Go slow to go fast.

Crazy busy day today. Service from 6-10am - worked until 6pm - running errands with the family until 8. I was exhausted from a stressful work day made worse by only getting 4+ hours of sleep.

But I managed to head out for a quick easy mt. Bike ride on the roads for 35 minutes, and I felt a lot better afterward.

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.

Just had time for a bike ride this morning and did the Marshall Mesa loop - which is a 14.9 mile loop, about half on awesome single track, and the other half on dirt road and a couple miles on paved road.  It's a fun loop that I used to do all the time and i have never been able to break an hour on it on my mountain bike before.  Today I think I rode it in right about an hour.  It was actually 1:05 - but I stopped to chat with my old Bishop, Bob Ure from our previous ward.  I saw him running down the trail and so we had about a year and a half to catch up on...I didn't look at the watch, but I'm pretty sure that took 5 minutes or so, because we talked about a lot of stuff.  

Oh well..doesn't really matter, but I was trying to see where my biking fitness was compared to last time I tried this last year, and so I was pretty pleased that I was able to hold a 15 mile/hour average on it pretty comfortably.  I started out really slow to warm up, and I was never really going all that hard, just steady riding the whole time.  So i'm glad.  

I still think there's a good chance the 100 miles of leadville is going to totally work me over on Saturday.  But I'm glad that my overall fitness level is good, even though my specific biking strength and endurance surely isn't as good as it could be if I had actually trained more than 3 times in a 1 week period.

I'm also getting antsy to run more, I can't wait to go running for 8 or 10 miles tomorrow when I'm in Leadville.  

really easy run around leadville.  Loved the weather at 10,000 feet, so comfortable!

HO-LY CRAP! That was the most fun I have ever had on any mountain bike ride or any type of race ever.  Seriously fun.  I felt fantastic and full of energy all day.  Literally zero tiredness, zero fatigue, zero energy issues.  I felt strong all the way to the finish and it was odd to me to be blowing past all the carnage the last 30 miles of people cracking left and right.  I honestly wished the race were longer at the end and was kind of bummed about having it come to an end.  To the point where I was itching to go for a run after because I felt so good (I didn't end up running after due to lack of time though).  I'll write a detailed report and post a video report of the race later.  But needless to say I was really pleased with and absolutely loved doing that race.  I went into it hoping to just have fun and that my legs would hold up for 10 hours.  The legs held up perfectly and I had way more fun than I could have anticipated.

My full race report and video is on my blog here