Granite Pass

With the decent weather of the weekend, we decided to head up Longs Peak. The trail above the keyhole is rated technical above the Keyhole so we added crampons and ice axes just in case we got that high. We headed out at a good clip - probably too good. It wasn't long at all until we were good and sweated up. The trail had some snow but not bad at all.

Once we broke from treeline, the wind started howling down from the top. We had to lean into it just to keep going. A few people were already heading down but it was certainly not a crowd.

A couple hours and we were at the trail split overlooking Chasm Lake. After a quick lunch we needed to make a decision on whether to keep going up. Why not.

Another mile and about 600 feet elevation brought us up to Granite Pass. If we thought the wind was bad at treeline, it was 10 times worse at the Pass. Looking up, the clouds started only about 500 above us. We could keep going toward the Boulder Field but we wouldn't be able to see anything so we decided it wasn't worth it. Try for the summit another day.

The hike down was obviously a lot quicker. We were pretty wiped out. Needed a bite to eat so the obvious place was Oskar Blues. A beer and a pizza was the perfect ending.

Elk Season

Its been a while since I posted. Yes partly becasue its been boring for a while but also because I suck at regular blogging.

**Disclaimer** If you don't like hunting or are a little squeamish about blood, you might want to skip this one.

I had my hours in for the time period by early morning on Thursday. They were doing some wiring work in our building and the computers kept going out so I bailed on work and headed out to Steamboat Springs a little early. I made it into the Route National Forest okay but it was a little iffy with the mud. There was a lot of snow and the temps were around 35. This is when I realized that even with only about 35k on the tires, they were getting too close to bald for this area. Everywhere you drove packed down the snow and as the sun went down this all turned to ice. Out come the tire chains to the rescue!!! ( I have GOT to get a second set for the front)

Camp was my big Kelty Grand Canyon tent (12'x12'). Plenty big to fit my cot, lounge chair, all my gear, food and cooking gear. A lantern hanging from the top made it nice and cozy. Not exactly roughing it other than it being about5 degrees overnight. The biggest problem was that there was a full moon and all the snow lit everything up almost as bright as day. At one point I woke up and thought I over slept because it was so light. It was only 1 in the morning. Only thing to do was pull my hat down over my eyes and bury myself back in my sleeping bag.

At about 6:30 in the morning I headed east from the trailhead, straight into the woods. I climbed over a couple ridges to a high park and then started moving back down one more ridge. There was very little sign up high. One or two sets of tracks heading south to private land but not much else. It had snowed heavy about two days before so you could easily tell what was new vs old.

After I dropped a couple hundred feet, I started seeing groups of tracks all over. I kept going down and slowly checking the small parks and creek beds. I stopped to have a sandwich and drink a little. As a started to move on, I was stepping around a pine tree and suddenly there she was - a nice cow elk standing in the middle of a meadow. I stepped back and used my binoculars to verify that it was a cow. I only had a cow tag and didn't want to mistakenly shoot a small bull.

I dropped to one knee for a rest and put the crosshairs right behind the shoulder. Squeezed one off and knew it was a solid hit. The elk didn't even flinch. I racked another shell and put a second shot next to the first (a little fast forward to the post mortem exam - only 2 or 3 inches apart). The elk again didn't even flinch. I was getting ready to put number three into her when her front leg buckled and over she went. Never even took a step.

Now cleaning an elk is a whole different thing than cleaning a whitetail. I've done dozens of whitetails but never an elk. With a deer, you open up the guts, flip it over and dump it all out. Its a little harder to do this with 400 pounds of elk than it is with a 150 pound deer. And of course I was out in the middle of a field with no trees to tie a leg back while I worked on her.

Things did not start out well anyway. As I split the skin up the belly I went too deep and punctured the stomach or intestine - nasty! New plan. I skinned the top side of the elk and lay it back. Next come the front and rear quarters. I cut the legs off just above the knee/elbow joint. I did it to save weight when I carried out the quarters. (It was a bit of a mistake since that is what the butcher wanted to hang the quarters later). Next I took out the back meat and some of the other large pieces.

Next I pulled the elk over keeping the belly down so the split stomach wouldn't spoil anything. Skin the other side, remove the quarters and back meat. Then its done. Except for digging out the tenderloins. I had to pull the guts away from the back and reach into cut them out.

