Long naps, good food, and easy riding.......

What a great weekend! Friday nite I got home in time for a quick trainer ride and then headed over to the in-laws for some grub. Hit the hay early so I could get up and ride with the VMS crew down to Vilano and back on Saturday morning. This would be a perfect ride because I was wanting to get in about 2-1/2 hours and these triguys (and trigals) ride pretty steady. So up at 0-dark-hundred and out on the road by 7. It was still dark out until close to 730 - not that I'm looking forward to Daylight Savings - but at least it will help the morning rides a lil bit. Had a nice tailwind on the way down, which meant a stiff headwind coming home. Still not too bad, and ended up getting in close to 3hrs in the saddle. After that, I took a looooong nap while semi-watching the Gators DEVOUR some cats......sorry about that Blue. Then we headed out for a going away party for some of friends that are moving to Boston. We ended up staying pretty late, so I slept in and missed the group run. That worked out alright, because I had about 3 weeks of laundry to catch up on anyway. Spent most of the day doing that and other things around the house. Towards the afternoon, I was finally getting caught up on my household duties, so I decided to "work" out in the yard.

God Bless the inventor of the hammock. I was instanly out cold with the gentle breeze and the perfect mid70's temp. BUT, then I got a wake-up call from my favorite training partner.......

The Stephanator was ready to hit the road for a little spin..... so I made sure that my road bike was still working and we hit the road.............We cruised through the land of condo's i.e. Jax Beach and headed towards Atlantic Beach. Its only about 6 miles away but there are ALWAYS some good sights out on the road. We even found this rad uni-cycler with fannypack on his way home from the pub. Weird.

Once we hit Atlantic Beach, things settled down. But we did see this house with a terrible insect infestation.

No wonder the neighbors were looking to get out of there. Still probably a little out of our price range, though. A little further down, we hit the turn around ....................................... and then Steph put the hammer down.
After that, we headed on back to the 'hood.

We ended the night with some killer fresh linguini pasta mixed with broccoli rabe, roasted chicken, pine nuts, and freshly grated parmesan and awesome fresh garlic bread from Fresh Market. Deeeee - lish. Oh yeah, and after me and Blue discovered these on this past Thursday, I went to the corner store to pick up some Dead Guy's. Good stuff. Highly recommended.

So I ended the week with a little over 9hrs of easy riding. This week is a little more volume, and I'm throwing in some intervals towards the end of the week. Right now i'm 5weeks out from the race at Felasco. I'll be ready.

-sbc

Can't sit still.......

So I took two weeks and did (pretty much) nothing. I ran maybe three times and rode once. Not any kind of "training", that's for sure. I did get to practice my beer and french fry consumption, though. I'm definitely an expert when it comes to that now! But after being fat and happy for two weeks, i'm ready to get moving again........

So, as I sat in the Toronto airport on Sunday night waiting for my plane (and drinking a beer, eh) I came up with a little "mini-plan" geared towards the race at San Felasco at the end of November. Its six weeks out, so I figure I can put about 2wks of easy miles in, then about 3wks of some build workouts with some intensity, then give myself a slight taper and be ready for the race on the 30th. Easy enough. So this week, is "only" 9 hrs - most of which will be on the trainer watchin tv. Fun stuff. It does feel good to be riding again.

Also, i've decided to run the 26.2 with Donna in February. This will be my first marathon and I'm gonna use the training and prep as run-base work for the 09 tri season. I figure its a worthy cause, a great route (no better place than Jax Beach!), and Tony J. will be running it also. So, I will be keeping about 2 runs a week in the mix - but mostly 30-45 min ez jogs. That way, as soon as I'm done with my mtb race, I can kick off a 12-wk plan at the beginning of November and be good to go for February 15th. My goal is 4hrs or better - preferably "better" --> so, that equates to a little over 9 min miles for 26.2....... Sounds ez, but I've yet to surpass the 15 mile distance, so I know those last 11 will be the "fun" ones. Oh well, goals are good, right? So now its out there!

Back to Reality (Tahoe Race Report)

The worst part about taking a vacation is when its over and you realize you have to go back to work. This past 10 days has been awesome and it was the coolest race trip / honeymoon that I could have asked for. We flew out last Thursday to Reno where we picked up our rental car and then headed over to Incline Village. For a Floridaboy I think I drove pretty good in the hills but i did get passed by an 80+ year old guy in a cadillac on those mountain roads (along with the other 10 cars that I was holding up! ) I guess I was too busy taking in the scenery!! Probably not a smart thing to do, but oh well. We stayed at the Hyatt - which was the host hotel and the race venue was literally out our back door - so it was really nice to be able to check out the expo and preride and be back in our room within minutes.

