So Far So Good

It's now getting towards the end of the month and things are looking up for the 2010 season. Today was an opportunity to get some nice miles in with a few teammates and wander around the Mendham area. The hills were good and so was the company. It's soo much easier to get through a nice day in the saddle when you have people to suffer with :-) 5 hours 10 minutes and 80 miles seemed to just fly by.

On the other hand the 2010 schedule is coming together nicely. On tap for this year are basically a repeat of last year. A bunch of the NUE series races, a few H2H XC races, some road training circuits, and a nice bunch of CX races for the end of the season. At this point the thought process is going over fitting in the Cohutta 100, Mohican 100(just registered), Wilderness 101, Shenandoah 100, and if the lottery is nice - the Leadville 100. I've basically realized that I can only do about 10 MTB races, I want to pick the good ones and actually leave some good recovery time inbetween so that I get my money's worth at each race.

For the Leadville, it's actually jammed in the schedule 2 weeks after the W101 and 3 weeks before the Shenandoah 100. It kinda fits, although I'd like more recovery time going into Leadville. So actually I won't be horribly disappointed if I don't get in since that will springboard me into a great buildup for Shenandoah. The Mohican is the 1st planned peak in my schedule and the Wilderness is the 2nd - although I'd really like to do well at the Shenandoah too. I know 3 peaks is a little much to plan for so I'm hoping I do well in the W101 and carry over some megafitness to the SM100. We'll see.

Either way I'm feeling pretty good for January and already getting some good rides in and the body seems to be responding. The weight battle was not too bad this year as watching the diet closely has only led to an additional 6 or 7 pounds which peaked at 165 around New Year's and has already begun to be shed as I hit the scale this morning at 160. Looking back my goal was to be at 165 for the Cohutta last year which I barely made. And at this point I'm already 5+ lbs lighter. That will make all the difference in the hills - and there's still 3 months to go(from tomorrow - but who's counting). Things are looking good.

Happy New Year

Or something like that. Anyway as my first post of the new year I figured I'd just do a status update.

I had a blast with my trip out west to start the new year. 3 days of biking in chilly St. George Utah was amazing. The desert terrain was a nice change from the eastern rocky/rootyness. The following 2 days of skiing Alta and Brighton were also amazing. Such a change from the eastern crud that I've been used to skiing on. The locals were calling the conditions terrible, but from what I've skied on, they were awesome. There's so much terrain that the bad stuff could be avoided and the good stuff was great. Totally worth the 41 hour drive out through 3 snowstorms...maybe.

Once I got back from the west trip I got back into the usual swing of things. Base miles have started as well as my school's ski club. I'm the advisor so Mountain Creek will be my home for the 4 Thursdays in January. At least it will be a little cross training in there. The rest of the weeks have me doing a trainer session, recovery ride, 2 nights of lifting, and some long - low intensity - hours on the weekends. This is great since I've wanted to do some long mileage exploring and it gives me the ability to do this.

Thanks to the holidays a little added ballast has been added to my frame, and I'm pretty happy about it. Happy in the sense that I've limited it to about 6 pounds over my average race weight this past season. For a good portion of 2009 I raced at 159 pretty comfortably. The high that I saw this winter so far was 165 after some wonderful holiday dinners. Knowing all that I've done and accomplished this past season - my body deserved some extra calories. The interesting this is that I've got the diet back on track and the weight is starting to peel off already, without much effort. This morning I weighed in at 163 and in the middle of a downward trend. I'm curious as to what I will level out at with not much effort. I'm hoping that I will be able to race in the low 150's for the 2010 season, and as it's looking so far, it might be possible. I just have to make sure that it is a weight that I can maintain my power at.

So far the tentative schedule for the big races anyway is as follows: Cohutta 100, Mohican 100, Wilderness 101, Leadville 100(lottery pending), and the Shenandoah100. There will be a few local races thrown in, a 6 hr hopefully, and I'm anxious to see the Michaux Endurance series announcement as I'd like to have that series completed this season as well. So far the schedule is getting set up nicely and I'm going to work it a little smarter this year to help recovery and save a little $$$ as well. We'll see how that goes when I'm jonesin to race...