Now comes the hard part.
I loaded the back straps inside the hide and strapped it to the top of my pack. Then I put my orange vest over the top of everything - no sense getting shot at walking out after a successful hunt. The load had to be 60-80 pounds or more and it was a good mile plus to the road. I had to walk farther becasue I angled to make the walk mainly downhill. Once I found the road, I stashed to pack and walked up to get my truck and sled - my "meat wagon". The walk back in wasn't bad. I loaded the quarters and head onto the sled, tied it all down, and headed out. This load had to be way over a 100 pounds. One downhill stretch, the sled got away and took my legs out from under me, I rode the meat wagon about a hundred yards down the hill. The few times I had to pull it uphill out of a creek crossing, it really blew. The last quarter mile to the road was all uphill and I could only pull about 50 yards at a time.

As I go to the road, a guy stopped to talk to me. He ended up giving me a ride and pulled the sled with his truck up the road the last half mile to my truck. A few others also drove by. No one had seen anything all week. Probably because all they did was road hunt. None were to enthused about walking off into the woods to chase them down. As I explained where to look, the only comment was " you sure earned that elk!"

Victoria BC

I'll need to change my profile. We went on vacation so we wouldn't be home over my big 4 - 0 birthday. It started out with a visit to Jean's cousin at Fort Lewis Washington and then took the ferry across to the island.



Victoria British Columbia is absolutely beautiful!!

Lush and green. It reminds me of the north shore of Lake Superior with bigger mountains in the background. We visited Oak Bay bicycles and rented a couple of Specialized Rubaix and Ruby Elite road bikes. Very smooth.



If you think Boulder is bike friendly, you haven't seen nuthin'. The city of Victoria has bike lanes everywhere. People expect bikes and watch for them. We did 30+ miles on regional trails going north from Victoria up to the Sydney area. Then we got on the country roads. Light traffic, beautiful country, rolling hills, and decent roads. There are no shoulders and only a single yellow stripe down the middle. Cars were so constantly aware of bikes. They would slow down and patiently wait for an opening to pass. Simply amazing.



Its very English influenced. Pubs everywhere. We hit one that had benches at tables, high top tables, low top tables, boothes, etc. If there was room you buddied up with other people to fill up a table. It was really fun!



Old downtown Victoria and the wharf area are extremely tourist friendly. We spent a couple nights down there in an old hotel. Careful you don't get a room on the street though - lights, loud, and hard to sleep.



We took the ferry from Port Angeles. Its shorter and cheaper. But its around a 2 hour drive from Tacoma. On the way there, we didn't have reservations and pulled in to the port as about 75% of the boat was already loaded. We pulled in and they closed the doors behind us. Perfect Timing.



Overall a good trip.

You gotta RIDE to learn to ride.

A very frustrating day at work Thursday so I needed to blow off some steam. The Sourdough Trail on my Mountain Bike seemed like the perfect solution. Drove up to the trailhead off Rainbow Lakes Rd and hit the trail around 5pm. A little cooler but not too bad. The trail was rockier than I'm used too but I kept moving all right. It climbed for the first mile and then got rockier and steeper for another half mile or so. My bike computer wasn't aligned right so I'm guessing at mileage. My deraileur was skipping too and pissing me off. That doesn't help blow off steam so I stopped and messed with it a bit and got it working pretty well.

I do all right on the rocks but I'm not fast and I did have to walk up in several places. I finally topped out on the first major climb and was able to make a little better time. The trail was good in places so you could cruise and in others you were still bouncing over roots and rocks.

At one point I realized I was being a real puss over the rougher parts of the trail. I said to myself "self, you ain't gonna learn to ride this stuff unless you RIDE it". So I let it rip. About 20 yards farther, I hit a rock with my back tire that threw my weight high and forward and then my front tire hit a rock and stopped head. Endo. Ripped up my left leg and my left elbow. The picture is the next day after I cleaned things up. I haven't shaved my legs since the Boulder 5430 Long Course about 4 weeks ago. I guess if I'm going to keep riding I should keep that up too.

