Recovery mode and Refining the Plan

i am in full on recovery mode this and it feels good  I was stoked to have monday off of work hit the trails with beth.  i kept it super mellow and beth was dropping me all over the place!

the trails are in perfect condition right from all the rain we've had.

beth killing it up a climb... before making the turn and dropping me.

on wednesday i got in another mellow mountain bike on my local trails.  with the rain we've most of the miles i have been getting over the last couple of weeks have been on the road, and as much as love my tarmac sl2 and riding with my friends on the road, riding in the dirt is what it's all about.

the climb up

view from the top

heading back home

I have been doing a lot of thinking about my race schedule and trying to trim the fat.  there are a lot of races i want to do but I don't want to be racing every weekend... unitl CX season at least.  i want to race, have fun with friends outside of training and racing, be at as many of the beth's races, as possible, and just have fun riding my bike.  i really do like the training as much as i like racing.  in some ways i like it more.

so on monday i was ready and waiting on the computer for the clock to 8am (9am MST) so i could try to get into the Park City Poing 2 Point.  it will be the 2nd year for the race and it's said to be harder than leadville.  78 miles, 14,000 ft of climbing, and 90% of it is on single track!  there were only 143 slot available when they opened registration.  luckily i was able to snag one before they were all gone.  it ended up taking about 5 hours to completely sellout.  i am stoked that ryan, slater, monique, keevin, and sean all get in too.  labor day weekend is going to be sick.

later that night i also locked up my spot into Vision Quest on march 20th.  originally i was trying to get a slot into Counting Coup after missing registration, but i was willing to take a slot into either race.  i was contacted by a guy wanting to sell his Vision Quest slot and i jumped on it.  go big.  so instead of 44 miles with 8000 ft of climbing i will be tackling Vision Quest and it's 56.5 miles and 11000+ ft of climbing.  i did this race back in 2007 as a training day and then did Counting Coup last year, again, just a a long training day.  this year i plan on racing.

so getting into these two races has changed things up a bit and confirmed some things for me.  outside of racing i have a lot going on this spring and summer with beth's races, family visits, and work and pretty much figured that actually competing all the necessary races to makes runs at the Kenda Cup West Series and SoCal State series would be pretty tough, if not impossible.  So I am choosing to put more of my focus in the into the longer endurance mountain bike races with the big one being the PCP2P on labor day weekend.  I still definitely plan on racing XC MTB as well but i  will pick and choose races, no series'.  I just want do well enough at one of the Kenda Cup qualifiers so I can get slot into the "invitation only" championships in mid september.

the long riding i have been doing the past couple weeks really made me realize again how much fun long epic days on the bike are.  racing for 4-8 hours as opposed to 1.5-2 hours is a lot more gratifying i think and makes all this training more worth while.  so simply... big training, less racing, but longer/harder races.  that's the plan for now.

after september it will still be all about cyclocross.  i am really looking forward to my second season of that and trying to compete with the pro/1/2's.

some good food stuff going on this week too... on monday night beth and I headed to colleen and justin's for dinner and beth made a killer side dish.

Asian spiced, roasted kabocha squash.  this was her second attempt and making this type of squash and it was really good.

the spices

ready to roast

ready to eat

on tuesday night beth had a track workout and i was on my own.  i had some trader joe's curry chicken breast tenders and decided to make a mega veggie chicken curry stir fry.

i cooked the chicken in it's own pan

and the veggies too (broccoli, brussel sprouts, onion, mushrooms, carrots, red bell pepper, zucchini)

while they were cooking i made a sauce using course ground dijon mustard, yellow mustard, organic tamari, stone ruination IPA curry mustard grilling sauce, and rice wine vinegar.  once the everything was cooked i put them all in the same pan and added the sauce.

dinner time!  i topped it with some sunflower & pumpking seeds