Variety In Terrain

I took my race bike to AZ so I could get some training time on it without getting it wet and muddy and nasty dirty. It was actually quite shocking how clean it was when I went to pack it up after riding so much... hardly any dirt on it at all! Refreshing. :) Anyway, I was sort of thinking that I was just going to leave it in it's box for a while and would go back to riding my training bike but then I remembered that I actually have a little race this weekend and it *should* be dry so I went ahead and unpacked the bike tonight.

My mom is here visiting and she watched me assembling my bike and couldn't figure out why I had three.


Are you going to sell one? No.


But you have THREE. Yes. But that one is a road bike. And this is the one I race on. And that is the one I train on.

I'm not sure she got it but it made perfect sense to me! :)

I'm still trying to recover from my two weeks in AZ and seem to be getting better each day. I am finally not looking like a marshmallow. What is that anyway that causes you to swell up like a balloon when you train a lot? Something about ADH I think but I'll admit I don't understand exactly what that's all about. All I know is that we should never weigh ourselves immediately after a big training weekend. Anyway, in good news I have ankles now and even a few veins.

Finally downloaded all my data from my garmin tonight too. It took like an hour! Fun to geek out on all the graphs. There was a good amount of climbing done in both Tucson and Scottsdale... total climbing (riding) ~26,000ft which is a lot for me given that I ride flat most of the time! I think one of the things that has been sort of missing in my training is variety (hello I live on an island) so the different terrain was awesome.

Madera Canyon:

Gates Pass:

Mt Lemmon:

Paradise Valley:

North Scottsdale:

Bartlett Lake:

Fountain Hills/Rio Verde:

Looking at these graphs leaves me feeling even more nostalgic for that awesome riding in AZ!