The rest of the ride was fun but pretty uneventful. I still tried to ride harder than a puss. No more crashes at least. Once back on pavement, the ride down from the Brainerd Lakes/Red Rocks trailhead is a fst fun downhill bomb. Most of the ride back along the Peak hwy is down so I made good time back to the truck. Nothing like a high heart rate to calm you down to sleep good.

The Labor Day Recovery Ride

A beautiful day for a recovery ride. For this particular ride we chose the bike with a 750cc Honda motor. The ride up Hwy 7 to the Peak-to-Peak was a hell of a lot faster than Sunday's ride.

We took a nice cruise into Allenspark and had lunch at the little restaurant built into the hill. Love that place but still don't know its name. After that we headed back south to Nederland. As nice as it is not to have to pedal for propulsion, the seats on these things still aren't that comfy. The butts were getting pretty sore and the legs stiff from being in one position too long. We walked around Ned for a bit the stretch things out before moving on down. Golden was our next stop to wander a bit and have some ice cream. Then Boulder to check out the Festival on the Creek. Fifteen miles between stops was about our limit by now. That's about what we had left to get home and sit on a nice soft couch for afew hours.

A wonderful day it was.

Lyons to Estes Park Ride

So to recover from our nice little hike up Bear Peak, we joined some friends for a ride to Estes Park on Sunday. Dave & Wendy McMillian, Alex C, Meghan Rabbit, Artie Sandman, and Jean&I met in Lyons to ride up Hwy 7 to the Peak to Peak and back down along the Big Thompson to Carter Lake and back to Lyons.

Jean was very nervous as she had never done anything like this before. The looooong ride up started great with everyone keeping a nice easy steady pace. But its one long-ass uphill ride. As we were entering hour 3 of climbing, Jean had to back off and spin in her granny gear which dropped out of the pack. I went back to ride with her. She was feeling really bad which triggered some anxiety which in turn triggered some breathing issues. After she calmed down and we got riding it was okay, we just took it slower than the rest.

When we finally made it to Lily Lake, the 6-7 mile downhill began. Thank God! Jean loves speed and downhill riding a lot more than several others so she was way back up into the pack by then. Wendy, Alex and I were the downhill wimps bringing up the rear.

Once in Estes we were treated to Wendy and Dave's favorite smoothy place. Of course that wasn't enough for some and Dave and Meghan had to go to McD's for some to go burgers. Now that everyone had recovered, we could be on our way down the hill.

20 miles of coasting along the Big Thompson does a lot for your morale. We did actually have to start pedaling again around Carter Lake. Finally rolled into Lyons about 4pm. 6+ hours and 80 miles of riding.

All in all, a good tough ride. Made Jean more confident about being able to complete the Buffalo Century this weekend. Dave and Alex both tok some pix for the memories. (That's one of the new one's of me on my yellow bike).

I think we'll take it easy on Monday

Bear Peak

A little review of this past weekend's adventures.
We decided to tackle Bear Peak on Saturday. We slept in, had a nice breakfast and drove down to NCAR to start our little journey. We really haven't done much hiking around Boulder in the year that we've lived here and figured we had better get started. We were thinking about doing Longs Peak next week so we should get the legs into the groove.

Its a nice easy hike for the first 3+ miles when you do the loop in a counterclockwise direction. We headed out to the Mesa Trail and then up to the Bear Peak West Ridge trail. At about the 3.5 mile mark, we topped out on a nice little area and thought "cool - we made it!" Took a few pictures on top of a little rock that seemed to be the highest place other than climbing a tree and then had our snacks. After a little rest we kept going on the trail only to find it still going up!

About a half mile farther, it REALLY started going up. Class 2 nearing Class 3 in a few spots. Exposure really wasn't that bad but hard going. We rested alot on the way up and finally topped out. By that time, Jean was spent so we didn't do the final scramble to the true summit. The veiws were still spectacular. I wish we didn't have all the smoke from the western fires or it would have been even better.

Heading down ended up being nearly as bad if not worse than going up. A lot shorter but steep! You drop over 2000 feet in less than a mile and a half. By the time you are back to flatter terrain, your quads are jelly. Once you get a chance to walk a while you feel a little better, and the slight uphills actually feel pretty good.

We finished off the day with a motorcycle ride to Border's Books and a drink at the Niwot Tavern.

A nice hike and highly recommended as one of your first "strenuous" rated hikes in the Boulder area.

