Beer-Cat and Fat Bikes

Now that it's the "off-season" I'm excited to start strength training on a regular basis with Jason and the rest of my workout buddies.

Last week was my first week back since Nationals and already the smack talking is in full force. On Friday Jason and I had another race and this time I took the win! Yessssss! It makes up for my stair defeat this summer :-)

Anyways, our race was pretty simple. Chug a beer and then race to Brewery Vivant, which was less then 3 miles away from our start. Since I am a waaaaay stronger rider  ride more then Jason he raced on his El Mariachi and I raced on my Mukluk.

I definitely need to work on my chugging skills (my parent's will be so proud). I was only half-way through my bottle when Jason took off.

We could take any route that we wanted to get to the brewery and I spent the night before trying to come up with the perfect route with Scott. Of course the route changed a lot once I started racing. I've never raced an alley-cat before but I think I might have a future in them :-)

I ended up catching Jason and took the win by 8 seconds...phew. I never knew that 2.9 miles could be that painful. I went straight from doing two weeks of 1-hour recovery rides to sprinting up a hill on a fat bike. IT HURT a lot!!!! I seriously felt like my lungs were going to collapse.

What started out as a challenge has turned into a full on "beer-cat" series. Right now I'm the leader but a few more friends are in, and t-shirts and a trophy are being made. I might have to ask my coach for some workouts to prepare for these :-)

The rest of the weekend went by pretty quickly. Early Saturday Scott and I met Juli and her husband at the Ada Bike Shop to watch her make a new purchase. Technically they didn't need us to be there but I was too excited to stay at home!!! Plus Juli and I did need to discuss Mukluk colors....always important!

Thanks to the Ada Bike Shop, her bike got built up in a few hours and we were able to go for a ride on Sunday.

SO...MUCH...FUN!

We got caught in pouring rain towards the end of our ride but that's OK. I think we probably looked a little crazy riding our fat bikes in the rain and laughing...I was completely drenched by the time that I got home.

The good news is that I finally feel like I'm recovered from Nationals. I can ride without my lungs hurting and feel like I have a bit of power back in my legs. It took a full 2-weeks for me to feel better and I'm so glad that I listened to my coach and didn't try to push my recovery. Now I can start training again!!!

And speaking of Nationals, my blog post about it is finally up on the Salsa website. People keep asking if I am interested in doing Leadville.  Now I can just refer them to my post, tell them to read it and then they will know my answer :-)