Loaded!!

That was me yesterday on my ride. This week I have been attempting to do some upper zone 4 and some zone 5 efforts. Courtesy of Senator Wiens (I swear he’s like the new Chuck Norris, only cooler, so I make up tons of fun titles for him), I had a new workout to try this week called 20-40s. 20 sec as hard as you can, back off for 40 sec. Rinse, repeat. I did that workout on Tuesday. It sounded like 2 sets of 4 wouldn’t be a big deal. It’s only 20 sec after all. Turns out I was shelled by the time I had to go back home. It did me well. Here is an excerpt from the power file. It looks fun.

PUUSSSHHHH. I almost puked once or twice.

I was fully pumped to do the Boulder Short Track Wednesday which was cancelled due to the rain and thunder. Summer isn’t here yet… I am still wearing knee warmers and none of my fun, cute summer outfits.

And yesterday was a fun day at Betasso. It’s one of the few trails in Boulder where you can mountain bike. It is closed on Wed and Sat to mountain bikers as well, so Thursday was a go. I ran into Mr. Keller on the way there and got confirmation that the trails were a tacky delight.

I attempted to some intervals up the connector and felt pretty good riding out to the trail. It must have been the Peet’s New Guinea Highlands coffee blend. I started up the connector and noticed a couple things. My high end power was not really there. I’d die a horrible death, feel sick, lightheaded, and almost puked (again!) If I eased down 10 bpm on the HR (which is around my endurance race pace), I felt fine. There was a huge difference between the two efforts and a fine line between them. After attempting a few times and lacking much oxygen for some reason, I decided I was knackered and had to back off. My body was all loaded up. The trail WAS fun and lush.

I didn’t mean for this to come out blurry, but I think it looks cool.

It feels like I have been living in Seattle for the last month. Not much sunshine and it rains every day. However, I have never seen it so green. BONUS

I came to my favorite DH section, and much to my shock and horror, were children… as far as the eye could see. Just to get it out there, I am 100% supportive of getting kids outside on field trips AND sharing the trail, but seriously! Betasso is closed on Wednesday to mountain bikers, why couldn’t they have been there on Wednesday? There were about 25 8 year olds, all walking along, blissfully unaware to their surroundings. (of course, there were like 10 adult chaperones too). I’d come up behind a kid and politely say I was back there and they wouldn’t notice. At one point I was talking very loud like, “Hi there! Excuse me little buddy!” and the little boys had no clue. I ended up having to get off my bike and walk part of the trail to get around all the kids! Instead of moving over, they would run in front of me for awhile. haha. I tried to laugh it off. Share the trail applies to pedestrians, not only cyclists. At the end of the loop, I ran into Anne Trombley and her group of juniors she works with. I have to say, I am always very impressed with the work that she does. I see her out there all the time working with the juniors and it is very commendable. There were about 10 of them. None of us wanted to do another loop on the trail (the loop is only 20 min) due to the field trip children traffic. I just hope that no other cyclist came flying around the corner, not realizing there were a million kids on the trail, and hit one. Poor planning on the school’s part (and there are a million other trails in Boulder completely CLOSED to cyclists where they could have gone), so hopefully they learned… and I think it’s great that they school took the initiative to get the kids outside. Enough of that rant!!!

Today will be a chill ride in the sunshine – yes, the sun is shining this AM!!!!! Tomorrow is a short hill climb race at Winter Park followed by a few blissful hours of riding the WP singletrack with Mr. Kerkove. WEEEE!