No more Monday Monday on Tuesday.  That’s just wrong.

So here’s what I did this weekend.

First Climb Diablo to Junction then climb Morgan Terrirtory

** update**

I just re-read this post and realized that if you aren’t a cyclist it sounds like I am a nutjob who speaks in some strange tongue.  I’m not going to re-write it.  Just an observation.

** 

That second climb looks a lot like the first but the general concensus around here is that it is much harder. I didn’t really know when the climb started because the road winds  through a heavily wooded area so you can’t see what’s coming. I found myself thinking “this had better be the climb because if it isn’t I’m in a heap ‘o trouble!”  When we got to the very steepest part I had no idea what to expect and my HR was in the stratosphere so I stopped for a minute to let it go down.  Then I started up again – going up a steep hill.  It’s still easier when you have O2 in the system.  Of course that part  flattened out a bit just around the corner but the climb was not done.  Oh no – there was a ways to go.

I only used the little chain ring for that 1 part and the rest of the time was in the middle chain ring.  My climbing was really good and I felt a huge sense of accomplishment for having done this.  On the way back a couple of fast guys pulled us slower riders in and then I kind of ran out of gas.  When we were just about back – close enough that I got dropped, I flatted.  No princes in shining spandex came back to rescue me so I had to change my own tire.  I was actually kind of glad of that, too because I did it in a relatively short amount of time and it worked and it’s always nice to know you can save yourself.

Sunday I took a nice recovery ride follwed by a whopping 20 minute run and Monday I did an open water swim and a little run – a whole 30 minutes.  My next race is The Relay which is all run.  It takes you from Calistoga to Santa Cruz (199 miles) in 36 legs for each 12 person team.  That means you run 3 times in about 30 or so hours so I need to practice running some more.  I think I’ll skip practicing the sleep deprivation and enduring a lot of stink, though.  That is something that needs to be endured real time because there’s just no reasonable way to simulate that experience.