a lot of riding... that's all

a huge weekend of riding (for me) and not much else... I am loving just focusing one one sport right now. it makes for a lot of quality work that isn't compromised by the needed recovery of additional workouts.

Monday-Thursday were focused on recovery and ended up being good timing as I was also battling an impending cold... i am pretty sure i won. the only day I really felt like crap was tuesday mid morning to wednesday morning. by thursday morning i was feeling good again. i still have kind of scratchy throat and feel like i am losing my voice but the body feels good.

as i mentioned before I took friday off of work to take jaakko out to palomar before he headed back to finland early this morning. beth came out too and we conned a couple more people into joining us. the rest of the crew was made up of katya and paul... and unfortunately we were a bit late and missed matt who ended up charging solo.

the plan was to ride from kit carson park, up to lake wohlford, then climb palomar, descend palomar, climb cole grade, and then head back to the park. i had pretty good legs after taking it easy all week and put in a solid effort up wohlford with jaakko leading me. i just hung on and stayed on his wheel. we regrouped at the top and then headed for palomar.

I was hoping to use jaakko as my rabbit climbing up palomar in attempt to beat my time and watts from last go, but a couple of miles into the climb his back began to lock up and so i was forced to charge it solo. the weather was perfect... for me. it was 80 degrees and sunny. I ended up making it to the summit in the exact time as I did a month ago almost the exact same normal and avg power. I am happy this time because it was pretty much a solo effort. last time i was with a group I had people to chase and it's hard for me maintain absolute focus for over an hour on the climb.

I waited at the top and troops started to roll in... except for beth. i got a bit worried and headed back down to find her. i won't go into the details but she had an epic blow up... check her blog for the details!

we descended palomar and then hit cole grade and i was still feeling good so I pushed again. i was stoked to be done with the ride and back to the park with 4.5 hours of riding in the bank.

the ride.


Saturday ryan and keevin came down and we hit the Celo Pacific ride after getting in hour in before hand. There was solid group and I really didn't know to expect. We rolled out of carlsbad and then on to camp pendleton and once we crested the first hill and regrouped it was hammer time. i was sitting about 5th wheel when a bunch of guys went flying by. I tried to latch on and after a 600+ watt effort i was back with the group and moving forward. I decided i was going to get in the mix and worked hard the entire northbound trip and took a lot of pulls and sat in the front. it was tough and fun. It was more of the same heading back south except this time we got to ride in the rain. gotta love this extreme june gloom.

this is the the group ride and cool down... a lot of spikes.

at the end of the ride ryan, keevin, and I tacked on another hour to give us just over 4 hours and 75 miles on the day. solid. after cramming some food in out mouths and cleaning up ryan headed over to Green Flash for a couple of beers to celebrate the solid effort. it was fun until a bus full of meat heads showed up and started getting rowdy... so we headed out.

Sunday I had 3 hour endurance moutain bike ride on the schedule. After 3 cups of coffee and a solid breakkie i was out the door. I decided to hit the local trails solo so if I was over it or really feeling beat down I could bag it and head home. that didn't end up being the case. i got in a solid ride with a lot of climbing. i didn't nail it on any of of the climbs but just kept in control and pushed some big gears.

now it's monday and the work has definitely caught up with me. my legs were trashed when i got up this morning... a good feeling! so it was a good thing today was a scheduled rest/recovery day because i needed it. I got a lot of work done, got in a fun surf, and got spend plenty of time with FW. tomorrow morning i will be hitting up the swami's ride before work... and that's just the start of a hard week that will end with Race #1 of the Rim Nordic Summer series. I'll be heading up there with the Celo Pacific crew.