Back in action

So it's been a while since I posted. Here's the news - the knee is good, "just" an IT band strain. I think the rolling and deep tissue massage just before the race wa not a good idea. Stretching regular, rolling regular, and the occasional massage should keep it at bay.

I sat around for about 2 weeks after the race and finally went back at it. A short mtn bike ride the first week, a couple easy runs the second week. I finally got back in the pool too. Now work is getting crazy and I've missed several more workouts with Wolfgang. At least he still remembers my name for now.

It was going great and then....

5430 Long Course. Half Iron distance. August 10, 2008 Race recap.

This was to be my big race for the year. Training wasn't as consistent as in the past but I was feeling good and strong. I was rested up pretty good even though I didn't sleep well on saturday night.

I did Master's Swim class this year - never in the past. My swimming was smoother, faster, and stronger. It showed because I PR'd my swim by my watch. I need to pay attention to where the timing mats are because the chip time in my various races have never matched very well with my watch times.

I finally must have figured out my transitions too. I checked my past 1/2 IM times and my T1 has been 3-3:30. I transitioned in 1:14 yesterday - now that's some serious improvement.
The bike went okay except I had ridden the course and had in my mind what speed I would ride certain sections. Its a great plan until your bike computer batteries die 2 miles into the ride. I had no idea how fast I was moving. I just went by RPE, which is fine if you have it planned that way. Kevin R passed me at the U-turn on the first lap. Which is fine since I knew I could run him down.

I came in to T2 nice and easy. Slipped out of my shoes, dismounted perfectly, ran right to my rack, and then just stared for a few seconds. It was like my brain shut off and I didn't know what I was supposed to do. Shake it off Jonny. Did my quick switch and got out on the run. My old T2 times were 2:20-2:30. Chip times says I smoked out of there in 1:00!!

I settled into a nice quick turnover pace to start my run. Mile 1-4 averaged 8:40s. I love it! I was feeling good, nutrition was right on, running my race. Lap one was about 57 minutes. I caught Kevin as I expeced as we were got out to the road for lap 2. I just wanted to hold a pace of 9 minute miles or under and I would PR the run. And then...

Mile 8 gives you an uphill on the back side of the Res. I was moving up the road when I must have twisted just right and it felt like a knife got shoved up under my kneecap. I tried to run through it for a little bit and just had to back off and walk. I've felt this before but its been a long time.

5-6 years ago I had knee surgery to clean up the cartilage in my left knee. They took about 70% of it out. I was scared at first because I was just getting into shape (I went from 255 down to 210 over the past year and a half). It felt great after the surgery. I ran 4 miles about 3 weeks after and was able to build from there. All my triathlons, marathons, adventure racing, ironman have been done since then. I had very intermittent pain in my right knee and knew there was a little bit of damage floating around but its been manageable. Until now.

I was 5 mile from the finish and knew I wasn't making my goal time anymore. I walked the aid stations and tried to jog to the next one. That worked for one station. Then it was half and half.
Kevin got me back with a mile to go. At the last hill I wanted to look decent coming in so I blocked out the pain and settled in to a hobble jog to the end. 5:44:15.

I'll do the ice and ibuprofen for a day or so and try to find a doctor for an MRI. Got to get this fixed this fall so I can get back on that horse.

Taper Time sucks

So for a lot of us doing the Long Course, its taper time. Some people look forward to this. I did too until today. To put it bluntly, I'm bored off my ass. I feel fat from not working out and I've got the blahs. I feel like going down to Pearl Street and having a few beers on the Mall. Nope - gotta race on Sunday. Its cool and overcast and a prefect day to go explore some new mountan bike trails - nope gotta race on Sunday.

I have some friends driving through to do the Leadville 100 MTB race tomorrow. I'd love to go watch but I need to be back down here too early - remember, gotta race on sunday.

I just don't feel productive today at work either. Everyone else must have felt the same way because its like aghost town here. I bet over half the staff is off today. We'll see how long I make it today.

Foam Rollers are evil

Finally in the last week of training for the 5430 Long Course I'm going exactly, word for word, by my training plan. That means Monday off, Tuesday swim in the morning, ride at lunch, run after work. It also means stretching and rolling. Stretching I do (not often enough - see an older post) but the foam roller, that's another story.

