6 Weeks Away

My 1st race of the season is only 6 weeks away now. My coach is steadily increasing my ride time. Weights and core will continue through February. Getting ready to start up the Women's Frostbike MTN bike series at Castlewood this weekend. Loreen and I are leading the Sunday group. Hoping the trails will be rideable while I continue to watch sleet/snow being dumped from the sky right now. I learned of a new sponsorship this year for me with the Trek 29er Crew-SRAM. This is very cool since Reba 29er fork is my favorite! I received No Tubes sponsorship again this year and will be helping them put on some clinics. The new kits will be rolling out soon with a new look. Can't wait.

Thursday: I headed out to Lost Valley to hit the trails for 2 hrs on my single speed. A 4 wheeled vehicle had been on Hamburg allowing me to ride in those tracks. Hitting the double track down and back up the hill was a completely different story though. This was very slow moving and almost impossible to ride in at some points. I felt like I was riding in deep sand. It took me 28 minutes to just get the the single track from the time I left the car. My only incentive to continue was that maybe the single track was more packed down. When I got to the single track it looked like maybe 3-4 bikes had been on it already. It was more rideable but still difficult. This really made me work on my balance and boy, what a workout!

Friday: Time to hit some trails in my own backyard, Castlewood. I figured these trails were more packed down and they were. I went pretty early since the temps were going to get up in the 40's so it was icy in spots. I was surprised to see some sections of dirt! I spent 3 hours riding there and it was just starting to get soft when I left.

Saturday: Early 8:00 AM start at weight clinic again where we have started converting our weights into endurance lifting with a lot of core building. He added a new one which we did 1 minute planks with toes on bench and arms on exercise ball. Tough. After weights, Todd and I headed to Highland, IL to get in a 2hr road ride on the country roads there. It was awesome weather and barely any traffic.

Sunday: We headed to Hermann, MO for the rescheduled 38-40mile gravel grinder. Jeff Yielding hosted this ride and did an outstanding job. There were about 15 of us who showed to ride. It was chilly, windy, and cloudy there for the ride. Some folks came on their MTN bikes but, I chose to ride my cross bike. I had to stop to adjust my seat post since I took it off my road bike and we quickly lost the main pack. We ran into a local, Jose, who also missed the start. The 4 of us took off trying to chase down the main pack to only find out 1hr later that we missed a turn. We ran into some other folks who also got lost. Good thing I brought my iPhone. I was able to re-route us on the gravel roads to get us back on the planned route. We were out there a little longer, 3hrs 45min, but needed a 4 hour ride anyway.