Training Summary - Week 10

Week 10 was a reduce training load week, so we planned a family vacation to San Francisco this week.

We stayed in a hostel at the Marin Headlands which was cool but a little noisy. Mount Tam is close by, and is claimed to be the birthplace of mountain biking. Gary Fisher and crew started mountain biking the area, and of course Gary Fisher started building mountain bikes. Ironically, all the singletrack on Mount Tam is closed to mountain bikes because the wealthier hikers and equestrians had more influence than the dirt bag, stoner mountain bikers.

Sam had her bike, so I rented a bike and we rode up Mount Tam. Mmm, railroad grade, my favorite. The rear brakes on my $75 rental bike didn't work at all, so that at least added some excitement.

So I got a little riding in, and then we did a lot of walking around SF. So I counted that as 4 hours of training.

Training Summary - Week 9

Last week was to be the biggest training week of the program at over 28 hours. 

I was pretty worried about the IT band problems I had the weekend before. Because of my experience with IT band problems in the past, I knew that any serious flare up might mean the end of training and the race. I went to the doctor and she suggested that we wait on any steroid injections until the week was over, because the steroids can weaken the tissue in the short term, and won't provide much anti-inflammatory affect for two to three weeks. Since this was to be a high intensity week she didn't want to weaken anything.

During the week, the training volume was the usual. The weekend however was a long overnight. I have been trying to do the long overnights on the Colorado Trail to get to know the sections and because none of my local trails can provide the time required without doing laps on them.

I decided to go to Durango, and ride to Silverton. This would allow me to do a long ride without forcing me to ride back the same way to get back to my car. Instead I planned to take the narrow gauge train back to Durango.

It turned out to be an epic weekend both physically and mentally. 

I left work early Friday to drive down to Durango, but due to a fire I had to take a longer route. I arrived around 10:00pm, had dinner, and started trying to figure out where to stay. I wasn't thinking clearly, and wasn't sure where the trail head was. I also left my detailed guide book at home, so I called Mickey and gave her the name of the trail head, and she gave me directions. I headed out of town towards the trail head, and eventually found a camp site along the way. I set the alarm for 5:00 am, and decide to just sleep in the front sear at around midnight. Comfy!

In the morning I continued up towards the trail head. The road turned into a very rough jeep road that was probably too rough for my Subaru, and made progress very slow. This didn't feel right at all. I was getting way to high, and it didn't feel like I was in the right place. Finally I found a place to park and decided it would be easier to ride my bike the rest of the way. I eventually reached the trail head after about 1000 feet of climbing, only to realize that it was the wrong trail head. I was at Kennebek Pass trail head, one trail head out from the Junction Creek trail head near Durango. Continuing from this point would have eliminated the first 20 miles and 6500 feet of climbing from the ride, so I headed back to the car and drove to the correct trail head. It's now 9:30.

I start riding the section, wondering how my IT band will handle the weekend. I start to feel some pain, and decide to negotiate some mental ground rules with myself. This weekend ride is epic by any normal standards, and is bound to be really beautiful. I decide that if my IT band has a serious flare up early in the ride, I will turn back and probably not do the race. If it flares up past the half way point I will continue on and try to enjoy the accomplishment of this ride, and then probably not do the race. If it doesn't flare up I figure that my gratitude will make the normal suffering more bearable, and I will enjoy the ride into Silverton. Well, the IT band creaked and moaned for a little while and then went to sleep. I really didn't have an issue with it. ( My gratitude wore off pretty quickly and the normal suffering took over )

I slogged along up the first 20 miles to Kennebek Pass. The pace was slow. It seems to get slower each time I go out. Around 2:30 I got caught in a nice thunderstorm with rain and hail. Fortunately, I was caught just a hundred yards inside the tree line, and was able hunker down under a large bristle-cone pine. At tree line, the temps fall very quickly in a storm and I scrambled to get rain gear on. Being cold and wet sucks, but this was a good mental test. The storm passed and I continued up towards the pass.

A few minutes later as I was pushing my bike up a scree field, I saw two riders coming down, and I pulled off to let them pass. ( Only because I was pushing ). As they came closer, I recognized the first rider and said something dorky like "I know who you are. You're Kurt Refsnider". It's funnier if you imagine me saying it with the voice of Larry the Cable Guy, AKA Mater. Kurt won the Tour Divide in 2011 and was featured in the Mike Dion film, "Reveal the Path".

He didn't stop to give me an autograph so I continued to push to the pass. ( Where I had already been 8 hours ago ) There were some tents setup, and I got some water from some people providing support for a 100 mile mountain bike race going on.

For the next 5 miles I met a number of riders doing the race that asked me if I was training for the CTR. Many of them either were doing it this year or had done it in the past. I was always pushing my bike, so it was easy to stop and talk. Have I mentioned that I was pushing my bike, a lot. I find that bringing a bike along is only really efficient if you can actually sit on it and pedal.

