Catchin' Up

<
The picture above of Jen and I was at the Denver Aquarium in Denver. Outside my family and equally important, she has been as much as a supporter as I could have asked for. I have been lucky to have her come out for the past couple of weeks. Not ready for her to go, but she starts work soon. Heck she has probably had enough of my grumpiness anyways…… j/k :)

#####

Well, let me catch everyone up on the last couple of weeks. Had quite a bit of training and was up in Winter Park for a little altitude training camp 2 weekends ago. We did an IM sim ride to give us a reality check on our current fitness status and race prep.
Winter Park is around 9,000 ft and happen to cross the Continental Divide a few times. The ride was very informative as we were to ride exactly as it would on race day. Something everyone should definitely plan in their training schedules, you can really learn a lot. The ride was 110 miles and I found out that I can take in more calories than I thought previously, only as long as stay within my HR zones. It seems that I can only digest if my HR is under 145’ish, anything else above, it sits in the belly. Then did an hour run after the ride. Well, I would love to say a lot about it, unfortunately, there is nothing to say except…..DEAD! I think I was running over 10 minute miles, perhaps it was the altitude, right?!?!?! Well that will be my excuse.

Jen came into town right after that. Got to run around see Boulder and Denver a little more with her here.
We went to a Colorado Rockies game with Adam, Sara, and Lyndsey, a quick re-group of the the graduated PA's from Wake that are all in Colorado. We went down to Pearl St., which is the “walking” street downtown and quite a bit of entertainment there. The street performances are truly awesome. Fortunately or unfortunately, I was chosen as we were watching one of them to help.
This fella was quite talented, juggling fire, swords, hatchets, etc. I was chosen to come out and help him as used myself and another guys to stand on our arms that were crossed across our chest and then juggle, 1 flaming torch, 1 sword, and 1 hatchet. Yeah, I was a little nervous having all of those deadly objects flying around above me. In any case, he was pretty awesome. We then caught up with this lad called the “Zip Code Man.” Now, this was a site. He created an outline of the United States with a big yellow chain and would ask the crowd to give him your zip code. He would be able to tell you what city you were from and something interesting about it. For instance, if there was a famous statue or something. He then started asking people for zip codes out of the country, anywhere in the world. Jen gave him 27103 and he was able to name W-S.
He was able to tell one person from Germany what city they were from and one guy from Japan. Pretty amazing.

We also got to go and hang at Boulder Creek
which is an awesome water way through town and ride mountain bikes up the steepest paved road here in Boulder. As if things in Boulder aren’t steep, but to climb the steepest paved road is quite a task.
We had hopes of doing a little hiking, but when it takes you about an hour and a half or more to go 3 miles, the plans to hike are quickly dismissed. It was a blast though. Talk about someone who can spin, Jen rocks at it! She was kicking my but up the road, seriously!!!

Yesterday, we went to a fun park and played some putt-putt, go karts, and did a human maze. Talk about feeling like a rat. It was fun and challenging.
I could go on and on about the things we’ve done, but I won’t bore you. I am currently in the 2 biggest training weeks for IM Canada prep. I have almost survived the first week, only have a long run tomorrow until I am done. Will run a trail called Switzerland Trail which is 15 miles, but it is at 8,500 ft. It took me two hours and twenty minutes to do it last time. We’ll see how it goes……should end this week with over 25 hours of training. What I have found here is that the volume is necessarily as high as you would think, but the sessions that we do are very structured. Easy days are still easy days and really almost more important, the harder days just get harder. This is an important concept here to understand. It is easy to bury yourself here.

Day in and day out,
John