The Ride Part III

The Ride Part III

For me the ride is always the most interesting and most fun. We started from the paved road just below the cabin and headed down for a nice brisk 6 mile decent, the same one that I ran down the previous day. Its funny how altitude plays tricks on you, my legs and lungs were both hurting by the time we got to the bottom. What’s up with that? It’s supposed to be a decent! Hope this isn’t an omen for the rest of the ride!

We made our way into Chama proper to meet Steve and the kiddos. The kids were having a great time eating pancakes and Steve had this wonderful looking breakfast burrito with bacon and green chile hanging out the sides. I decided right then and there we were stopping for one of those on our way back through town.

The ascent to the top of the pass and the continental divide is an 8 mile, 2000(ish) foot climb. The scenery is spectacular! The road sports a smooth wide shoulder with plenty of room to weave side to side when the oxygen deprivation starts hitting. We left just a few minutes before the train started its trek up the pass and our loose goal was to beat it to the top. Right out of town the hills start but they are small and we stayed together as a group. When the hills started getting steep our nice little group fell apart as we started climbing at our pace. The “Leaving New Mexico” sign came up much faster that it did last year so maybe that’s a sign that I’m in better shape, or maybe it’s just the thin air playing tricks on me. Either way, it’s a great regroup point and we took full advantage of the rest stop. We had fun taking pictures of the train as it passed us and then it was time for the final assault on the summit. The train passes under the main road and I was determined to beat it to that passing, not really that hard but it’s a fine line between blowing up and making it to the pass gracefully. I could see the train on my left as it picked up speed, and luckily I had a nice downhill section where I could also pick up some speed. I pushed hard, determined to beat the train and felt like I was a cowboy trying to ride my horse ahead of the train to the safety of the other side. Yeah I was getting a little hypoxic. I beat the train to the pass and now I needed to beat it to the top! The final hill looks daunting, I saw it and wondered if I would even make it to the top much less beat the train. As it turns out its an optical illusion, while the it’s most certainty a good hill it’s nothing compared to what it looks like. Even after climbing the hill last year I was still fooled into thinking about how difficult the final ascent was. Having cleared the final big hill it was an easy ride into the train station. I handily beat the train, Nothing like racing 100+ year old equipment up a hill.

Next in was Jane and she also beat the train, Orlando, Hartley and Debi all made it to the top and we got to take a great picture.

The ride back to Chama was fantastic! Not TDF fast but it sure made up for the ascent. Back in Chama, Jane and I ordered our burrito (with double meat), it came just in time as I was starting to fade and seriously doubted I would make it back to the cabin. Orlando ordered a breakfast plate and Debi and Hartley rode back to the cabin.

Back on the road it was an easy ride to the cabin road but now we had that 6 mile hill up to the cabin plus an extra 2 miles to Corkins lodge to make an even 60 miles. Riding the hill wasn’t as bad as I feared and we made it without any problems. What a great ride with great friends.

Part II - the Swim

The swim was supposed to consist of a 2500 yard open water swim in Heron lake. After refueling from the run we goofed off a bit and I played around with the kids, face booked and generally relaxed. We had a few hours to kill while Steve was off riding to the top of the continental divide (He volunteered to watch the kiddos while we swim). We made it to the lake, trying to ignore the storm clouds building in the horizon, and got ready to swim. The water was perfect, the lake was calm, clean and we found a great spot to start from, but those darn clouds were looking ominous. We made it about 500 yards out before the first squall hit us. The waves started getting bigger and started capping, I looked up and saw lightning in the horizon. Our pleasant swim turned into a make it back to the shore as fast as you can type race. We all made it back to shore with just a few panic attacks. Debi’s fancy new GPS unit said we swam 1.25 miles in a little over 16 minutes. Yeah! Those new fancy wet suits sure help! The ugly truth is, she forgot to reset her previous workout so we only ended up doing about 1000 yards, which still isn’t too bad.

Back on shore we quickly packed up our gear and headed off to the cabin. We had a barbeque planed for the evening and despite our attenuated workout we were all still starving.

The evening’s activities consisted of rolling on the foam roller and watching a great documentary about hiking the continental divide from the south end of the US all the way to Canada. The first part of the show was focused on New Mexico and they showed the Continental divide monument which would be our destination on tomorrows bike ride. Those hikers are seriously crazy, It takes anywhere from 4-5 months to do the hike – that’s 20 miles per day, rain or shine. Serious stuff.

