What a beautiful day. I feel like going out and riding a hundred miles. I am getting primed for this race. I wish it could have been a bit earlier in the year so I wasn't so much past my peak but such is life. There will be some good teams there from around the US. It will be interesting to match up against them and see where the chips fall after we kick some serious butt. After this race it will be nothing but fun trainings in the PNW and planning for next year..

In the past it took me forever to get packed for a 24hr race. Now it seems easy compared to other races. The hard part is geeting the bike there. I am looking at shipping the wheels and putting the bike in a cardboard box so I don't get penalized by the airlines. We will see how it works out.

My body is knackered this morning. I had a great weekend up on Whidbey Island this weekend. ran, biked, and paddled all around Fort Ebey and Casey. Have a look at http://www.attackpoint.org/weeklyactivity.jsp/user_2463p:// for the details.

Mentally I am getting more focus and excited every day. Matt Hayes, Mari Chandler and I will be represent DART-nuun at nationals in two weeks. After my last race in September I had a serious case of over racing/training burnout. I just needed to hide in my house for a while. Doing my taxes didn't help any. I would use any excuse I could find to avoid a workout. Now I am back on track metally and look forward to driving hard. I can remember cycles like this when I worked. There were times when I just couldn't get myself out of bed and other times when I couldn't wait to get into work and make it happen.

Now I find myself metally planning my base training for the next 4 months. Thinking about all the cool trainings we are going to be doing. After nationals, I will take some time off. I am planning on going camping with Mathew and maybe Sarah up in the Olympics. Fishing, target practise, hiking, biking, and just takin it easy.

What does it take to improve my bike? Aaron, RVG, Matt, these guys are great bikers and can easily drop me - always. I need to improve my abilities this winter. I hate pushing at 85% while they are at 65% talking and leaving my in there tracks whilst climbing. So this is the plan:

TOP every wednesday night for technical training
Joining Old Town road team
Begin teaching spin class
weight training focused on legs

I think that training by myself doesn't provide maximum output as compared to training with better bikers who push me, hence the OT road team. Every sunday morning

Teaching spin class will require a committment that i show up at least once a week and put out at threshold. This will help for that "I like to go out hard" as RVG describes it.

Now to clean gear

IMG_6095
Originally uploaded by ledusledus.

This weekend was the rainfest. I have been shut up doing taxes for the past week and I need to get out. Nationals are coming up and I need to step it up and get ready to rock. Saturday Aaron, matt and I went out to the Olympic Peninsula to collect flags from the 24hr race. I thought that it would take us about 4 hours. 7 hours later we were soaked and back at the car have covered about 40 miles and 7,800 vertical feet.

Sunday Matt and I teamed up for the first annual Peterisoba. It was a Latvian style bike orienteering event that included plenty of bikewhack and hike a bike. We were given a set of 92 directions. These were distances and a picture of an road intersection and the direction to go. There wasn't much elevation gain so it was a nice recovery day after Saturday. However, because of out lack of Latvian orienteering skills, we lost the race and spent another 6 hours in the pouring rain. The race was suppose to be only 3 hours. kundos to Manny's for their solid performance.