After a day off and an easy ride yesterday, I was ready to get back on the horsey and get in 2 more days of solid training before I head to Texas on Friday. I’m really looking forward to seeing my cousin et al. in Dallas, and one of my best friends in Austin later in the week! My cousin has bene like a big sister to me growing up, and my friend in Austin I’ve known since I was just 1 year old!
It’s been beautiful weather which is quite the contrast to last week.
I love riding to Gold Hill via Sunshine Canyon, but today I ventured up Switzerland Trail out of 4 Mile Canyon on the mountain, which connects to CR52 a few miles above Gold Hill. My training buddy, Jason Hilimire joined me for a portion of it. He was planning a road ride today. Here is a silly little interview with him:
BEWARE. There is a really loud beep around 1:20…. my memory card was full. And yes, I am a dork. We did head up Sunshine Canyon, but took Poorman down to 4 mile and up from there. We parted ways at the turn-off to Sunset.
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“It’s beeping, I don’t know what happened.” FAIL!
Switzerland Trail is an old railroad bed- it’s not an actual mountain bike trail.
At first, there wasn’t too much snow… but then it became unrideable for longer sections.
I actually didn’t mind trudging through the snow. I loved the solitude, the sunshine, the views, and simply just being there. I know I will enjoy some of the Colorado Trail Race because I love being in the mountains on my bike, company or not. It’s freedom. It’s living, breathing, sweating, and sometimes even bleeding.
The higher I got, the more snow there was (go figure). Within the first mile, I spotted a set of mountain lion tracks in the snow. I thought they were dog tracks, but the prints were massive. I had never seen footprints that large before. At first, it didn’t bother me… but I grew increasingly nervous because they didn’t go away, and I was following them. I was wondering if I was being stupid, but the fact is that the big kitties are out there, I just happened to see its pawprints because of the snow. One of my main fears with CTR is the animals, and I know the chances of getting attacked by one are extremely rare so following these kitty tracks were good mental training. For being terrified of the idea of seeing a mountain lion, I think I did pretty well. It was probably watching me and licking its chops…. eeeek!
Here is a video I made while I was hiking. I decided it’d be more interesting to watch than just the road/trail. Don’t worry, there aren’t any heinous beeps in this one. I’ll work on my video editing skills but it’s already so late tonight. My gym buzz has me alert(BEEFCAKE!!)
(hilarious, can’t help myself)
…but I don’t want to spend any more time trying to learn IMovie with this one. I promise I’ll work on it and they will get better!
So here you go!
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Switzerland Trail from Sonya Looney on Vimeo.
After comparing the doggie tracks (there were actually 2 dogs) to the kitty tracks, the dog tracks were a lot smaller. eeeek!
I’ve been thinking about something I heard the other day. It was something like, “Learn to balance the act of striving versus the act of surrender.” Some of us are more surrenderers…while some of us strive so hard that we forget that surrendering is actually an option. Whether you’re on one side or the other, it’s tough to come back to the middle. I know I tend to over-strive and a lot of cyclists overstrive in their training (translation: we enjoy overtraining ourselves into the ground). The balance point is not in the middle for me, but I’m trying to learn to sometimes surrender. In a race? No frickin’ way. In other things? Hmm, I’ll have to think about it. 