Fast forward to 9:30 pm. I left the trail head 12 hours before, and have only gone 43 miles, mostly above 11000 feet. It's now dark, and I have been riding a traversing trail running below a ridge on a steep slope. There haven't been any places to camp in a while, so when an "almost" flat, obvious campground shows up, I decide to call it a day. I want to push myself hard, but I'm not sure when the next camp will turn up, and I'm not riding very well in the dark on this narrow, sloping trail. I make up for it by setting the alarm for 4:00 am.

I'm up by 4:15 and moving by 4:30. The first task of the day is to push my bike up a 12000 foot pass. Guess what the second task is? As usual my pace is slow, and I start worrying that I won't make it to Silverton in time to catch the train. But the last 8 miles to Silverton turn out to be nice and fast, and I make it with 40 minutes to space.

The train ride back is very cool, but it's an old train. It's jerky and impossible to find a position to get some sleep.

Back in Durango I ride back to the trail head to get my car, gas up, fail to find the Starbucks, and head out of town. My plan is find a hotel somewhere along the way, but it's so late by the time I get to the Salida area, that I decide to just pull over and try to get some sleep before I pass out and crash. I got about an hour and a half of sleep, and then pushed on to Bailey where I did another half an hour. I made it to Denver around 6:00 am, found a 24 hour fitness and took a shower. Another 40 minute nap in the parking lot, and I was ready for another day at the office.

I think this was the most tired I have ever been. I fell asleep on the couch around 7:30 and slept very well through the night.

Little waterfall

Columbine

Free bike wash

Survived the lightning, rain and Hail

Final hike-a-bike to Kennebek Pass

Indian Trail Ridge ( I think )

More waterfalls

Molas Pass Panorama

Train ride back to Durango

Training Summary - Week 8

This concludes week 8 of the training plan, 4 more to go. 

I have been mostly mountain biking up to this point. I'm getting bored riding all the same trails, so this week I decided I would mostly ride the road bike, and arranged to do a 100 mile ride with my friend Ron on Saturday. We did the Copper Triangle, a route that goes from Copper Mountain, to Leadville, Minturn, and back to Copper. We extended it by starting and ending in Frisco, which makes it the Copper Lollipop.

The big, and not so good news of the week, is that during the above ride, which was not that long or difficult relative to the other rides I have been doing lately, I developed some significant soreness in my left IT band. The soreness is continuing off the bike, and is the first significant issue I have had with my IT band since I had surgery to correct the problem over 7 years ago. Obviously the timing of this is not good, and I need to make it go away very quickly. I'm starting some IT specific stretches and I'll probably try to get a steroid shot early this week. I'm crossing my fingers.

This coming week is the largest planned training volume of the program at 28 hours, 18 of which will be during a long overnight next weekend. I'm still figuring out where to go. These overnights are difficult to plan because I have to end up back at the car at some point.

Ron, always texting

View heading up Fremont Pass

Bridge near Minturn

Training Summary - Week 7

As I mentioned last time, I was in Orlando most of the week for an important trade show. I was hoping that I would be able to train in the evening either in the hotel exercise room, or at a local 24 hour fitness. Unfortunately with long days working the booth followed by long dinners, I was only able to get a single, one hour workout in on Tuesday evening between 11:00 pm and midnight. Fortunately, most of the weeks training was scheduled for Friday through Sunday.

I flew back to CO on Friday morning. Mickey and Sam met me in Denver for an early Father's Day lunch because Sam was going to be at a mountain bike camp, and I was going to be spending the weekend on a two night training ride.

After lunch I headed to Buena Vista where I planned to start my weekend riding two or three more segments of the Colorado Trail. Nothing was really going right. I couldn't find my iPod, or my bike computer. My rear tire wouldn't hold air, and it took me over an hour to unload my car, pack and get going. I found a bike shop to put more sealant in my rear tire, but it didn't work. I had to keep pumping it up until the next day I finally gave up an put a tube in my tubeless wheel. Saturday morning I checked my spot GPS tracker and noticed that the low battery light was on. I had told Mickey that I would bring spare batteries ( Which I forgot to do ) so that there would be almost no chance that I would lose contact. So I was forced to ride by to Buena Vista to buy batteries, and then drove my car back to the Mt. Princeton parking lot to continue where I left off.

Towards the end of segment 13, I ran into Pete, another rider training for the CTR, who had also finished in 2011.

The CO trail in this area runs along the front of the Collegiate peaks. Looking at the elevation profile, the area doesn't look terribly daunting, but I found the trails difficult. The trails had lots of short steep climbs with loose sand and rock. I spent a lot of time pushing my bike, and getting off and on over and over. I keep doing the math in my head to figure out how long this race is going to take me, and the answer is not good. I'm in the best shape of my life, and I'll be luckyif I can just finish before I have to go back to work.

