Back to the Grind

Back to work today after my 10 days off riding in Dixie. I had one final misshap during my road ride on Sunday. Blew a sidewall on my rear tire and needed to use the dollar bill trick to boot it so I could get back home. It was a great trip and I gained a lot of useful info to prepare me for race season. The most important thing I need to work on is my core strength. Any time I put out any kind of real extended effort my back starts to tighten which forces me to reduce my pedaling output long before my legs or lungs give out. I had this problem to a limited extent last year but it is far worse this year. I believe that my weight training this winter created a muscle imbalance between my legs and core and that the added power in my pedal stroke is overloading my core strength. I have a month till Cholla so I'm going to increse my core training quite a bit to try to rectify the problem.

Blown

75 mile road tour through the slickrock canyons and redneck towns in the mountains NE of St. George yesterday and five hours of city limits dirt today. I'm blown. My legs ache, my back aches and my ass is raw. If my car was fixed yet I'd probably pack up and head back to SLC tomorrow, take a long soak in the bubble tub, order pizza and drink fu-fu drinks all weekend. Since I have no where to go I'll HTFU and ride a bit more tomorrow. My car wont be finished till 4PM on Sunday so it sounds like I'll be riding sunday AM as well. It feels good to ride, it's just hard to get started and hurts when I'm done. I'll quit whining now.

An interesting weekend turns into a crappy week.

Got a frantic call from Rhonda last night at 9PM. Our cat had fallen off a ledge above the stairs and fallen 12 ft down into the basement. She was crying and not using her front leg. I told Rhonda to call the vet to see what he said. His answering service paged him and he called back right away. He said Rhonda could take the cat to the pet ER if she wanted but he recommended just waiting till the AM when he could see her. Apparently cats can fall up to 30 feet before they will actually break something. Thats crazy! A 12 inch tall cat can fall 30 feet without any serious damage. I fell 3 feet off the top of my bike last fall and could barely move for days. She took the cat in this AM and the X-rays were negative so the vet put the cat on some anti-inflammatory's and had Rhonda lock her in a room so she wouldn't move around too much. A car wreck, the flu and an emergency trip to the vet all in a week. What's next?

Got in a nice tour de Green Valley today on the MTB. 3.5 hours with 40 mins of tempo. Legs felt pretty good but the hard tail was killing my back after the hard effort. Need to get in more core training methinks.

ICUP gets web ink on velonews

http://beta.velonews.com/article/73012

A continuation of a very interesting weekend.

My plan for Monday was to do a 60 min recovery ride and then to spend the afternoon helping Rhonda's mom around the house. Instead I woke up dizzy and nauseated from a stomach bug with very bad timing. Why does that crap always happen on vacation? I had the mother in law run to the store for some nausea meds which helped immensely. By late afternoon I was able to keep down Gatorade and some lite food. Went to bed feeling much better. Woke up this morning still feeling a little light headed but was determined to push on with my vacation. Ate and drank what I could and hit the saddle for a two hour endurance road ride with 20 mins of a pathetic tempo effort. Felt almost normal after the ride so all is not lost. I'm going to try to get out for a few hours tomorrow to see how things go.

Stolen Photos

Rhonda rippin' the DH on the Rush (stolen from zazoosh)













Rhonda's 1st podium (stolen from BK)

A very interesting weekend.

We left Salt Lake at around 7:30 Thursday night to head for St. George. At 11PM we were cruising 75MPH down I-15 and I plowed the car into a rather large deer who decided to jump in our way. No injuries and the bikes were fine but the car is a wreck. The deer blew up the front end of the car and destroyed the radiator. We chilled at a truck stop till 1AM when the tow truck finally arrived. The driver dropped us a motel in Cedar City and dropped the car at a body shop. Rhonda's mom picked us up from the motel in the AM and we somehow piled my bikes and all our gear in her Taurus for the trip down to St. George. After arriving in St. George I put the finishing touches on my 29'er and we headed to the race course for a pre-ride. Rhonda ripped through the pre-ride and dropped me on the DH while I fought through a rear tire that did not want to seal and tried to figure out how to ride a hardtail again. We had all our ducks in a row for race day but somehow Rhonda still only had time for a 15 warm-up before the call up. Time seems to always get away from us on race day's and we need to work on that. Rhonda set her AM problems aside for the race and rode "her race". She concentrated on keeping a smooth pace on the climbs and aced the downhill. She beat last years time by five minutes and took 3rd, 8 seconds behind BK's wife Tasha and not too far behind Dot Verbrugge who tore the course up and took the win. The whole women's 35+ field was fast this year. The winning time was a couple minutes faster than last years winning time. It was a great day for everybody I know who raced. Travis won the men's 40+ race with a personal best time and he'll be moving up for the next race. Greg and Christan both beat last years times by 5+ minutes. Megan killed it in the sport women's category for her best finish ever in the that category at 4th. Bob knocked 6 mins off his personal best for a 5th place finish. We didn't stick around for the Pro race since the people I was with had limited time and wanted to get some more riding in but you can see a recap here. After the race we did 20 miles on Church Rocks/Prospector which was in perfect condition and finished the day off nicely. For today we had a plan to ride Hurricane rim but 40+ MPH winds put and end to that so we did a loop on BCP, Stucki, and Barrel instead. Tomorrow I am doing a 60min recovery spin around Bloomington to prepare for some big road miles this week. I forgot the PC cable for my camera so no pics this week.