Adventures in hiking and riding!

Another great weekend in the books.  On Saturday I went with my brother and an old friend of his for a ride.  Even though my brother commutes on his bike and doesn’t own a car I hardly ever get to ride with him so this was very exciting!  It was also really nice to get to see him and his friend interact it reminds me that no matter how much he’s grown up there’s still a little bit of that goofy carefree kid somewhere in there.  It made me smile the whole time I was on the ride as I rode behind them and got to hear them talk. 

 So let me tell you a little something about commuting versus distance riding.  I commute 1-2 times a week on my bike during the summer and I thought I finally had this commuting thing down.  But the thing is I take my commuter bike which is clunkier and doesn’t make you clip in.  I also take back roads (non-congested) and/or bike path the whole way to work.  What this means is that I am forced to go slower and am not on the defensive for very much of my ride.  When I do my longer weekend rides I take my lovely tri bike (did I mention how much I love my bike!) which you do clip in to and is very light I can go fast!  When I ride this I usually am not in town I’m on a road with no stop lights and I can go for ever without having to clip out.  Well, when I rode with them this weekend we went from my brother’s house out, which meant lots of city riding.  Now my brother is both a pro and fearless when it comes to this so he was whizzing in and out of traffic using his hands to command which direction he was going.  I on the other hand was timid and doubting my moves which cause more confusion and probably put me in a little more danger.  Also add clipping in and out a gazillion times which let me tell you that and the brain power I was using made me TIRED before we even got to the hills we were going to ride!  J  I of course got a flat right at before having to head up a 6% grade hill which meant once I had the flat changed I had no momentum to get up the hill.  I’ve decided I need to buy new tires I think I’ve worn through these I can’t even remember if I’ve ever replaced them since I bought the bike, YIKES!  I also need to try and be more like my brother when riding in town!  I wasn’t able to keep up with these two guys but was thankful they let me tag along because I had fun.

Sunday I was up at the crack of dawn to join some friends for a hike up the La Luz trail.  I did a little bit of a run first just so I could say I ran then went back to meet up with them and hike the rest of the 9 miles with them.  I had never actually been all the way to the top and it was beautiful!  We took the tram back down.  It’s only my 2^nd time riding that even though I’ve lived here for over 8 years.  This was a tough hike and my legs were tired after but so much fun!  It was great seeing lots of people from my running club out there too they were running up the entire thing in preparation for the race that goes up that in August.  So I didn’t get a long run in this weekend but I figured that long of a hike should count for something?  What do you think?  I mean it does have about 3,775 feet of elevation gain!

Of course I had to end the weekend with some lovely ladies I had over for homemade empanadas and one of the brought over homemade strawberry short cake!

Happy Training!

That moment when I realized I had no brakes.....

One of the recurring dreams I have is where I'm driving a car really fast on the freeway and right when I'm coming up on a really sharp turn is when I realize I have no breaks!  The dream always ends right before I go off the road.....  This time it was on my bike and it was for real (gulp) !

Luckily this story does not end with tragic road burn or with me on the hood of someone's car just with a lesson well learned!

My favorite part of my commute is when I leave the house to head to work the first thing I get to do is go down a long fast hill.  I may have on occasion kicked my legs out and yelled Weeeeee as I go down it.  This time I head out as normal and about half way down this hill there is an intersection I usually slow down at to make sure there are no cars, when I went to press on the brakes there was NOTHING!!!  I realized that after fixing my flat tire last night and put my wheels back on I had forgotten to reconnect the brakes on both the front and the back!  

So what now I still had half of the hill left to go down.  The road was too small to let me turn around at that speed to go uphill, I tried weaving back and forth really big to slow myself down, if I bailed I'd have some major road rash and I'd be late for work..... so as the turn at the bottom of the hill came I took it really fast and wide and hoped that there wasn't a car on the other side coming towards me!!  I made it and the road went flat for a while which slowed me down then I put my foot down to stop me just in time before the next down hill!  Safe and sound with a HUGE adrenaline rush!  I reconnected the brakes and made it to work.  I don't think I'll need any caffeine today to get started! :-)

I guess it could have been worse right!?

Have you ever found yourself without brakes, car or bike or other?

Adventures in commuting

As I went to work this morning on my commuter bike I felt like this (it's all donwhill to work):

Then on the way back home after work I felt like this (it's all uphill and hotter on the way home):

Once I got home and remembered it was a recovery week and that meant my workout was over for the day I felt like this:

Once I got inside and put my toys away I wanted to do this:

So here is what I looked like today on my ride home minus the bike:

 Well I GARUNTEE if you saw that coming towards you the 1st instinct would not be to whistle, offer to call 911 maybe or call the fashion police even better.   But for the poor soul who thought that was whistle worthy may I suggest that you get out more.  I mean come on it's not like I was wearing this:

Happy Cycling!!!

Disaster Averted

On my bike ride in to work this morning I was totally out of it just completely zoned the whole way which isn’t a good thing on your  bike.  The f said I crossed the street right in front of him and didn't even notice, luckily he was nice enough not to honk.  I’ve been so tired lately yet keep waking up earlier than I need to.  On the first downhill a skateboarder crouched down low to the ground to bomb down the hill as he yelled “Hello!  Good morning!  How are you?!?!”  I could barely muster enough enthusiasm to mumble a response with my best impression of a person who was awake.  Just as I thought he wasn’t going to make the turn onto the the flat side walk he yelled out  “woohoo”  Why can’t I be that awake and chipper in the mornings?  Later on my ride there were about 10 FBI agents lining the road I went down looking very serious!

