Saturday, May 11, 2013

It's Been a While!!

I can't believe it's been 3 weeks since my last post. Since the Sea Otter, I haven't been doing anything really exciting. I did take the week off after the race just to get some downtime from work. I did complete my 500 miles for the month of April on Runkeeper. In that 500 miles was a 45 mile out and back trip to visit Julie at work for lunch, and one 30 mile round-trip ride into town to visit my parents.


My 5K-10K training is going into it's 6th week with another 3 to go. Next weekend is the Avenue of the Vines race, I'll be running the 5K as usual, and Julie will be running in her first half-marathon. I can't express how proud of her I am and what she can accomplish when she puts her mind to it. After this race I think we both need to take a week off from running, riding and working out and just veg out. After that we can get back to training for the next big event in June, ( The Mendocino Monster) 62 miles of mind numbing hill climbing. Luckily, we have 2 comparable hills to climb right in our own back yard. (i.e. Mt. Diablo and Del Valle)





















I did, however, manage to record my first "real" KOM (king of the mountain) on Strava. I've been riding this stretch for about 2 months now, and have been very close to the record time several times. May 6th was the day all the planets came into alignment, ducks fell into a row and I got my first KOM. It's actually a pretty tricky segment in that you have to know where it starts to be able to trigger the GPS to track it. I won't lie, it took a lot of luck to do it, First of all, I had to catch the light just right. Second, I had to have a clear path with no pedestrians or cars to dodge. Next, I was fortunate enough to catch a tailwind that day. (usually face a headwind here) Finally, I had to pedal as hard as I could to the finish. I'm sure it will fall, but for now I'm "The Man" on this segment!!