A weekend on the Hills
This weekend was anther great one. I had a full week with work and trying to build up my training hours early in the season but everything seemed to fall together this weekend.
Monique and I headed down to see some family because it was my nieces 7th birthday and we were able to drop off the puppies with them for a while. She is so cute!
(Kayla and Nacho on her 7th Birthday)
This freed us up from the beasts for a little, for a ride Saturday morning before the party. We planned on getting a look at some of the Vision Quest course. Marius had it mapped out on his GPS for directions so we were off for our ride. We planned on a quick two hour ride but we did not know what we were really in for… Marius had the trip recorded on his GPS and when we finished our ride was about five hours with 5166ft in elevation gain. Needless to say we were late for the Birthday party and we were hungry when we got there.
(Hills and the beautiful views all round)
We couldn’t have ask for a better day of weather... Clear skies and just under 80 degrees. The view was amazing too. We could see all of OC & some buildings in LA for most of the trip up and Catalina and
(One of the few downhill sections)
I think that all but the last 6 miles of our ride was either uphill or rolling hills but we needed all the training we could get. The VQ will be an interesting race for me. I had never been on my mt. bike for 50 miles until the 50mileRide last weekend but it was not at race pace and the elevation was not even half of what the VQ will be. I believe the VQ has over 11,000ft of gain and is about 56 miles total.
(Monique and me with Corona in the background and Mt Baldy all the way back)
Sunday was another day of hills but this time it was just putting one foot in front of the other. After we spent the morning back at home cleaning up after our puppies again we headed for the foothills by our house for some hill repeats. Wow… Monique is getting faster with every run now and even our six mile hill repeats dont wear her out. What a girl.
(Monique working her way up our hill repeat trail)
I was not in any pain from our ride yesterday and I think that the big breakfast we had was really helping me out. It is amazing how much your diet comes in to play when you need the energy. We really had some help with our IPods today too. I have not run with it in a long time and I forgot how much it can pump you up and distract you from the pain in your quads! I was rockin some Muse and White Stripes and Monique was lost in space with Britney Spears.
On our way out of the hills Monique found a cool carcass so we did what we thought was best. Took some pictures with it and didn't eat meat for dinner. Poor guy.
This next week is a big training week for me. In fact, it is the highest number of hours in my "build" phase for the entire year so I have to plan out some unique workouts. We have an orienteering meet that we are going to this weekend so I will count some of that as general training but it is also our last week to get a long run in before we start to cut back for the twin peaks ultra so it should be interesting.
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