Here's the view from our the Hyatt -->

FedEx lived up to their word and got my bike to Village Ski Loft on time and without any damage. Definitely saved a couple of bux on that one cuz i heard the airlines were chargin in excess of $200 bux (one-way!!)....... After our normal room switcharoo (we always seem to get put RIGHT NEXT TO AN ELEVATOR for some reason) - we got settled in and I got in a great preride while Steph hit up the Spa....... I think that Steph would like going to races more often if there was always a spa that she could go to while i ride. It seemed to work out perfect for both of us! The trail that the race was on consisted of a long climb up some jeep road towards the infamous Flume Trail. The climb wasn't technical at all - but just relentless and long...... I knew i would have to pace myself come race time. Here in Florida our climbs are short power climbs that you can attack and just power your way through - but this was the real deal where you had to sit and spin (and spin and spin and spin and spin - you get the point) ..........

Here's some pics from the Flume Trail on my preride.......

So, after a couple of days of ez prerace workouts and some much needed chillin - the race day was here! This had been my goal race of all year -THE XTERRA USA NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIPS......... back in last December, i had decided that i would forego the usual mountain bike racing scene and just concentrate on this Xterra series to be able to get to this race. It really motivated me this year to have this goal, as i have trained harder and more consistently than ever before. It was a lot of fun and hard work, but i feel like I made some real gains in fitness and learned a lot about training and racing. Special thanks to Shawn Burke of Velocity Multisports for settin me up at the beginning of the year with with a solid plan and some guidance to get me where i needed to be. I knew this race was gonna be a tough one, as everyone i've talked to says how different it is than the other races on the circuit. Sure enough, the cold temps and the climbing on the bike section were definitley not something I was used to, but I survived nonetheless. The swim was a lot harder than expected as I went out hard as I normally do, but just couldn't get my breath back at the first buoy, which is where I normally can recover by. At this point i started to panic - cuz i've never felt like that before and had to just tread water for a couple of minutes (felt like an hour) but eventually I got my breath back and finished the lap. Steph got a picture of me as I was going in to lap #2 and I look ruff!!! As I was walking back into the water I looked up and saw the lead group hitting the second buoy, it was definitley humbling, to say the least. I ended up finishing the swim and feeling alright once I knew that I couldn't go as hard as normal. Its funny, even though you read stuff and people tell you how you are going to feel, you still have to figure it out for yourself. Lesson #1 learned. The bike was good - just went semi-easy up the climb - still was passin a ton of people - mainly because i had come out of the water so far back from usual ..... didn't start seeing any one from my class until the top of the climb but I picked off a few guys here and there and definitely put some gaps in on the descent. That was definitely the funnest part of the trail - there was a rocky but flowing switchback section that you could just FLY down and each turn I would sling it around -- I was smiling big and just loving this section. After that was the Tunnel Creek downhill section where it was WIDE OPEN....... only had 1 instance where I almost flew off the mountain, but other than that i kept it under control. Then back to transition for the run........ this run was ez by xterra standards - pretty mellow little climbs but really twisty with a few rocky sections and log crossings but I liked it alot b/c it was a double looper so you could pace yourself a lot easier.

Steph and BigBlue were all over the course cheering me on so that was cool. At one point on my first lap, I look back and see a black and blue blur haulin towards me - turned out to be James Walsh. I got confused because I knew there could be no way i was in front of him - but then i realized he was on his second lap and me on my first - again - HUMBLING!! (That dude is sick-fast and a really nice guy btw. Good luck to him in Maui in a couple of weeks!) So, I ended the race at 3hrs and 25min - definitely a long one compared to the others that I've done.

So with this year's Xterra series coming to a close i've got some things in mind for next year already. I learned a lot and had a ton of fun so next year should be a good one. I'm gonna enjoy the next couple of weeks of unstructured training and just get in some rides and running when I feel like it. Looking forward to some nite-rides with Tony J and some ez trail running in the cooler weather (coming soon i hope)....... oh and I think the Stephanator has been building up a huge-mongous list of home improvement projects around the house..............maybe i'll figure out a way to make household chores some sort of cross-training........

Come on 5 o'clock.......Come on.........

Remember that last day of school in fifth grade when all you could think about is summer vacation? Just waiting for that clock to roll around was the worst torture ever....... well, that's about how I feel RIGHT NOW. I'm so ready to get out of here and get the show on the road. It's been a while since my last vacation - I'm definitely needing a RECHARGE. With switching jobs last year, i lost my two weeks of vacation - so this is my first full vacation since the 2006 North Carolina trip with Steph.

So, besides the racing at Tahoe, we'll be headin over to San Francisco to check out Mt. Tam State Park and also taking an Alcatraz tour.

Its gonna be cool. Also, have a night planned out in Healdsburg, which is going to be real nice.

Breaking News:

So I just checked the weekend forecast for Incline Village --

Saturday: Snow likely. Mostly cloudy, with a high near 44. Chance of precipitation is 60%.
Saturday Night: A slight chance of snow showers. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 32.
Sunday: Partly sunny, with a high near 47.

Uh..............i don't quite know what to say about this..............