Skip to main content

Hello Mountains

Boyfriend and I are four days into our Colorado trek and just like last year are wondering why the hell we live in Kansas City. My exact words were, "If you get any job offer in Colorado, take it." I'd make a fine barista.

After the lovely Tour De Kansas, we stopped in Denver for the night. Then next day we headed to Leadville to watch the Leadville 100 Trail Bike Race. Leadville is not much of a tourist attraction, which is fine. It's an old mining town turned endurance mecca. Fortunately, Boyfriend's aunt is a resident and kindly loaned us her apartment for the weekend. Doubly fortunately her apartment is literally right at the start of the race.

We spent Saturday ogling fine mountain bikes. I'm never sure what I'm looking at, so we have a code: "green" means a bike he'd love to have, "yellow" is a maybe and "red" means his current steed is nicer. I like to simplify things.

My favorite part of the race was watching Rebecca Rusch beat the women's record (she set it last year) by 15 minutes. She is simply amazing and maybe the best female endurance athlete around. (Or at the very least ties with Chrissy Wellington.) Check her out: http://www.rebeccarusch.com/ I took the coolest pic of her crossing the finish line. (You know when you're just an average photographer and then randomly take an amazing pic? Yeah, that's it.) Anyway, I forgot the cord that downloads pics to my computer, so I'll post it later.

Sunday, the Leadville Race Series offers a nice little 10k for those of us who don't even pretend to want to race 100 miles. I knew about the race, but being on vacation did not want to commit to anything. So an hour before the start, I decided to register and kept my fingers crossed the 10,200 foot altitude would not kill me. Ha.

Though a mere six miles, it was the worst kind. An out and back that was all downhill the first three miles. Which means the last three are all up hill. The out portion I'm just trying to take it easy as the realization hits me how awful the second half will be. And it was. But that's okay. Finishers got a handy dandy coffee mug, which I'll actually use. I finished 34/108 women overall, which pleased me, but just missed breaking an hour, which did not.

Unfortunately, I've been permanently dehydrated since arriving in Colorado and the race did not help. The remainder of the day was spent pulling over at various rest stops on the drive to Breckenridge. We arrived to find our condo lovely with a 25 yard lap pool and the yoga studio is two blocks away. I love vacation.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Get This Party Started

So what do you do when you're reclining in a hospital bed, Olympic beach volleyball on the TV and watching petocin slowly drip through an IV into your arm? You blog. As of 3:32pm, all is manageable. Ask me in an hour or two and the tune will most likely be different. Petocin scares the crap out me, but as long as it gets the baby out of me, I'm trying to not freak out. I woke up this morning and greeted the day as a normal Monday. After walking Trudy a few miles and spending 40 minutes on the elliptical, it dawned on me I felt a little crampy, for lack of a better term. And without getting too graphic, I started to wonder if my water had broken. (It was nothing like it's portrayed on television.) So I called a handful of friends and my sister to get some feedback. All signs pointed to yes, so I called my doctor's office which said just go to the hospital. I took Trudy for a second walk while waiting for Husband to get home and try not to overreact. At the hospi...
2 comments
Read more

Adding Some Color

I distinctly remember my first encounter with food coloring. It was love at first chemical-laden sight. Mom and I were icing sugar cookies. We'd made a bowl of white icing. Then she broke out the food coloring. I was memorized by the bright colors and giddy at the thought of mixing them. Like most six year olds, I believed more was better. So the icing started a lovely pink after a few drops of red. Next came lavender with some blue. Then Mom turned her back just long enough for me to reenact the movie Cocktail with food coloring. Every color was going in and hell with a few drops, more is better. This is fantastic, I thought, as I created a rainbow in the bowl. I stirred with glee until I realized the rainbow was disappearing. The icing was turning a disgusting shade of gray-brown. This was terrible. No one wants to eat icing that looks like poop. So you're thinking, nice little story Jen. Way to point out that more isn't necessarily better. But that's actually n...
2 comments
Read more

The Softride Has Left The Building

Today I bid adieu to my first triathlon bike – a Softride Rocket TT named Sally. (“Ride, Sally, Ride...”) While technically still mine until the ebay auction ends tomorrow, she has been dropped off at the bike store for clean up and packing. We’ll ship her off to the new owner this weekend and that will be the end of my beam bike era. A Softride is considered old school in the triathlon world and is mocked mercilessly by roadies. Sally has a carbon beam, no down tube and 650 wheels – basically the low-rider Cadillac of bikes. While it doesn’t have a stiff suspension or a brag-worthy weight, it has one thing – comfort. This is something I desperately needed when training for my first Ironman. Sally raced at Kona in 2001 and Wisconsin in 2003. She was dependable and attention-getting. Like riding a motorcycle, Softride enthusiasts also offered the casual hand wave when you encountered another one on the road. However, there are fewer out there these days. The Softride...
2 comments
Read more