High Altitude Workout Training - Part I

High Altitude Workout Training (HAWT) as the ladies of the tri camp have designated it.

Debi and Hartely were incredibly kind enough to host a tri training camp at their cabin in northern New Mexico. Last year we had a “Race the Train” ride where we try to beat the Cumbers & Toltec train to the 10,022 foot continental divide. We had so much fun last year that we did it again this year except we threw in a run and an open water swim.

The weekend started early at with a half day of forced vacation. I was told early Thursday morning “either you use it or you lose it” so of course, I used it.

Fellow outlaw Orlando, my son and I drove the 2.5 hours to Chama and arrived at the cabin around 8:00pm, received a warm welcome and a table full of sandwich fixings, roast chicken and fruit. We promptly stuffed ourselves in preparation for the weekend’s activities and anticipated caloric deficit.

DP, hubby and twins arrived later that evening around 11:00 pm just in time to save me from impending doom in the jingo game that Debi and I were playing.

The next morning started off at a relaxed pace. No reason to get up early and run, the mountains are cool and it was late August so we got to sleep in. Everyone had different runs scheduled. Mine was about 18 miles but I figured I could cut it down a few miles because I was running hills and we were at 8000 feet. We all ran down to the paved road form the cabin, at the bottom everyone headed up the hill except me, I headed down. Now, down hill is not as easy as you would assume, especially at 8k feet! The first 6 miles of the run is a net loss and my legs and lungs were feeling it. It seems that I just couldn’t catch my breath and I chalked it up to the high altitude but by mile 5 I realized that not only was the altitude getting to me I was also having some asthma issues, funny how the altitude masked things. At the turn around point I used my inhaler and wow I could breathe! The run up the hill promised to be long and painful, and it was. By mile 11 I was spent and ended up taking a little walking break, which really helped. I pushed on past the road leading to the cabin and ran the rest of the way up the hill, another three(ish) miles to the end of the paved road to my turn around point. What a great feeling to start running down hill again!

My total run time was 2:39 for 16 miles at about 8k feet with an ascent of 2600 feet. I’m not sure my Garmin is lying to me or not about the 2600 feet, it just doesn’t seem right ( I think it's too much), but I don’t have a way to verify it. When I got back from the run Hartley was making breakfast and we had a great time talking about our individual runs.

Picture of me after the run. Yeah,I think it’s the gayest picture I’ve ever taken but hey, maybe the socks had something to do with it?

Swim workout Part II:

Yoga

I’ve been doing the same yoga for a couple of years now and decided it was time for a change. Since I had extra time on Thursday night I decided to do a hot Vinyasa yoga class. Normally I do the Bikrams yoga once or twice per week and while it’s certainty hot and I get dehydrated it’s very doable. The Vinyasa class kicked my butt! The poses aren’t particularly hard but the combination of 105+degree heat the second workout of the day conspired against me. At one point I thought I was going to pass out, which would have been a little embarrassing, it was a tough class.

The 6:00 am yoga class that I’m used to going to is very low key, little talking, not many people, serious and most folks are over 40 years old and generally a 50/50 split between men and women. The 6:00 pm vinyasa class is the complete opposite. Everyone was talking, laughing socializing, and three quarters of the class was under 30, female and the studio was packed. It was a totally different experience, and I really enjoyed it (minus the whole passing out thing). I think what surprised me the most is seeing what some of the women were wearing, I realized it’s hot and all but is that really a reason to wear next to nothing? I normally wouldn’t complain about these things but it was pretty difficult to concentrate and I kept falling over. The women didn’t seem to have a problem with what I was wearing, go figure.

I think I'll try and make a few more of these classes, it was a lot of fun and well worth the hazards of falling over. If you are looking for a hard workout look up a hot yoga studio.

More on the POJ

After a many requests to see my POJ, Okay, well, actually only one request. Here it is. I like to call vehicles like this a 50/50 vehicle. Now, I’ve been around cars all my life, grew up working on them, rebuilding engines, body work, paint, the whole nine yards. I know when a car has the potential to look good and I know some cars will never look good without a lot of body work or a paint job. This is one of those vehicles that look reasonably good as long as you don’t really look at it. Where was I, Oh yeah, the 50/50 truck. A 50/50 vehicle looks good from 50 feet away (when you can’t really see the details) or at 50 miles per hour (when you can only get a quick look at it). This is my 50/50 truck. Don’t look at the bent up fender/door the hood is bent and pounded back to a reasonable shape. The rust over the rear tires isn’t all that bad, all the scratches and little dents on the bed and front fender aren’t too noticeable. In the end, a good buffing, cleaning the rims and a little chrome polish go a long way toward making a POJ something that can be used as an everyday driver. At least everything works. Well almost everything, I still need to change three light bulbs, fix the drivers side seat so I don’t sink to the floorboard, and replace the broken bolt on the drivers side mirror so I can actually bolt the mirror on to prevent it from shaking sliding around. It’s getting there.

