I'm Still Alive, Busy But Alive

The past few weeks have had me traveling for work and for a family vacation. A lot has been happening so I'll try to give you a quick update.

First off I raced the Mt Evans Hill Climb. I haven't done that race in three years and now I remember why. My race team puts on the race and last year I did a lot of volunteering. This year I found a couple of volunteers so I decided to give it a go. The week before the race I comfortably pre-road the coarse in 2:45. I was hoping I could get down to 2:30 come race day. After a week tapering at sea level in meetings for work, it didn't quite work out the way I wanted. To my surprise (not really), sitting around at sea level in no way prepares you for climbing to 14,000 ft. Come race day I almost killed myself for a finishing time of 2:41. Unimpressed with my result, I was comfortable with the fact that I couldn't have made it to the top any faster that day. When I got to the top I was seeing stars; in the thin air it takes a while to recover, as in whatever time it takes you to get back below 10,000 ft.

In other news my powertap crapped out. It totally lost its calibration. My guess is it was reading 150 or more watts low. Even reading zero while I was peddling at times. So it's been sent off for service and re-calibration. So perhaps this explains my "Power loss" ordeal of the past month. I guess that's what happens when you rely on technology, it lets you down. I bet that wont be in the marketing manual for powermeters anytime soon. Oh well, time to move forward.

My Cannondale Flash 29er Lefty fork finally came back from Cannondale Service. Their warranty repair took three and a half weeks to get the fork back to me. Fortunately I had a loner fork to ride. I haven't gotten out on the repaired fork yet but I'll let you know how that goes when it happens.

Now I'm thinking about cyclocross season. I got out for my first run this morning and have started drawing up CX specific training intervals to work on in the coming weeks. I am starting to get pumped for the fall.

Thanks for reading, I'll try to get back to a normal posting schedule.