As Nan and I did our normal Sunday night planning for the week, it became clear that this was going to be a busy week. And today lived up to that again. Up bright and early for another glorious 4 hour shift at my service post! (Just 6 more of those lovely opportunities, I'm not counting though) Then another full busy day of work in the office for some and out making rounds to houses and meeting with contractors mostly. I definitely don't have a problem keeping myself busy, but fortunately I enjoy what I do and mostly that I am the boss, so that when it gets annoying and demanding it makes it pretty tough to blame anyone but myself. Then in the evening Nan had lined up a babysitter so she could go to her workout and so I could finish my work, and also get a workout in while it was still light out. I had a really great mt. Bike/run in the evening from about 6-8. I am riding the top of the line $7K Fuji carbon frame, 24 pound, XTR components, extremely sweet bike which my buddy loaned me for the week to do Leadville with. And it is not disappointing me at all. I can attest to the bike making a huge difference in comfort, speed, and enjoyment of the ride. That thing is seriously so smooth to ride. It just flies over anything. 25-30 mph and super rocky and bumpy fast section decents tonight and it just glides right through it all. And then having 24 pounds instead of my old clunkers 30 pounds going uphill makes it pretty sweet too. (I'm still kind of in a dreamy state as I reminisce about how fun it was to ride that bike tonight if you couldn't tell, I'm really looking forward to seeing how I fare on it for 100 this weekend.) I'm still waiting on getting my other new bike back which is why I'm borrowing his for now. Anyway, back to the workout...so I was riding at the flatirons vista trailhead, where I ran goshawk ridge last week. Most of it is rideable, but the 1 mile section at the top up to goshawk is off limits to bikes. The perfect excuse for me to squeeze in a run. I rode the 4.9 miles and followed an Xterra racer guy named Matt as he pushed a solid pace . I was happy that I had no problem hanging with him. Then I stashed my biking gear, and threw on my NB 790's which I had stuffed in the back pocket of my jersey (very nice how easy those things are to pack around since they are so minimal) I then did 2 laps up goshawk ridge and back, which was really fun and felt great. Averaged 9:09/ mile for 4 miles with about 650-700' of vert. Then hopped back on the bike for a really fun and fast return trip 4.9 back to the car. I love doing run/bike combo days, they are totally fun. I am getting really excited to be done with my service hours so I can do more of them in the early hours before the early summer mornings are gone. The bummer about today was I only got to spend about 30-40 minutes with my kids, and that was totally fantastic time, and was the highlight of my whole day, but I was bummed that I was so busy that that's all the time we had together. It made me reflect on when I was travelling for work years ago and regularly being gone for 3-4 days or a week at a time and how bad that sucked. Even just 30 minutes a day, is so much better than nothing. But its also far from ideal for me, and so I'm grateful that its temporary, and that today and tomorrow are less busy, and that next week I get to spend a few full days traveling with my awesome family. There's just nothing in the world that is as enjoyable and fulfilling to me as spending quality time with my family. | 