Bow Mountain

Went for a bike ride up Bow Mountain today-very beautiful but not scenic for photos if that makes any sense.  It's basically a network of quiet steep roads, some paved, some dirt.  They don't go anywhere in particular, they just wind around the mountain and are roads for the people who live up there.  No trails but a great place to go on days when the trails are too muddy and you don't want to hit the road.  Or more accurately the trails are too muddy and your road bike is kaput due to a snapped shifter cable and you can't figure out how to open up the shifter to fix it because of stupid Shimano 'technology' and it's a sunny beautiful day and you want to ride not screw around with your stupid ancient road bike stupid piece of crap Shimano shifters.  So Bow Mountain is looking pretty good right about now and it's right out my back door.

The roads are steepy steeeeeeeeep, great for building up those quads for running alongside dogwalks in pursuit of a black and white blur.

I'm out of shape but had a great time huffing up those hills anyway.  This was a flat part.

We saw a huge bird but he was too far off to tell what he was.  Jonny thought vulture but I'm skeptical about that.

On the way home I couldn't believe how green and lush everything looked on the Foothills Trails.

A view of the Flatirons from the Foothills Trail.  Yes that is snow up there on the high peaks.  I spared you the rant about the snow we had last week.  It's sunny and warm now so let's pretend it never happened.

More views from the Foothills Trail

These trails are out my back door, I'm so lucky to live here.  Except for when they catch fire but that doesn't happen too often.

More weave pole/dogwalk practice yesterday.  He was still popping out if I accelerated near the end of the poles but I was able to move away laterally earlier and for a greater distance so I was happy with that.  Turns to tunnels from the contacts were awesome today, guess he finally remembered.  Nice solid hits on the dogwalk too, I think he missed one that wasn't even supposed to be a rep but otherwise was perfect.  I got ahead of him on the dogwalk this time and cued the turn to the tunnel with deceleration as well as the verbal cue and that worked perfectly.  I know, he shouldn't be responding to my motion on those non-turning obstacles but he's so sensitive to motion, especially deceleration/acceleration, I'm not sure it's a battle worth fighting.  Maybe this will bite me on the butt in other scenarios but for now I'm not going to worry about it and use it to my advantage if I can.  As long as he lets me move away laterally I think we'll be fine in most situations.

Another crazy busy week ahead but hopefully I'll get at least on more training session in before our DOCNA trial next weekend.