Training Log Archive: carbon

I got worse again with a bit of a fever yesterday. Started the antibiotics that the doc gave me last week (tried to avoid them at first). I shouldn't have races sick last weekend...

C • Good decision to start the ... 5

Chest cold 1 - VJ 0. Legs felt good, but the cold is till making me feel really low.

C • Skiing at Xmas 2

Okay, I'm going for it. I'm signed up for the Solo MTB world champs.

C • Awesome! 8

Sounds like both Mike and I qualified for the World Championships in Solo mountain bike racing in Canmore in September. And not only that, we are welcome in the Elite category. What marketing! They just want our money and more riders, but that is understandable.

C • Cool!! 6

I haven't figured out the right stats for the race yet, but will update later. Ater the initial hurdle of the event with freak storms and mudslides, the race went off seamlessly to us racers.

This was my first solo 24 hr mtb race. I went into it with a chest cold, which in the end cost me the good placing I felt like I could have had. I was first female across the line on the first lap, but due to a detour off course on my second lap (same steep hill that Mike detoured on) I lost exactly 12 minutes and a couple of riders passed me. I caught at least one of them back. Then I stopped and helped another solo rider with a broken chain and lost a minute or so there too. The other laps went well. I felt super strong and was both climbing and downhilling well. I passed the other women in various laps. My chest cold got the better of me on lap 10. I was coughing so badly that even breathing, eating and drinking hurt. Lap 10 was so bad that I decided to pull out for a while and ask James his thought of me continuing, but he was asleep in his tent. I went into my tent and sat there coughing for the next ~3ish hours thinking that I would stop. I then felt a bit better once all the crap was out of the chest and decided to give it another go. I rode strong for the next 4 laps. I again passed the women I was racing against a few times. Too bad that I had to sit out for a few hours or I'm pretty sure I would have placed well, even one hour would have helped plenty. Only 4 women were racing. I placed 4th with 14 laps. Second and third place also only did 14 laps. The winner rode 15. The way I felt physically (the cold aside), I felt like I could have done 15-16 laps. I was shy of about 15 minutes in the end of being able to go for a 15th lap. But who knows. I may not have done as well as I think I could have. It's all speculating.

Mike had a fantastic race and rode all the way through. He rode 17 laps. He got 5th solo men. A machine this weekend! Many of our other friends also did well, winning and placing in their various categories.

I was 5 min away from third and only 25 mins away from second. Wish I hadn't sat on my ass for so long!!!

C • Smart 12

Event: 24 Hours of Adrenaline Mountain Bike Race
 

Cold still not gone, but just kind of stuck in my chest. If it doesn't get any worse I think I can race. Not sure how well though. We'll see tomorrow I guess.

RTN Silver Star just had the plug pulled. Everyone who was registered for it, why don't you come out and race WT???!!!!

C • RTN 9

As we were heading to our hotel room in Canmore for a good night's sleep before the race tomorrow, a whicked storm moved in. Lightning, wind and rain. Received a phone call from a friend who is RV'ing it up at the race site and he informed us that half the camp site had blown to pieces and some stuff, including helmets and equipment were being blown hundreds of meters away. None of the tents stayed in place except for a gray little one stuffed full of gear bins and stuff....ours. I guess we'll find out in the morning if our stuff stayed dry. Not that we should need anything if all goes according to the plan but our support may want to nap at times.

C • Wow!!! 3

Also, a mudslide just at the Banff Park gate a few km west of Canmore has the highway closed since mid- day today? A bunch of racers are stuck on the other side of the closure.

Taking a complete rest day plus a couple of hours of sick time from work to try to kick this cold! I want to feel okay for the race on Saturday.

Bummer, I feel a cold coming on.....

To and from work. Threw in a couple of higher intensi bursts. The
legs are feeling good, but this cold is making me feel a bit down.

A quick run to MEC and back to get some food for the weekend. I'm keeping my training light until the weekend. Time includes stopping at a few lights.

A little run on Nose Hill. Some of the trails have become so overgrown with vegetation that it was nearly impssible to run on them. I trotted through those, but in another week I bet that it won't be possible. It was super humid which has been the case for a few weeks now. I was sweating buckets on the hills.

I bumped up the resistance a little. The ergo is so sensitive to that and I noticed a huge difference. Hard work! Hopefuly I will get used to it.

Headed out to West Bragg to ride the new trails. First my plan was to ride all the way across to Sulphur Springs and Moosepackers but I modified my plan a bit when I took a wrong turn and spent much longer in West Bragg than planned. Rode Ranger Summit, Strange Brew, Boundary Ridge and Snagmore down to Allen Bill Pond. On the way down there were lots of spider webs across the trail. I kept getting them on my arms and once even a spider ended up on me. At least I think it was a spider. He had what appeared to be 6 eyes! Very freaky looking. I think he was visiting from Tjernobyl. Next I rode back up the same way until I came to the turn I missed. There I went down Sugar Momma and back up. I explored two trails on the way back that are not on the map. As well I added an in and out on the north side of the parking lot to add distance. The climb back up Strange Brew was a tough one. Lots of wet roots and steep sections. Plus I think I was bonking a bit. The average speed for the day seems high to me as I felt like I was always climbing and reading around 6-7km/hr, but I guess the downhills brought the speed up. On one climb, up Snagmore I think, I could hold a steady fast pace despite climbing. Since I rode on my own I was hesitant to open up too much on anything technical with fear of crashing and getting hurt. My pack was heavy today and that added to the work when climbing. Sometimes it's good when you can't sleep in as you can get a good workout done and still have much of the day left. Glad I didn't go to Fernie! The weather held up the entire ride and I like the riding here better.

