Aquadeath Pics

Amy and I took Gulliver and Primo on an Aquadeath hike last weekend. Trail reminds me of the danger ridden Peruvian trails. The wood aqueduct goes for miles. Eventually we found a plaque that marked it's 1932 opening by the Golden Canal and Reservoir Company. That's about the excitement lately.
Last night I came through with a solid team goals. Last week we swam easy and I thought I'd blast team goals and come close to 1:00 but instead I felt terrible, along with most everyone else. 1:05's, 6's and 7's were tough.
Felt much better yesterday and swam 1:03, :03, :02, :02, :01, :03. Much better. Tried to go with Matt on the 2nd to last and blasted out but then hit the hurt big time the last 50y. Did them on the 4min this week which is actually easier than 6min.
Amy and I are driving out to Park City, Utah today to see Taylor and Martha. Taylor's got IM Arizona this fall so he should be eager to punish me on the bike with a long ride. I've done about 4 rides in the last month so it should be interesting.

Aquadeath

This post is titled aquadeath for two reasons:
1) Yesterday was the grandaddy of swim days. 2000y in the morning then another 5300y in the evening. Man was my back itchy from the chlorine afterwards!
2) This morning I got out early for a run. Since Amy and I moved to Golden I've been hunting for trails so yesterday I searched around on Google maps and zeroed in on a trail that ran along the south side of Clear Creek. Went up there this morning, found the trail, ignored the no trespassing sign, and was on the trail. 1:00 into it I was walking along a landslide retaining wall with a 50" cliff on my right side. Got through that and was able to run aside from the other retaining walls I encountered. It seemed like the trail was a really old aquaduct. Maybe it's what used to pump the water into Coors. Man that aquaduct has provided some enjoyment to people round the world.
Anywho, it was a bad ass trail that hugged the north side of Lookout Mtn along Clear Creek. Then came the crazy secntion. The dirt ended and the trail continued on a wooden structure straight outta The Goonies.
There bere pieces of wood every 5 feet with boards laid down to connect them that you could walk on. I walked on the ice covered boards for a few hundred feet then did the prudent thing and turned back.
I told Matt Balzer about the trail a swim practice and he goes "You mean the Aquadeath Trail." Apparently the trail is well know to the School of Mines guys.
VeloSwap is this Saturday. We've got a booth to sell some wares so come on by.
Sweet bikeBounce listing of the day is this Giant TCR Advanced. Too bad it's a size Small.

eBay Bike Selling Guide

I spent a few hours yesterday writing a guide to selling a bike on eBay which you can see here:
http://www.bikebounce.com/bikesellingguide.php
I think I covered the basics but add a comment if you think anything substantial is missing.
The team swam hard the past two days. Thursday was team goals, 6x100y all in. I averaged 1:04 which I'm happy with for right now.
Yesterday was a bit better for me though. We swam 3 broken 500's. They were broken into 200y on 3:15, 150y on 2:30, 100y on 2:00, a 50y then a 5min minute break with 100y of easy swimming. The last broken 500 I managed a 2:17, 1:45, 1:08 and :29. That was my best and about 1 second per 50 fast than my others. It was friggin hard though and definitely all I could muster up. The arms were a bit tingly when I finished those last intervals. The workout was great all in all, especially after taking a couple weeks of and doing absolutely nothing after pro nationals.
The weather is beautiful today so Pete, Matt, Josh, and I met in Golden and rode easy up Lookout and then putzed around Genesee for a bit. Genesee has some sick hills and we rose one killer 15min loop with a brutal climb. We joked about doing a crit workout there next year. An epic crit that would be. Easy swim later today then off tomorrow, I'll be taking a day off a week for awhile as I want to build up a big swim base now but don't want to overdo it and wear myself down.