My POJ

I recently picked up a truck from a friend, who has been having some financial difficulties, and I was trying to figure out what to do with it. My first thought was to fix it up and let my middle daughter drive it. That thought was quickly nixed because the truck doesn’t have air bags and I wanted something a little safer for her to drive during her first few years of vehicular mayhem. So, I thought, it would be great to have a second vehicle at work so when I ride to work I would still have a vehicle to do errands in at lunch time, or have the ability to pick up kids from school in an emergency, and it would be kind of nice to just have a second vehicle. The University has a nice safe underground parking lot that is patrolled by security 24x7 and I can just park the truck there and use it when I need it. Sounds like a great solution to my bike commuter woes, it will be interesting to see how it plays out. The plan is to drive it in on Monday (with the bike in the back) park it for the week and drive it home on Friday (with the bike in the back).

The truck is lovingly referred to as the POJ – that’s Piece of Junk, or as I less decorously refer to it as my POC – piece of crap. My son was around when it was named so it’s officially the POJ truck.

The truck itself is fairly solid now and is actually kind of fun to drive. It’s been getting about 23 mpg in the city, which is much better than my F150. Unfortunately, I have more money in it than I paid for it. Mind you, all the work has been done by me and my son, so the money is in new and used parts, no labor.

Here’s a list of things that I have done to it.
Replace the gas tank - The old tank leaked whenever it had more than a quarter of a tank.
Replace the fuel filler hose – It would leak more gas on to the ground that got into the tank
Major Tune up – It almost flunked emissions – the tune up really helped
Replace the turn signal switch ( brake lights, and turn signals wouldn’t work with the old switch)
Oil change - normal stuff
Transmission oil change – Wow, it was bad, surprised it even shifted
New Battery – it died, when I was driving it home, I had to push the darn truck into the Checkers parking lot, my son was not impressed.
Replace all 5 tires – bad rubber = bad stopping power and drivability.
Replaced about half the lug nuts so they would be the same size, just incase I did get a flat.
Replaced one of the windshield wiper arms – the old one was zip tied together!
Replaced all shock absorbers - only one was actually working – I was getting sea sick driving the truck because it was bouncing so much!
Put a working stereo in it, I need my jams.
Replaced the steering wheel - the old was totally trashed, how do you trash a steering wheel?
Had to find a spare tire carrier at the junk yard to replace the rusted contraption that was under the truck

Replaced the air filter box – I had to get one from someplace in Louisiana
Pounded out the door and fenders so the drivers side door would open
Put bolts in said fender so it wouldn’t fall off.
Aligned the hood so it would open and close
Replaced about 7 light bulbs, including both headlights (still have three to replace but they are non critical)
Buffed out the truck so I wouldn’t get oxidized paint on me whenever I brushed up against it
Cleaned up the trash form the inside of the Cab
Replaced the shifter knob, how do you shift without a shift knob?
Fixed the doors so they actually open from the inside – great design idea.
The minor fixes go on an on.

On the bright side though, it has good brakes!

There you have, it my solution to not having a vehicle at work when I commute by bike. Now I don’t have an excuse not to ride everyday this summer.

Slow Start

This season, like many others has really been off to a slow start, if it’s not one thing it’s another! Every year I say I’m going to get a great start on the season and almost every year something comes up.

This year I had a Hernia operation, and while the operation and recovery aren’t necessary that bad the pre-operation slowdown was horrible. It’s been exactly two months since the discovery of “Ernie” (as he has been affectingly nick named) and I’m just now getting back into the swing of things. Next week I’ll start on my normal training load.

This weekends easy bricks were pretty tough on me and the scar formally known as Ernie. I’ve had this persistent muscle pain/spasm in my side since the surgery and on the bike ride it decided to start acting up. Wow, that was rough. Guess I did a little too much too soon. Oh well what’s a triathlete to do?

Funny thing: Before the surgery the Doc said he wouldn’t put any restrictions on me after two weeks of the surgery. He said it wouldn’t do any good anyway, “triathletes are always pushing their bodies to the limit”. Funny guy, he’s a runner…