C • Jealous! 3

Record time to work. My legs felt so good I couln't help but to push it. The weather is very Ontario-like today. Lots of big thunder heads and even lightning.

C • Fast! 1

Shaw had a little bit of an explosion in their building yesterday adn blew up a bunch of our main servers. When the fire sprinklers went on, our backups were also destroyed. Very clever to have the backup system in the same building! Now all the clipnical systems are down, e-mail, calendars, all external drives, intranets and sharepoints are unavailable. Good thing I have become so good at never saving any files to my local drive (not). As I'm not able to work, I left early to get other stuff done.

Looks like I just got home before the storms run through. Took a longer way by a few minutes to get another hill done.

C • Yikes! 4

Oh, yeah! We've got tickets to go and see the Hip tomorrow night (and Matthew Good and 54/40, but it's the Hip that counts)!!!

C • Hip 8

My legs felt better than I expected this morning. A bit of acid flow on a couple of hills but other than that it was all good. I was a bit tired though. I think I need a bit more sleep.

The "longer" way home in the hottest weather so far. I mostly spun it out in E2 with two higher intensity bursts up a couple of hills.

The goal was to paddle a bit longer, but it's sooo boring to work out in the basement.

C • Tour! 2

A cruise to work with one smaller detour due to the flooding. My legs felt a bit tired this morning, especially on the hills. The last couple of days adding up I guess.

For the first 10-15 minutes of the ride my legs felt very tired and heavy but then they came back and I could ride stronger. Fun to work out in some heat to get the body used to it.

A quick switch to road shoes and some cereal and milk and then off to COP via pathways for 4 hill repeats. Despite tired legs I had some strong climbs. The first two in MAP and the last two in E4 for the first half and in MAP for the upper half. It was fun to push it. used the ride home to spin it out.

Met up with Revy and C-Bass at Ribbon Creek. Ran up to the falls and back down. Although it was only a 300m gain, it felt like a steady climb. All of it was runnable but after yesterday's ride it felt like hard work.. I was sweating good in the summer heat and dunked my head in the river a few times. The run out felt nice and quick.

Set out to do the Bow 80 loop but the ride got slightly modified as one
person in the group felt that it may be too muddy. Instead we rode Sulphur Springs - Elbow Trail - Powderface Link - up the back of Powderface -Elbow Trail - Pneuma - Moosepackers - Ridgeback. It felt like we were constantly climbing although the last downhill on Moosepackers and Ridgeback felt fast. I felt a little sketchy on the Powderface downhill as the steeper top part was full of loose rock the size of baby heads (this had me a bit grumpy for a few minutes). Despite the Pneuma climb being later in the ride, I felt good and steady on that section. It's still my favorite climb in the area. Ridgeback was super fun too. nice flowy downhill and a couple of fun longer climbs. Most climbs today were pretty technical which was good as I need to work a bit more on my technical riding. At the very end I beat the boys back to the car as they were washing up in a river so I looped around the lot until I reached 60km (just to look better than them). Nice day! Lots of sun and 29C!

Body is feeling great. No pains anywhere. Not even any stiffness! :). I think I'm 100% back!

If anyone would like to join me in running the North Face Endurance Challenge on December 1 & 2, please feel free. Various distances available. Company before and after the run would be fun!

http://www.thenorthface.com/en_US/endurance-challe...

An absolutely stunning night in the mountains! I figured that the best way to not get too depressed and sad over my sister and her family going back to Sweden today was to head straight from the airport into the mountains for a ride. We rode the Elbow loop. I felt great. I didn't push too hard but still held an average of 14.4km/hr for the 20km climb. I focused on keeping a steady pace. The backside was super fun and flowy with somle steeper climbs. I always forget how much climbing there is on the backside despite the overall loss of elevation.

A really fun sisters only day today! My sister and I headed out to Banff and ran the Minnewanka Trail. We were out for about 3hrs but we probably had enough stops or walking sections to call it 2.5 hrs. We walked a couple of the hills and then my sister took a nasty fall and hit both knees pretty hard so we walked it out for a few minutes. Now she looks all hard core with a nice scab forming on one knee. After our run, which ended with a downpour and a temperature drop to 7C, we hit the hotsprings for a soak followed by a sushi feed. A perfect day in my books!

Yes, yes, yes!!!! No pain in the run today!!! Lots of elevation gain and loss so this was a good test! Sweet! I will still skip the 50 miler in July so that I don't mess myself up for WT, but I just signed up for the SF North Face 50k run, which if I am successful at Superior 100miler will give me the last point to allow me to go into the UTMB lottery. Running with my sister has been super fun. She is a slower trail runner than me at the moment but if she keeps trail running we will soon be at the same level. We're going to find some fun trail races in Sweden or internationally to do together.

C • LIKE! 8

A quick paddle in the basement after the run.

Morning ride before heading out to the rodeo with the Swedes. Tried a new trail system behind Bragg Creek. Loads of great riding. Started with a 40 minute climb followed by a fun downhill, then we turned around and rode back up the way we had come as we were running out of time. I felt a bit tired in the legs as the last couple of days have been higher intensity workouts. Mike, unfortunately crashed and hurt his elbow. Now he has this big bump sticking out. I'm sure he will recover quickly.

Can't wait to do a longer ride next weekend.