Weekend ride

So yesterday my boss came in to my office to ask me if I could take over a training session he had on Oct. 3 that he’d trade me one of mine.  I said I can’t I have a ½ marathon that weekend in Florida.  His eyes got real big and he asked “Was it on the calendar?  Because my wife just booked us a flight to Chicago.”  I said, “Noooo I must have completely spaced putting it on the calendar and I was going to tell you about it but then we had a meeting start.”   Long story short I was going to have to cancel my trip because of my STUPID mistake of not remembering to put it on the calendar and they have a rule that there always has to be 1 person from the team in the office, but we are the only 2 person team.  So he asked for an exception and I get to go on Thurs. as planned but had to change my return flight to Sunday instead of Monday.  I will be a zombie because  the ½ is at 10pm with an after party but at least I still get to go!  I learned my lesson on that one.  I will not confirm or deny that I had to go into my office, close the door, and have a panic attack for about 5 minutes. 

This weekend I got some good training in and I’m so glad I got up a little early to beat the heat.  On Saturday it was already feeling hot at 7 am but I did 7 miles.  On Sunday it was cooler about 70 degrees but the high that day got up to 102.  We saw big groups of people headed out as we were getting back I could not imagine!  It took us 2.5 hours to do 33 miles but it was some great hill training!  We went roughly from 5650 ft to 7600.  What is your favorite kind of bike training?  My favorite is tough hills!  Then when you go back and work on speed on the flats it feels so great!

Pic of Los Alamos on my way to a race there 2 years ago, this is the place that is now evacuated and on FIRE!  Hope it is contained soon!

Weekend Wrap Up...

Had a great weekend and a productive one to boot!  My dad came up to visit and we got to spend a great Father’s Day weekend with him!  Gave him a new cycling jersey just like the one that was torn up from his accident.  It’s his favorite and might be the only one he ever wears, the New Mexico jersey.  The f made him ribs which apparently turned out pretty good and was kind of a joke considering my dad’s own ribs are still recovering.  I had some vegetarian “meatloaf”. 

On Saturday I had a good run hadn’t ran hills in a while and did about 5.75 miles with 2.5 miles of uphill but what goes up must come down, yay!  Sunday was a nice 25 mile bike ride also with some hills.  With the smoke and allergies it made for a very snotty bike ride but I survived it.  I have to admit it’s kind of gross when you are flying down the hill and you can feel the snot escaping your nostrils and not sure where it’s landing, ewwwww.  Yeah well back in the day when I was still single I remember learning real fast that cycling dates usually wasn’t the best first impression, you’re dressed funny, you have to pretend that the lighting fast speed that seems so easy for them as they chat away is not making you lose your breath, and at the end you have to try and wipe yourself down inconspicuously and make sure there isn’t anything oozing out or some leftover saliva on your chin.  J 

So the f and I had a discussion about heat exhaustion and the two schools of thought on it.  I believe you can acclimate to heat by training in it more and that once you’ve experienced heat exhaustion it doesn’t necessarily mean you are more prone to get it.  He believes and has been told that you are more likely to have a heat “casualty” as he calls it, sounds so deadly, once you have had one.  We looked up articles and it seems that the experts are still on the fence about this one.  What is your opinion?  This came up because on the days I’ve been doing my bike commutes I seem to be overheated the rest of the evening.  Apparently one of the nights after tossing and turning for hours I got up and turned the swamp cooler on in my sleep, which is very unlike me.  And when he asked me if I was ok I mumbled “I don’t feel right”  Then later that morning I woke up freezing wandering why he had turned it on, Ha!

Happy Monday!  A new week a new training schedule!  :-)

Commute to work.

This is my second day this week commuting to work and it went a lot better this time since I knew my way!  I’m also starting to get use to my commuter bike.  It’s slower, bulkier, and a little uncomfortable but I will learn to love it!  I won’t love it as much as I love my tri bike because I think the day I have to retire that bike I might actually cry! 

Commuter Bike

Tri Bike

It’s about 9.5 miles each way for my commute on the way to work it’s mostly downhill which is nice because then I don’t get to sweaty and I have to try and look presentable and business like.  The hardest part is the walk up the stairs to the 3^rd floor, Ha!

 On the way home it’s all uphill, which makes is hard to get a second workout in once I’m home because my legs are shot.  On the way home it was HOT which made me overheat and my lower back hurt from those hills because I’m not use to sitting that upright.  I think with time this will get easier, I will drink more water before and get stronger.

Last time after I got home I attempted to meet my best running buddy Kelly for some track work which I only managed to do the 1.5 mile warmup with her and my legs just weren’t going to respond to sprints.  So I’m going  to move my commute to Mondays and Wednesdays with an easy run after, that should count as a brick right?  I’ll do speed work on Tuesdays, then Thursday will be weights and swimming, with a long run and long bike on Saterday and Sunday.  Now where am I going to fit in a second day of weights and second day of swimming?  Help!  J