Relaxing Friday night

Shining my Niterider bike light into a water bottle made for a nice camp light.

Rise and shine in camp 1

Meadow near the end of segment 14

Training Summary - Week 6

I have to admit that after last weekend, as good as it was, I found myself high in fatigue and low in motivation. I started asking myself why I must choose goals for myself that are ridiculously hard, and considered changing my goal to set the world record for most pounds of Cheetos consumed in a single day. OK, enough whining!

The above, combined with a big software release at work, resulted in my first training week where I really missed workouts, and didn't get the hours in. I did finish the week out with a strong weekend, but ended about 5 hours short. Next week I'm in Orlando all week for a trade show, so next week will be even more difficult.

It has been two weeks since I attempted to ride Fall River Road in RMNP. I attempted it again today, and except for a couple of snow fields at the top, it was rideable. So I rode it twice.

The second time, I locked my bike to a very secure, sun bleached road marker pole, and walked the final snow field to the plowed road near the top to the visitor's center. ( Both shown below ) After a snack, I did some obligatory hiking around the soaking wet alpine tundra for an hour or so.

As I headed back past the visitor center towards the snow field, a conscientious park employee pointed out to me that there was a sign that said "No pedestrians or bikes beyond this point". I may have snapped at him a bit when I said "THAT'S THE WAY I CAME UP, AND MY $7000 MOUNTAIN BIKE IS ACROSS THE SNOW FIELD, AND THERE WAS NO SIGN ON THE WAY UP SAYING THAT I CAN'T GO BACK". Apparently my argument was compelling since no park rangers arrived to arrest me.

Alpine Visitor's Center

I walked the final snowfield to the visitor center. The visitor center is just out of view on the other side of the snow field.

Training Summary - Week 5

Last weeks training was the highest volume of the program so far.

The big event of the week was a long overnight during the weekend on the actual Colorado Trail. I wasn't feeling great this week so I deviated from the training plan a little bit, and put in some extra hours on the weekend. I really wanted to go far on the weekend, so this worked out well.

My weekend ride consisted of riding segments 1-3, plus the Bailey detour to Kenosha Pass and back.

In total it was about 135 miles of mountain biking, 17,000 feet of climbing, and almost 17 hours of pedaling. It was difficult, but I wasn't completely at my limit. I recovered quickly. My performance was much improved over last Summer's experiment on the trail. My average speed on Saturday where most of the climbing occurred was 7.7 mph with a fully loaded bike. I stopped less and went further in a single day..

I worked on nutrition and hydration strategies. In particular I set an alert on my computer to sound every 15 minutes to drink and eat, because I tend to zone out and forget until it's too late. This worked well for the water, but I'm going to continue to fine tune what and when I eat. I also tried to take some electrolyte supplements every hour which I did pretty well the first day, but mostly forgot to do the second day.

Clearly, I want to enjoy the scenery and the experience of these long rides, and I do. However, assuming a rider has the fitness to do these rides, the next issue becomes physical and psychological pain management. I always ride with music, but music is more of a background thing. I experimented with listening to books on tape this weekend, and they are very effective at making the time go by faster.

On Saturday while riding segment 3, I rode through a large group of riders resting at a trail junction. Seeing all the gear on my bike someone said "Cool", and then someone else said "I'll see you in Durango". I said "I'll be there", without seeing who was speaking. It was a cool exchange.

At Kenosha Pass I met another lone camper ( David ) who provided me with a beer, a camp fire and some good conversation. It was cold up there, but the sky was clear and the stars were bright. I should know, I woke up about every 20 minutes to look at them. :-)

Below is a map of the course I took.

As always, here are the totals after week 5.

Training Summary - Week 4

This last week was a lower training volume week, to allow for some recovery from the previous three weeks. Monday - Friday was nice and easy, and I think I needed the time off. I wasn't feeling that great. The usual summary is below.

On Sunday, the plan called for high altitude riding combined with a couple hours of hiking to get the legs in shape for the inevitable hike-a-bike sections on the CTR. I decided to ride Fall River Road in Rocky Mountain National Park. The road was not yet open to cars which was why I chose it, but I was hoping the park had done some Spring maintenance on it. Unfortunately at about 10,500 feet the road became unpassable without snow shoes. I climbed the road twice to get in the needed time and then hiked for a couple hours on a nearby trail. It was a beautiful day with lots of great scenery. See video below.

Training Summary - Week 3

This week was an interesting training week. The prior weekend I felt invincible on the bike, climbing with ease. But this week started off difficult. The first workout was road bike climbing  intervals, and I just couldn't get my heart rate up. The second workout was an easy mountain bike ride, and again I couldn't find the power or any skill for that matter. I was putting my foot down everywhere. If this continued, I would start to worry, but I chose to assume that this meant I was training good and hard.