I'll often sit on the roller and work my hamstrings as I watch TV late at night. Feels pretty good and seems to help. Then I remembered that I usually have the most pain when Katie (Katie Sandmeyer at Tri-Massage, you rock!!) works on my quads. So last night I rolled over and laid on top of the roller, slowly working it down my quads. Ouch! That hurts like hell! Inch by inch, control the breathing. You'd think I was in Le Mas class for child birth. Puff puff puff. Its tough to relax and when you do, most of the time you drop a knot right onto the roller.

As if that wasn't masochistic enough, I then worked the IT band. I don't care how loose, flexible, or relaxed you are - that hurts! Sometimes it feels like you knee is pulling apart. about 30 minutes (or half of House) of rolling and I felt like I just competed in the Peak Tri again.

Feel pretty good today. I think I may roll again tonight so I don't get too beat up by Katie on Thurday. Everything in moderation. Just be moderate on a regular basis - not once in a blue moon before a big race.

Taper Time

So maybe this should have started earlier but I'm going to take it real easy this week and try to catch up on sleep, stretching, relaxing, etc. The Long Course is next weekend and I do NOT feel as strong as I hoped. My original goal was to do a sub-5 hour 1/2 iron. I just don't see it happening. I'm a big fan of positive thought, but the math just isn't working for this.

I did the S&S on Thursday and even though the course was long, I took about 31 minutes to complete the swim. My typical 1.2m swim is around 38 minutes. I'd love to do 35. Saturday we rode the two loops of the Long Course. This includes finding the extra little turn around on 65th. But it was a hot day and we hit the second half of the first loop waaaaay too hard. After we came down St. Vrain, a couple roadies who weren't racing jumped in front and started hauling ass. We, of course, stupidly tried to hang on. Absolutely dead when we finally finished. Most people calling 'bonk' in the last few miles. Again - didn't eat enough (any). I am looking at around a 2:50 for the bike. I'd love to be under 2:40 - it'll depend on the heat and nutrician.

One unfortuneate incident was as we were coming down 75th. Barry Siff was on the side of the road talking on his phone. Deiter saw him and started to slow down to see if there was a problem. The whole group bunched up behind him not knowing why he was stopping and the group ended up being 3-4 across as it bubbled around him. On this particular ride, we had more BTC jersey's than not (which is great!). All Barry saw was a crowd of BTC taking up the whole road as we rode by and sent the Deiter an e-mail expressing his disapointment on our riding style. 50+ miles of single or double up max, and we have to look bad for a few hundred meters.

Sunday we organized a run around the Res to check out that loop. We did 8+ miles at around an 8 minute pace. Pretty good but probably a little hard for the weekend before an 'A' race. Again it was HOT. Not bad for the first half but then the clouds disapated and there was no wind. Brutal. I'd love to hold an 8-8:30 pace for the run. In the past I felt the run was pretty strong for me. I didn't train with a marathon group this year so its just no there like in the past. I'm faster but I don't think I have the same endurance. It'll be a total mental game at the end and it'll hurt. 35+2:45+1:45=5:05 and that's optomistic. (plus transition time)

The Avery Brewery party started my taper. It was a blast. Good food, friends, a lttle rain. Great end to the weekend.

Good Court Humor

My brother Craig happens to be a District Attorney. A County Prosecutor.
To most (alledged) criminals, he's the bad guy.

Here's the partial transcript from his hearing this morning:
Judge: Mr. Haukaas, how long will this hearing take?
Haukaas: Five minutes
Judge: August 12 @1:00
Defense:Judge, I am not available on that date
Judge: August 19 @1:00
Defendant: I will be watching Days of Our Lives. I'm not available.
Judge: You will be here
Defendant: Why don't you just sentence me and get it over with?
Judge: You have an attorney on this case Mr. ____. He can speak for you.
Defendant: I just want to say this is bullshit, your honor.
Judge: That just cost you 60 days.
Defendant: Big fuckin deal. I have already been in here for eight fuckin' months.
Judge: That's another 60 - get him out of here.
Defendant: Fuck you (pointing at the Judge) and you (pointing at his attorney) and you (pointing at the court clerk) and a special fuck you to you (pointing at the jailer). Not you Craig - your OK (as he is being hauled out of court).

