St A's goes BOOM

So the race was a bummer. I was a bit lazy on the swim and didn't get after it enough but once on the bike I felt extremely good and got rolling very well. First I rolled up on 2 male pros about 1 mile into the bike. I saw from a bit back that one of them was clearly drafting off the other one. Just sitting there 5ft behind the other guy. A shame. But good news, an official rolls by on the bike and starts riding right next to the cheater. Now I expected the official to give him a penalty right away but he made things a bit more interesting. The official rode right next to the guy for about 30 seconds and the guy didn't budge at all! Then get got the stand down penalty.
I passed a few guys and was keeping one of the best riders on the circuit within sight through 10 miles when all of the sudden BOOM, my rear tire completely blew. I took a look and it had a 1 inch gash in it. I had considered bringing a spare but decided not too so that was the day for me. Bummer.

Jocelyn had a good day, getting 14th in her 1st pro race. Well done in a very competitive field. Everyone else seemed to race well that I know too, all of Steve's Practical Coaching crew had fast outings.

Today Pete and I rode Lookout Mtn 3 times, Sean's classic workout o' pain. He wanted me to get after it from the get go so I rode 20:50 to open things up. From there I rode 22:10 and 21:50. Excellent workout, I'm fresh from resting to race and not racing but the times were still good nonetheless.

St. A's Pre Race

Usual pre race day today. Somehow I always think I'm going to have loads of time to laze about but there's always things to do. Rode the bike for 45min, somehow my spare tubular fell out during the ride but during the cab ride back to the hotel I saw it on the side of the road, grabbed it and we were back on our way. Swam the entire swim course with Jocelyn (or at least to the first buoy with Jocelyn). Felt good on the swim and I immediately felt much faster and stronger than previous open water swims - I'm ready for a huge swim improvement tomorrow. Water felt great, warm even without a wetsuit. The swim was like an aquarium, I was checking out stingrays and starfish during some stretches.
Ate dinner at one of Florida's many fine Italian restaurants with Steve Pye and his Pratical Coaching group and now I'm ready to race.
The plan tomorrow is to swim and bike very hard, I may not have a stellar run off that but I know I can run well off anything. The dynamics of the race will be alot different from last year for me since I've been swimming so much more this year. I'll actually have guys around me getting out of the water and on the bike so I'm hoping that will help me take some minutes off my time.

First off props to Ofer and Pete for their weekend antics:
Ofer, coming off an unimpressive 4:02 (yes 1500m) launched himself back into the Sub 4 hunt with a 3:45.57 to win the Texas Twilight Meet 1500m.
Then on Sunday Pete got 9th at the ITU PATCO Championship to get himself into the top 25 for the series.
And there was more. Not only was there weekend antics there was Monday antics. Marathon Monday antics.
Amy (yes 800m runner Amy) ran a 3:15 at the Boston Marathon, good for top 300 women.
Awesome when everyone races well.

I took the MTB out for a trip up Mt Falcon on Sunday. Rode up then hit up a sweet trail up top. I thought I was going to make it up for the 1st time ever without touching a foot until I got to the final quarter mile and there was snow everywhere so that grand achievement will have to wait and the press corp will have to follow me up once again. That's about it for me, not much happening.

Rude Running

Jason Finch and I headed out for an 11 miler today at Highline. We ran 4 easy tempo miles on the trip back and were holding down 5:45 pace. With a half mile to go we were coming up on a 60 year old or so lady riding her mtn bike. She was riding about 6:30 pace so we went to pass her, but then she but up a mild fight! She held on for a few seconds and then dropped back. We ran the last half mile and stopped at the mile marker to take a quick break since our tempo was done. She came rolling up and as she passed us remarked "How Rude!" Classic. That's right, we were out for our run, saw you ahead and thought it would make our day to pass you. But we couldn't hold it for very long and had to take a break from the effort!
After the run I brought the GullMeister General (Gulliver our dog) to Bear Creek to meet back up with Jason and his new pup Guinness. After some prodding Gull made a go of it and swam across the raging creek, I was a proud paw.
Feeling good and ready for St. A's next week. Had a slight ease in the training this past week so feel a touch better but I'll have to recover more this week. Works been busy the past couple weeks with all the skis we've been getting in but it should ease up this week. We have another 350 pairs coming in Thursday but we should be able to handle it without much trouble.

