dscf06521Over at the SSWC09 site, they’ve posted a bit of into on the  course. And this photo that you see above. Honestly, it frightens me. Regardless of  the fact that  i’ve been working on getting strong and good  since December – I’m still not either of those things. And certainly won’t be at elevation either. This is when i start worrying – is it going to be too tough? Or is it just ‘marketing’ meant to scare the meek and  weak urban and suburban folks? The Jay Challenge was like that – course description worded very strongly to scare folks off, but compared to the terrain that I tackle on a daily basis, not that bad and truthfully quite  fun.

It doesn’t help that i’m in another low spot. First I spent all of the week prior in Anaheim working a trade show,  sitting in meetings and drinking with clients. When I got back to VT (at 3am onSunday morning), I carefully jumped back into my program – but by Wed I was starting to fall apart. I missed two big workouts because I was just completely exhausted. So tired that I slept for about 30 hours before I got on top of it again.

Friday some semblance of normality started to return, and again I cautiously got back on the bike. Saturday was a nutty weather day around here. Raining, thunderstorming, and sunny – rotating between one of  those states every 20 minutes. George  took his time coming home from the shop and  we  played family baseball in the front yard and had a beer while  watching  it rain all around us. He was trying to talk me out of riding. ‘couldn’t  happen’ he said. ‘you’re going to get wet’ and ‘no one else is riding today.’ Well, maybe in his opinion but I saw a good whole in the clouds and headed out on the bike. Except for mistakenly doing one interval too many – the ride went well.