Now that's funny!

I hurt

I'm one hurtin' unit.
I took it easy on Sunday just because of the lack of sleep after Saturday's AR. Then getting Jesse & Beth to the airport at 5am (stoopid airlines!). I thought this would help me recover. It probably did but I jumped right back into the routine and beat myself up again.

Wolfgang gave us a pretty tough workout in the pool on Monday. After the warmup I knew I wasn't up to leading the lane and took the 3rd position. I hate drafting, it feels like cheating but thats all I could do that day. I did end up moving up and leading the last set anyway as Todd and Nancy blew themselves out. I had to stick around for a night meeting so I did a nice little hill run after work. Climbed the trails from Lakeshore Athletic Club up to Highway 128 and back. Ooh that worked the hammies!
The night meeting went back for me professionally, but that's work stuff I'd rather not comment on. Still, I never sleep after crap like that and finally dozed off at around 2am.
Tuesady night Mike Ricci put us through an 8 mile workout - 5 miles of it being a 4x1/4, 2x1/2, 1, 2x1/2,4x1/4 ladder. I held a pretty steady pace throughout. Actually increased my speed by 5-10 seconds per quarter by the end - seemed like a good idea at the time. Analysis - it hurt.

Wednesday brought us back to the pool for killer 2600m workout by Wolfgang this time. Luckily Philip joined us and led. Actually that just means He went first and opened a gap so I couldn't draft. It was like leading anyway with one guy out front. The pasta ride should have been easy but you get these roadies out front and its tough to hold back. Eating and drinking afterwards at Meg's was really nice. Huge group and a lot of fun. The problem wsa that it sacrificed the stretching.

I guess that's what it really boils down to. You throw yourself into the workouts and don't follow through to take care of your muscles afterward. What an epifany. If you don't stretch regularily, you end up as one hurtin' unit.

Summit County Adventure Race

I convinced one of my old race partners Jesse to fly out here from MN and race in Summit county where they don't beleive in providing oxygen to visitors. Jean's boss/manager (great guy!) let us use his townhome in Frisco so we had cheap comfortable accomodations about a mile from the race site.
We started from the Frisco Nordic Center. Compared to Dan's Wild Adventure Race series, this was a pretty low key start. They simply announced "It's 7:30 - get going!" or something to that effect - no starter gun, no count down. We took a nice easy jog for about 1km to the marina where we jumped into some of the best inflatable kayaks we've ever used. SOOOO much better than the old yellow Sevoy "rubber duckies". We quickly repassed all the uncoordinated paddlers and settled into rythm. We were the 4th boat done by 8 minutes. I don't count the solo racers because they got to use their own hard shell kayaks. One guy finished 45 minutes ahead of us!!
Next was the bike. We took our sweet ass time in transition but finally got rolling. This is where the oxygen deprevation really hit Jesse. On the flats and non-technical stuff, I had to really hold back or I just walked away from him. Living at 5500 feet for a year is better than living at 800 feet when the low point of the race is at 9009 feet. We took the paved trail to Breckenridge and then climbed the Ski Hill Road. It was the long way but it was pavement - race smarter not harder! We had about 9 miles of technical single track to get one last point and back to Frisco. This is where Jesse had to wait for me.
The trekking/orienteering was all in the Frisco Peninsula Recreation Area. RMOC set it up nice. 30 CPs total, we had to hit 15 minimum. We decided to hit them all. Jesse did the navigating and I played "punch-boy" for once. (Sorry Alan, I'll never make fun of that job again!) Only one screwup that cost us less than 10 minutes and another we'll call a half strike when he did his non-bearing of "a little north of west" and we stayed too high on the hill and went a few hundred meters too far. Other than that - it was spot on. It would have been tough for me to beat it.
We ended up with the 2nd fastest team time on the O course.
Only 4 teams finished ahead of us. 2 - 4 person and 2 - 2 person. We took 2nd in our 2 person open division. Not bad for a flatlander and a transplant!

Final stop was for beer and pizza in Idaho Springs. thats what makes it all worth it.

Boulder Peak - Post Race Party

Mark Gavach knows how to entertain! Awesome food, beer, and great people.
Despite losing in the first round of Bocce, a good time was had by all.
Boulder Tri Club rocks!!