MileHighAthletic Version 2.0 Released

We've been working to revamp our main ecommerce website - milehighathletic.com for the last month or so. Amy's been working on the graphics and I plugged in all the PHP MySql today and now it's up and running. I woke up, sat down and got started at 7:30, took one 1:15 break to ride the trainer and didn't get back out of the seat until 4:30 when it was swim time. Managed to get everything done right before it was time to go so now it's in action. Amy's design skills have really been coming along.
Our team made plans on Friday to ride a team time trial on Saturday at the Haystack Mtn Time Trials in Boulder. I swam Sat morning then figured I may as well hop in the individual TT as well. I raced home, got my bike and gear and whipped up to Boulder. Got signed up just in time and rode to the start, got there at 1:09:30 when I was supposed to start at 1:09. The official said that I'd just have to go so I went straight into it. Felt good, the last 5 miles was a 500ft climb with a headwind which was things painful but I held it together and rode 38min for the 17 miler - 2nd place in category.
Onto the Team TT after an hour break and we were rockin. We have some respectable paceline organization since we ride the crit loop together week in and week on and it showed in the race. We were ripping by other teams and won our category (ok Cat 4). Results here.
The weather is all over the place out here. over 80 yesterday and it snowed an inch or two today.
10 days til St. Anthony's so Sean's given me tomorrow off to get a little rest, first day off of training in a long time.

no mo sno!

Had a late season snow today so got a 50min run outside this morning then hit the trainer tonight for 1:15 while watching Michael Clayton. The 1:15 I saw was great.
Had a good ride/run yesterday at the crit loop. Josh was rolling on the runs as usual but I felt better on the bike and had some legs under me for the first time in a couple weeks. It started to rain when we started the workout so the corners on our crit loop were quite dodgy, luckily no one went down (hurray Pete!).
Had an easygoing trip to Telluride earlier in the week and came back with just under 150 skis so now we're busy getting those prepped for sale. Felt wayyyy tired running on Monday so took it very easy. Skied at Vail on the drive back on Tuesday then swam 4k at DU once I got back. I always feel great after skiing, I think it loosens up a triathletes body big time and gets you ready to go.

Taylor and I suffering in Canyonlands

Taylor with his game face on - he's suffering to keep on me

Crit workout today. 30 minute ride followed by a mile run then back on the bike for 10 min and another mile run. Started sluggish and finished feeling better. Rode Lookout 3x yesterday but granny geared it to get some recovery in.
Ofer and I are rolling out to Telluride tomorrow on a little business expedition. I was hoping to swim in Telluride but it looks like the town has a pool...but it's an outdoor pool and opens Memorial Day. Now why would a town like Telluride decide to build a pool and say hey, this is a great place to swim outside, let's build an outdoor one. So I won't be swimming while away.

I was thinking yesterday about the hypocrisy of putting caffeine into race gels. How is that drug ok while others aren't? Granted caffeine is naturally occurring and most people consume it daily (ok I have my daily Coke at lunch). But to take it only with the intent of improving race day performance rubs me wrong. Where do you draw the line? How bout some Banana Power Gel with 1x mescaline? Or Cola Gu with real Peruvian Coca? I don't necessarily think it should be banned since I have no problem with a coffee drinker having their daily fix before a race. But how do you pontificate about the dirtiness of Tour riders when you're taking a drug to get a little extra push yourself? So yes I had my pre race Red Bull in my youth (ahem last year) a few times but I'm off it for this year and will be racing clean.

Back to the DEN

Got back into town on Sunday night. Had a great quick trip to Moab over the weekend. Amy blasted a 22:59 (what a dip!) for the 1650y on Friday then we hit I-70 towards the mtns. Didn't leave until way late, 7pm, but we blasted through and with dinner got to Moab at midnight. I was quite pumped with this spectacular pace.
Taylor had some big plans for Saturday. We headed out on the bikes towards Canyonlands and got there aboutttt 3 hours later since we had a headwind just about the whole day. Was spectacular riding, especially once we got into the park.
Somehow while riding at 30mph I managed to get this shot of Taylor. I don't endorse such behavior but I'll sure do it myself.
More pics to come.