Things turned around on Thursday when I did mountain bike intervals up the Horsetooth tower road. I did 4500-5000 feet of climbing before work. See the nice pictures below.

Pre-sunrise at the marina

Longs peak from the top of Tower Road

Friday I had a short 1 hour recovery road ride planned. I procrastinated throughout the day, and ended up missing the ride in exchange for watching a movie with Mickey. It was worth it.

The weekend training plan consisted of the first overnight to work out gear selection and to start getting accustomed to the extra weight. The plan was for 4 hour Saturday, camp out, and 4 hours on Sunday. Lory State park has six back country camp sites, so I planned to ride Horsetooth Mountain Park, and then head over to Lory and meet up with Mickey and Sam who would backpack in from Lory.

Saturday morning I started getting a stomach ache, which is not something that I'm used to. I started riding about 2:00 pm, and rode every hard ride I could think of including Stout, Herrington, Wathen, West Ridge, Spring Creek, The service road, Mill Creek and Howard. Despite the extra fifteen pounds of gear on the bike, the riding went well. Unfortunately by the time I reached the camp at around 7:00 pm, my stomach was killing me.

It was fairly cold and very windy at this point. This combined with the fact that Mickey and Sam had seen a bear hiking in resulted in both of them being hunkered down in the tent. After resting a bit, we cooked dinner and went to bed. The girls in the tent, and me in my new bivi sack.

By midnight my stomach hurt so bad that I was writhing in pain in my sleeping bag. I thought that I had some strong narcotic pain medicine in my first aid kit to handle situations like this, but when I got up to look they weren't there. I took an aleve with not much hope that it would help, but within an hour I was feeling a lot better and was able to sleep, despite the 30 mile an hour winds.

I felt well enough to ride for 4 hours on Sunday, but didn't feel as strong. I still don't know what caused the issue, and I'm still not feeling that great.

In summary, the week went well. My mileage was low, but I did mostly mountain biking and I did a lot of climbing. The totals for the week show 17643 feet of climbing this, but if I turn on elevation correction in GarminConnect, the total is almost 21000 feet. 

Here are the totals.

Training Summary - Week 2

Despite some wet weather this week I managed to complete all the training. The weekend rides ended up being really good, and I spent most of the time up in the trees at Horsetooth Mountain Park.

Below is the a summary of the last two weeks of training. The hours include 3-3.5 hours/week of core strength and stretching in addition to the riding.

Below are a few pictures taken while training this week.

Sunrise on Pineridge. Not a bad way to start the day.

Spring Creek in Horsetooth Mountain Park

Training with T

I'm hoping that whatever ate this was still full when I went by.

Training Summary - Week 1

My goal for the first week was to do everything I could to complete all the training hours on the days they were scheduled. I wanted to set the tone for the next 12 weeks.

For me to do this meant I had to plan ahead and be disciplined. Each evening, I set the coffee maker to start brewing at 4:45. I packed my computer for work, put out both my workout and regular cloths, filled water bottles, and set multiple alarms on my phone to ensure that I would get up early. ( 4:30 - 5:30 depending on the day )

Monday and Tuesday went well. On Tuesday, the training plan called for a 20 minute time trial at 100% effort. This test will be used as a base line. I chose to do the service road at Horsetooth Mountain Park. I'm pleased to report that I had a personal best of 17:59 on this hill climb. This was much faster than I had ever done the hill before, and therefor was a great confirmation that my training is paying off, and a motivator for the next 12 weeks.

Unfortunately after Tuesday the weather conspired to shut down my training. But I would have none of it. I spent about 4 hours on a spin bike in the gym Wednesday and Thursday. Friday, things had dried out enough that I was able to get a road ride in.

The plan specified 7 hours of mountain biking over the weekend, but the trails were way too wet and snowy for that. I was planning to ride my road bike instead, but the bottom bracket on my road bike was in desperate need of service. It was creaking so bad that riding it for an hour was intolerable, so seven hours was out of the question. I took it to the shop first thing Sat morning, but they were unable to work on it until Monday.

So I quickly packed the car with food, gear and my mountain bike and headed to Fruita CO, where it was dry and the temperature was 80 degrees. I made great time and was able to ride from 4:00 to 8:00. I road most of the next day as well, and made it back home around 11:00pm, just in time to start week number 2.


Here is the training summary for the week. I didn't quite do all the training hours, but it was close. My Friday recovery ride was about a half hour short, and I missed the Sunday strength workout because I was driving home from Fruita.

Planned Training Hours: 17:45
Actual Training Hours: 17.19


Below are some pictures of Fruita.

Colorado River from the Horse thief Bench trail.

If you look carefully, you can see that there is a house built into this rock outcropping. 

I have ridden past this many times and never noticed before.