Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Long Hot Days in the Sun

The Arizona "Training Camp" is officially over. After spending a week down in Buckeye, AZ with the folks I'm back in Oregon only to see white stuff still stuck on the ground; and that would be snow.
The goal for the week was to log some long mileage day after day with moderate intensity. For the week I was able to log 400 miles and 17.5 hours on the bike. On Tuesday I rode from Buckeye to Wickenburg and back to Buckeye riding through the Vulture Mtns. for a total of 101 miles. I signed up for the Mining Country Challenge ride that started in Superior, AZ on Saturday. That was an amazing ride and well organized. It was a 96 mile ride thru several old mining towns that included over 7,000ft of climbing. The final climb back to the finish was a 1.2 mile 13% grade that was quite the leg burner. Both rides took exactly 5 hours and I averaged 260 watts both days.
Each day I began my rides in the early morning round 8am and the temps were in the mid 70's.

When I finished my rides, Jenny and I took advantage of the swimming pool and hot tub conveniently located at the Sage Center in my folks community.
Besides training, I was able to check out some pretty cool sights and sounds of Arizona.
On Wednesday we all drove up to Sedona, AZ to check out Montezuma'a Castle. The history behind this is pretty fascinating and hard to imagine how those Sinagua Indians actually lived in there for hundreds of years. In 1400 AD they disappeared and now the remnants of the castle still stand.

This house in Sedona belongs to the guy who invented Lasik surgery...I guess you could say he did alright.
The background of this photo in Sedona almost looks fake


On Thursday, we checked out a Spring Training baseball game that featured the Royals vs. the Mariners. The best part of the game was the person throwing out the "first pitch". Believe it or not, my dad was asked to throw out the first pitch...and he threw a strike! In front of family, friends and thousands of fans, my dad was in the spot light for about 2 min. Pretty cool.
With a good solid week of training the legs feel pretty tired. I'm anxious to head down to Arkansas in April and see how the legs will respond during the Ouachita Challenge race, the first of the season. Now I just need to get the bikes ready...pics coming soon

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