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Monday, February 22, 2010

Much Needed Rest

Over the past few weeks of riding I haven't had much luck with my camera and taking photos. Since I am typically limited by daylight and free time on the weekdays, I usually have been pushing harder during these rides - in turn spending less time looking around for that "perfect picture". A few other times I have forgotten my camera altogether...and when I do remember it, I always seem to be faced with the cold weather camera failures of foggy lenses and failed batteries. Grrrrr...looking forward to spring! This time around however, I'll plug in a few videos from a past ride...



As far as the training schedule goes, I think it cracked me last week. A few weeks of pushing hard had whittled my legs down to nothing. I ran out of steam and needed some rest. Over the past week I have been breaking up the rides a bit, not pushing too hard, and squeezing in some extra rest. On Sunday I was feeling full of fuel once again - back to normal. The next few weeks should be fraught much needed pain, but I suspect the snow biking days are numbered...

Saturday, February 6, 2010

Little Sissabagama

I just wanted to pop this little snippet on here to reminisce about the awesome off-road and gravel rides from this past fall. Looking forward to the Almanzo in May!

Friday, February 5, 2010

A January Saturday

**Pictures to come**

Once again I am doing a poor job of keeping up with these posts...another recap from last Saturday (1/30/2010)...

So far this year I've done a pretty good job keeping a rigorous riding schedule. In the past few rides I have really noticed some results, which helps with the motivation. Recovery time on the legs has become much faster. They're allowing me to push for a hard 2-3 hours one day, and still have enough gas in the tank the next day to crank another 2 or 3 hours. This Saturday's ride was a pretty good way to round out the month.

Two goals in mind for the ride: ride as much as possible on snowmobile trails (use the roads only if time becomes an issue), and make it to my parents. The trails were great! Although they were packed well enough to go fast, we paced it easy for most of the day knowing that it would be a long haul. We left my apartment at about 10am - temp was 10 below zero but the sun had some serious power! Over the next 5 hours it warmed up to 15 degrees.

We cruised north on the WRT to connect with 1 of 2 trails going west over to Cumberland. We took the north trail as I knew there was a nice winding section through Barron County forest land. With the trails as hard as they were, we figured this would be one of the few days that we could ride this section end to end on skinny bikes. We couldn't have picked a better day to do it!

The forest section was fairly hilly, and we hit some loose snow in spots slowing our pace down. It ended up taking a little longer than we anticipated. We then realized that we were running short on time so we jumped on an 8 mile section of roads to get closer to my parents. This allowed us to really turn on the gas for a bit...and remember what it's like to draft!

Each of the big weekend rides we've done have included a mix of trails, roads and lakes. Sticking to that...we took the last lake section to my folks back yard. Post-ride priority number 1 - recovery beer.

We must have paced ourselves pretty well. I wasn't feeling too tired even though this was the longest stretch of snowmobile trails I've ever ridden. It's too bad we were crunched on time...one or two more hours on the lake would have been right painful.

I have had an excellent week of riding pushing roughly 2 hours per day in the snow. Two rest days should set me up for a Super Bowl Sunday-fun-day of punishment!