold so my workout was really hard. Oops.
Fortunately, there was a local race two days after Thanksgiving up the street at The Inn at The Seventh Mountain. This meant that I could do a day on the trainer, a day of racing then hope for a day outside and end up with a solid block anchored by my favorite workout, the one where someone says “GO!” and you try super hard for an hour of fun and heavy breathing. The Crossflixation Cup course was super fun and coincided with a serious snowstorm. My morning warmup ride in 4”of fresh and still nuking had me wondering if I should stop at Carl’s and get some track spikes on the way to the race. Turns out the other categories had burned the track in pretty well for us by the afternoon. Thanks, other guys and gals. I figured I’d pretend it was Nationals and give ‘er from the gun, which resulted in promptly stacking on the fast snowy rad downhill and soaking my gloves. So, if I wreck at nationals, I’m going to stop at my car after a lap and get dry gloves so I don’t freeze my little fingers off for the next 55min. Other than that, it was totally like Nationals better be, some serious snow shredding combined with some serious heckling and snowball throwing from the local spectator crew. And I won. Good times and a good workout. Plus, the Inn has Apre-Ski all-you-can-eat chili starting at 3pm, just enough time to trade bike shoes for Sorels and head inside for some chili. They kind of expect you to have a drink too…
This part was REALLY fun. When I wasn't crashing. Really fun. And fast. And dangerous.
Hutch's Bike Shop manager John Frey was glad I lapped him with one to go so he could warm his shins up five minutes sooner. He wanted to borrow my sweet jacket for them. No deal.
In between all of the bike riding and whatever else it is that I do to stay really busy I got my snowmobile running so Josh and I could go skiing up in the high country in November. Novel idea. Day one didn’t work out so well…
Note open ski racks. Yup, I had to unload the "lifeboat" and go find Josh, who'd bailed waaay before it got this bad, to help dig out.
Second try on Monday was a little more productive. We skied a line on Broken Top I’ve been looking at for years but just never bothered wandering out and up to. Turns out it was worth it. Nothing like a classic line to close out a weekend of training…
P.S. I just joined Twitter. @A_Craig will have all kind of clever musings sometime soon... Maybe the other social networking site will follow soon... It's gonna be a long winter!