A welcome recovery week!

As most of you know I’m training for several things at once. Long term goal is the Ironman St Geroge in May of 2010, which I’m a little nervous about because of the bike profile, but that’s an entirely different post. Short term goals are the Colorado relay (Sept 11-12, Palo Duro 50k (October 17) and Beach to Battleship iron Distance race (November 17).

I’m less worried about Beach to Battleship than I am about the Palo Duro 50k, which is really strange. B2B will be my 4^th Ironman and I’ve never done a 50k run so I guess I’m nervous about the unknown as opposed to the bigger race. The Colorado Relay is hard but lots and lots of fun!

The training for both short term goals is going really well and I’m at the end of a four week build period that has been pretty intense. Each weekend has been a very tough workout and I haven’t missed a scheduled weekday workout, my fitness has steadily been improving and I’m gradually getting down to race weight..

This weekends run was a 20 mile hard trail run where I spent the majority of the time in zone 3 and zone 4, Not good, but running in the foothills east of Albuquerque makes it easy to push much harder than you would normally do your long run at.

After the run was supposed to be a 3500 yard swim but due to cramps in both lower legs I just couldn’t get past 2500 yards. Every time I would push off the wall one calf or the other would cramp. By the time I decided to call it quits both feet were also cramping. I’m not sure if the cramping was due to dehydration, stress from running the foothills or just an electrolyte issue.

The weekend’s bike rides were great, the main group did about 80 miles and two of us decided to get an extra climb in and did an extra 20 miles in the process. Nice even 100 miles for the first ride. The next days ride was a famous coffee ride. We ride out to Bernalillo (about 17 miles one way) get coffee, pastries or whatever and ride back home as a group. The coffee ride is a totally social and a welcome break to the intense training that we have been doing preparing for our various races.

This week is a very welcome recovery week, well, if you can call running a 170 mile relay race recovery!

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.