As Feb nears, so does the end of my first month of training in 2007. It’s been a month of ups and downs. The hardest part (besides the always present cold wet days) is trying (sooo hard) to work out in the mornings instead of the evenings. I remember bottoming out before a 6am spin class a couple of weeks ago. Feeling like the dead–and looking worse–I hobbled through the start of that class. Then, amazingly, the following week, I was up charged…at 5:30 AM! I’m still not totally there yet; but I think I’ve been through the worst.

Jan was a month for base building. I’ll continue that in Feb, but I’ll be adding some other elements later in the month, like regular brick work outs. Now most of my work outs are long single discipline ones.

My goals in 2007 are simple: a double century, a “real” ultramarathon, and a “true” expedition adventure race. By June I will have done all of that! The Solvang Double is in March; the Quicksilver 50 miler is in May; and the Raid the North Extreme is in June.

At this point my training is moving along nicely. My long trail runs are up to 20 miles. My long MTB rides are 30 miles. My long road rides are 60 miles. And my paddles are at about 12 miles. I expect to double these numbers by April (except for the road rides; that’s on an accelerated sched given the Double is in March! Yikes!!).

As Feb nears, I look forward to more pain. And farther forward, I can’t wait for Day Light Savings Time (fewer dark work outs! Yea!!).

Good times!

I just got back from a great Superbowl Sunday mountainbike ride and had to share the course with everyone. I went with Dennis (from my Birthday ride) who was on his new 29″ Redline singlespeed, and two others from the TROGS list, Alex and Fred. Early in the ride I got behind Dennis and matched his singlespeed climbing cadence. For most of the rest of the ride I stayed in that gear and rode a “virtual singlespeed” until on one long climb I cracked and couldn’t push the gear anymore with my skyrocketing pulse. After I caught my breath I finally rode around the next corner in the granny gear I saw Dennis walking his bike up the monster hill, he’d cracked too. The other two were in thier granny gears as well and were still grunting up the hill. Anyway we shortened the loop we’d planned and did 36.2 miles and between 6315′ (my GPS reading) and 6600′ (Dennis’ GPS reading). The terrain was fantastic and beatiful. There is a plethora of other trails to explore in the area too. In fact, this would be a great area to design a course for the Gold Rush 24 Hour Challenge AR…shhhh! Here’s a JPeg of the course on a Topo! map. Te view it open it, save it to your computer, then view it in a photo viewing softwarethat allows you to zoom and pan.