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...