Airing My Dirty Laundry

I wore all these clothes today for my bike/run workout.  Talk about a high maintenance sport.

Part of the reason for the clothes-splosion is because Holy Pacific Northwest Batman, today's bike ride up Left Hand and James Canyons looked like the opening scenes from Twin Peaks.  Cloudy, cold, damp and clammy is normally my least favorite kind of weather, I like my bluebird skies and Vitamin D sunshine and rainbows flying out of everybody's asses because they're so goddamn happy all the time in the happy sunshine.  But after the past month of no rain and 95+ degree heat and single digit humidity causing the whole Front Range to catch fire, today was a welcome change.  Anyway, I was so soaked in sweat from the humidity after a measly 2 hour, 20 minute bike ride that I had to change clothes before my run or face the consequences of some serious chafing.  Good thing I have my own washer/dryer and don't have to go to the laundromat.

We had a lot of rain last night and there was a lot of mud/rocks/debris that had washed onto the road in both Left Hand and James Canyons.  In fact Left Hand was closed for a time yesterday.  They cleaned it up enough for cars to easily clear the mess but there were some challenging sections for those of us on the skinny tires of a road bike.  Still was a magical ride in the mist, everything smelling so lush and green and the creek roaring with water.  Even a few remaining impromptu waterfalls coming down the sides of the canyon walls.  

Somebody is not so excited about the rain/thunderstorms.

Not sure why he thought this would help nor why he thinks frantically digging in the bathtub will help but he's always been one to think outside the box so who knows?

This week's training was low volume but high intensity.  Seems like I spent the week dodging thunderstorms so I decided to make up for the lack of hours with more intervals.  Two run workouts of hill intervals and a bike workout that was supposed to be intervals but turned into more of a fartlek type session due the trail.  Few of the uphill climbs lasted as long as the planned 4 minute interval so I decided to ride really hard every time I hit an uphill and recover on the downhill since it seemed there was more short uppy - downy type hills.  There were a couple of climbs lasting way more than 4 minutes so I rode as hard as I could until I needed to recover then rode hard again.  Thunder chased me off the mountain sooner than I was hoping but that hour of hard, red in the face riding had my quads trembly by the time I got back to the car.

Was hoping to do the weekly Stroke-n-Stride (swim/run) race out at the Boulder Rez on Thursday night but the race started at 6:00 p.m. and at 5:20 it was thundering with hard rain coming down so I didn't want to go out there and risk losing my entry if they cancelled the race.  Of course it did clear up in time and the race went on but there was no way of knowing until the last minute.  So I lost a day of training because I didn't want to do anything else during the day before a race.  Also lost a day of training dur to the agility trial/Smoky McBarbecue poor air quality day.

Legs are tired from the shock to the system of the harder workouts but I'll need to keep up with training for at least a few more days so I can rest near the end of the week for the Mountain Champs. on Saturday.  Feeling more prepared than I did last week but still wish I had another couple of weeks to get more climbing in.  How do these races sneak up on me like that?  It's not a goal race but it's long and hard and lots and lots of climbing so I'll need fresh legs if I hope to finish before they disassemble the finish line.

I keep having these thoughts that it would be so much easier to go to DOCNA Champs only 40 minutes away rather than the hassle and expense of a 7 1/2 hour drive to Utah for Xterra Nationals.  It seemed like a good idea at the time but the reality of that road trip is starting to sink in.  I was whining about the hassle and the drive to Joy after explaining to her all the races I entered and training I've been doing to qualify and she seemed a bit incredulous that I'd even consider not going.  'You have to go', she told me, so when I start fretting over the details and hassle of the trip I keep hearing her words.  I do have to go and it means I need to start setting up my training schedule for it now so it doesn't sneak up on me.  Stupid high maintenance hobbies.