Back to pool, back to pool, to show to dad that I'm not a fool

Got back into the training last week with a solid 22k of swimming. It's only getting worse this week. We had a hard set yesterday and when we informed Sean that it was hard he let us know that "Friday will be our worst swim workout ever." I best be ready for that one as Seans dished up some mean swims in the past.
Yesterday was 5200y of swimming with a main set of 12x100 with the evens on 500y goal pace the the evens just 1-3 seconds slower. My arms have been tired from getting back in the pool but I swam this set well - 1:05 to 1:08 on the hard ones and 1:10 to 1:12 on the "easy" ones. We should have team goals today (usually 6x100y all out) and then Fridays predicted hellish swim so it should be a doozy of a couple days.
I was getting incredibly hungry during the swims which often happens when I'm putting in successive days of hard swimming. I feel like I get depleted and then after 3500y of swimming all I can think of is food. Normal sport drinks helped but weren't cutting it so I went with the grand daddy sports drink of em all, Hammer Nutrition's Perpetuum which packs 260 calories a serving. That definitely does the trick. I usually reserve Perpetuum for long rides of half ironmans but it's also serving me well on these long swims.
Matt Balzer has been crushing the swims as of late and we were getting out of the water together at most races we did so that has me hopeful that I can make a swim breakthrough like he has. If I can get my team goals all under 1:00 I'll be happy.
I'm running so little now that even the 50min run I did yesterday has my legs a bit sore. Starting to feel like a normal everyday runner, running actually hurts now. The first 30min feel great since my legs are fresh but then all the sudden I start to hurt where I shouldn't hurt, the back gets sore, shoulders get tight.

Busy Ski Season

The last week was hectic as we're getting towards ski season. Perhaps it's the economy but ski sales fluctuate wildly - one day is dead and the next the phone is ringing constantly. Amy and I were busy shipping out a whopping 21 pairs of skis this afternoon.
I've been reading up on Google lately, about the company and the Adwords area of Google. The most interesting thing I've learned thus far is that all Google searches are run through relatively normal off the shelf computers. Instead of buying supercomputers for nearly $1,000,000 Google buys hundreds of computers similar to home PCs. Then they hook them all up and Google searches are run through them. Part of the beauty of this system is that if one goes down it has a negligible effect on the search network. Smart fellas.

Time to chill

Thanks to Sonja's dad, Eric, for the sweet pics from Portland.
I decided after Portland to call it a season and look ahead to next year. I could go to Treasure Island for another race but I want to hunker down and get my swim up to ITU par.
Before I do that though I'm taking a couple of weeks completely off to let the mind and body rejuvenate. I'm so used to rushing from training to work then back to training that life feels way easy now. I've got time to watch TV and chill out at night. I can even watch the VP debate tonight. I really haven't done anything in 10 days now so am feeling like quite the non athlete.
The ski sales are picking up this week so we've been busy shipping them out and get more listed online. It's hard to say how much the economic freefall has been affecting things. Dan Empfield from Slowtwitch.com wrote a good article on the economy's affect on bike manufacturers and retailers. He thinks that contrary to popular cycling opinion a bad economy will have a serious affect on things. He bases this largely on a Slowtwitch poll that found that 3% of respondents reported losing their house to the economy.
Skis seem largely similar to bikes. It's generally a middle class or high end clientele which are less affected by a downturn. But everyones still affected. It could be a boon to our business since we're a discount etailer and never sell skis at full retail. Perhaps instead of buying at full price people will hunt around for deals and find good ol' MileHighAthletic.com. Then again maybe the people who usually buy from us will decide to stick with their current pair of skis for another year. It's difficult for us to notice any effect since we're so new and growing rapidly. If sales are up 50% it's difficult to know if they'd be up 60% if things were better. Old time businesses can tell much better since adjustments in their sales can be more closely attributed to the economy.
I've been doing some work on bikeBounce.com and the good news is it's now FREE. I figured a way (I won't bore you with the details) of making it free and still being able to make it profitable. We've had more people sign up this week so that's a good sign, hopefully people will like it and spread the word.
That's it for now, time to watch the VP debate.