The past four days made for a training stress that is brand new and bigger than anything I’ve done in the past. 17 hours and 4 or 5 of them near, at, or above LT effort. On Wednesday Paul, Wenk, and I did a hard ride out to Kitt Peak and back. We did hard rotations the 45 miles out and also on the entire way back. The 12 mile climb at 7% grade was tough, but the heat was the real factor… I followed this ride up with an hour of LT climbing on Lemmon before tempoing up to mile mark 20 and flipping it back down. Friday was 90 minutes of singletrack ripping at Star Pass on the MTB. Saturday was a hard shootout ride with Madero Canyon thrown in for that extra intensity and distance. That final hard day was when I felt the best and surely set some new PR’s in the wattage department. Of course today I’m feeling quite drained so I’m making the most of the recovery.
Mentally and physically I’m ready for some racing now. The fitness is largely here and now it’s just some fine tuning in the workouts to come. With NMBS #1 in just two weeks, next Saturday’s state series race ought to be a great trial run. Rumor is that the Trek Factory team will be there racing too, so it ought to be a fast one – excellent. I might have to roll out on MTB #2, a new option for 2007. I picked up a carbon hardtail so now I’ve got that sub-20 pound option for the STXC’s and climbing courses… I’ll have to introduce you all soon, but some final components must be assembled first.
Today I did some real shopping and found myself a new tool bag along with a few new items to carry in it. Years past I’ve always carried a small tool box, so this bag will keep my tools nicely organized and it’s also easier to tote. Not to mention that I can fit way more goodies into it. New tools include: dead blow hammer, really long needle nose pliers, side cutters, magnetic parts bowl, and some fresh speed ball metric allen keys. Keep it Real, -TJ
