If there was a time to get sick it was good that it was last week. I feel much better now and I did not take antibiotics. It was sort of a gamble. Surely I would have felt better faster with them but I wanted my own immune system to battle it. Some research has shown that after a bad cold your body is stronger and you can actually get a boost in performance. Too bad it does not suppress my hunger also. I put on 4 pounds. I guess I have to take the bad with the good.
Speaking of the bad with the good; it is getting cold up here already. Remember I live at an altitude of almost 9000 feet. So I am a walking oxygen tank but heat training is very limited here. As I get closer and closer to Kona I will have to take more trips to Boulder. Not that that will be a guarantee or warmer weather all the time. In the early 90’s I remember training in mid September during a Boulder snowstorm. Mark Allen used to leave Boulder about a month before Kona if I remember correct.
Once I get past this Monday I would have made it trough my toughest week of training in ten years. But there are tougher ones coming. Amazingly enough I am recovering well. Just yesterday during my moderate 90 minute run my average HR was 129 and my max 136. That has to be my lowest numbers yet. I did it right at noon so it was as warm as it gets here, which is about 80 degrees Fahrenheit.
This weekend I plan a 2.5 hour long run and about 115 miles of bike riding in the mountains. The plan is to ride from my new house in Winter Park to my old house in Boulder right trough Rocky Mountain National Park. The problem with this ride is not the mountains. It is the weather. I am keeping my fingers crossed. Actually the ride is not as hard as one may think. The ride starts at 9000 feet down to 8000, up to 12000 and down to 5000 in the end. So there is an elevation loss. Of the last 50 miles there are only 15 that are not going down. It is just one of those rides that one has to do once in a while. One can also do this trip on a mountain bike on a more direct route over the mountains. I want to do that one but maybe not this year. It may be a bit too risky right now. Some of the trails are not marked and some of the terrain is technically challenging. Next year I’ll do it for sure. My wife said she will drive to Boulder with the kids to pick me up. Then we will have a nice dinner down there. I am thinking Sushi!
Sorry for not bloging as often but with the training getting longer, family, kids and coaching, the blog takes a bit of a back seat. Maybe I just have shorter blogs.