Boulder Peak Triathlon - Race Report

I got lucky and was sent off in the 3rd wave at 7:00am after a 15 minute delay. My swim was marginal. We did the typical bouncing around out to the first turn. I think a lot of this was due to the sun being directly behind the first bouy so you really couldn't see anything when you tried to sight forward. I found a rhythm but never felt really good at any point in the entire 1500m. I came out of the water with an okay time of 0:28. I really need to work on that.

Heading out on the bike, I was careful to "stick to the plan". Small chainring for 90% of the ride out to Old Stage Road. A few short sections where I jumped up but mainly kept a steady pace to revive my lungs for the climb. I was also feeling my hamstrings a lot more than I would have liked. should have stretched more. My decision to change out my cassette to a 12-27 worked perfect. I couldn't spin my way up but was able to keep a steady chug all the way. Stood up for 10-20 revolutions out of every hundred or so. I'm always counting in my head - its my own particular distraction. A bike team was about 3/4 of the way up cheering us on and really yelling for the climbers (it felt great to be included in that group!). I didn't use the aid station but their lead bottle holder in stockings and garters plus platform KISS boots made you want to stop and hang out for a while.

the ride down the back side was uneventful - I am definitely getting more comfortable on the downhills. I did have to brake hard to stay under the 35 mph limit. 200 pounds on a great bike really cruises easy. the volunteer at US 36 seemed to be directing riders into the southbound lanes rather than the northbound to I got screwed up there too. The rest of the ride out to 63rd flew by. Feeling great and even singing a little bit. Got some fantastic cheering from our BTC volunteers at the aid station and kept rolling. At this point the legs started feeling heavy again so I pushed when I could and just kept going. I was passing a lot of people but its real disconcerting when a much better biker still flys by you like you're standing still.

At T2 I went to what I thought was my station. Things looked not quite right but the shoes, visor, and race belt were where I put them. I've been to enough races where things get scattered around by the wind or helicopter downdrafts or what ever that in my exhaustion it didn't register. Just then a guy comes up to me and says "hey, that's MY stuff!" Sure enough I'm one row off. Move over, change and get going.

Phil M came in as I was heading out. I knew that would happen. 15 minute head start gone before his best leg. Damn little guys!

True to racing, the first mile on the run sucks. Heading out on the dam is a slight uphill so I just set a pace that allows me to get into my groove. I'm pulling down 8:20s and am able to pick up the pace. At the turn around I know I have the downhill and a little juice so I gave it what I could and ended up with 7:57 mile splits. I'll take that.

I finished in 2:44. No bad but leaves you wanting more. I should have given more on the bike. I should take 30 seconds off each transition, 3-5 minutes off the swim, 8-12 minutes off the bike, and a couple on the run. Got a new goal.

Time for something new

So this is my first blog post. Not sure how well this will work but I'm giving it a try.
I've read blogs by some friends and acquaintences and it gave me some motivation/inspiration to finally get going on one of my own. This will often ramble, hopefully be (somewhat) consistent, and maybe make a few people laugh now and then.

Work is so-so. The last few days have been pretty good. Last week sucked. I think I'm a finalist at another job but it'll take a while to find out. Things could be really good here if I get the support I am asking for. If the projects I am proposing get shot down - I'm outta here.

Part of my figgetty-ness is probably this little bit of taper. Boulder Peak Triathalon is on Sunday and I'm resting up. I swam in the Res with BAM on Tues & Thurs of this week. 2 laps -2000m on Tuesday. Only one lap on thurs - I was REALLY tired. Great workout with Amanda from D3 Multisport on Tuesday from Bobolink/East Boulder Rec Center. Sharon and I led the pack, she is taking it easy and I'm sure let me go faster to boost my ego. Wednesday I rode home from work - took the long way to throw in a bunch of hills and make 20 miles. Nothing today. Saturday I'll do a little of each just to stay loose.

Okay. this is a really boring post for my first. Here's whats coming up in my future that will hopefully live up the the Blog's subtitle.
7/20 Boulder Peak Triathlon
7/27 Xstreme Adventure Race in Summit County
8/10 5430 Long Course - Half Iron Distance in Boulder Co