Two weeks in the books

Woohoo! Saturday night. What a week it's been. I've been right on schedule all week except for an early bedtime on Wednesday to get some extra recovery sleep. Last night I rocked 2.5 hours of a hardish big ring effort on the Fuel after work, on top of my hard hour at lunch. It was cold and my feet were numb by the time I walked in the door after dark. I was sore due to the almost 4 hard hours on the bike that day but overall feeling great. We had a quick dinner at Noodles and Company of some marinara with steak and a spicy thai caeser salad. Yum! Then I got some good sleep because Jim and I decided to get a late start this morning. It was supposed to be cold today so we decided to leave at 10 am instead of 7 am like the week before. Well it was definitely cold, as in below freezing. This winter Jim and I had done a lot of cold weather riding and it wasn't too bad when we left. 25 miles later we arrived in Golden to light snowfall. Undetered we climbed up Lookout Mountain and I felt awesome sitting and mashing the pedals 5 miles to the top. That lasted only as long as the climb. When we turned around to descend back down it got even colder. Jim and I were both frozen, especially our hands, so we stopped at Burger King in Golden. Hot water in our water bottles and a few minutes to warm up and we were ready to roll again. Jim and I both wanted to be back by 2pm so we picked up the pace on the way home, right into a northern headwind. I hung on until the last 30 to 45 minutes. At that point the 105 miles in less than 24 hours started to take their toll. I hit a chocolate caffinated PowerGel and pulled in behind Jim to hang onto his wheel. He pulled us strong into the headwind the rest of the way home. We rode into the subdivision and arrived back at Jim's house, 61 miles after we started.

Tonight Marni and I are hanging out with her sister Colleen and her kids Kylie (9) and Trevor (5). Tomorrow I'm babysitting Trevor while the girls go to a bridal shower in the morning. It's too cold to go to the Stazio crits so I'm just going to go on a nice easy AR ride tomorrow afternoon. I've got 2 solid weeks finished on this cycle with only 1 more to go before a rest week. Hopefully the weather warms up for my planned century next Saturday.

In other news, Cherry Creek messed up my start time, as in I don't have one. Judging by the fact that they pulled the list of all starters I'm wondering if I'm not the only one. They cashed my check and two of my friends who entered the same day got in so I'm hoping I'm in too. We'll know soon I hope considering that bike is still not in working shape and the series is my only motivation to put it back together.

I'm also seriously considering entering the 18 Hours of Fruita on May 6th for my first long solo race. It looks like a nice race, it's close by, and I'm physically as ready as can be. Whether I can pull together enough lights and take care of the other logistics is another story. Stay tuned for the official decision, aka ponying up the dough on Active.com.

Ahhh, now time for more sleep. Sorry for no pictures today. I didn't take my camera and google images didn't have anything that fit the mood.