Swimming, biking, sleeping weekend

Since we moved to Colorado, I haven't been biking or swimming much. Mostly just running and lifting weights. It was beautiful weather this weekend and while it would have been nice to run, my legs were feeling a little tired and I knew it was a good time to get back in the pool. The longer I was away from swimming the easier it was becoming for me to stay away.

So I waited around Saturday morning to go to masters swim at 11:00am. And only 3 people, including myself were there. I was glad I went because I got to meet the coach that runs the early (and I mean early) MWF group and he seems nice and like he knows his stuff, and it got me over my fear of doing a swim workout again. I ended up with 3600 yrds of swimming and while it wasn't fast, it wasn't horrible either. I wasn't completely dying at the end, so that was good. I'm in bad enough shape that I am swimming around the speed for intervals in the yard pool that I was swimming in the meter pool. So, that's something to work on. Seeing that is a good motivation to get to the pool consistently. The goal now is to get to masters swimming 3 days a week for the next month and then bump that up. After swimming, I had a nice long nap :)

Since the weather was so nice on Sunday, I rode up Deer Creek with Adam. It is a long climb not too far from where we live. We were going to do it last Sunday, but it was cold and rainy and I was not dressed warm enough for the weather. Sunday was sunny and perfect.

We went early to avoid the traffic. Cycling traffic that is. There are a lot of cyclist that go ride there. The house we wanted to rent is on this road, but we ultimately decided it was too far from my office and the landlord was too slow getting back to us on everything. Riding by the house and seeing what a nice setting it was in and what a nice house it was and how different things would had been in that house compared to the Highlands Ranch house was a little...I don't really have a word for it, not sad, but sort of. Anyway, that was way up the climb.

At the bottom, I was excited when we were getting ready because I saw prairie dogs!

That's what I am pointing at. I dressed warm to start but quickly heated up. The first 5 miles went by fast and I thought the climb (which I thought was 10 miles) would be over in no time. Along the way we passed some dirt trails and I was wishing I had a mountain bike. I can't wait until I get my mountain bike. Then we turned left and went up past the house that we may have lived in and kept going up. At around maybe 8 miles it got steeper and it was beautiful, but my legs were tired and I was wishing I had different gearing so I could spin more. Or a road bike. I got a side stitch and then started hyperventilating and then of course Adam pulled out the camera to take a picture, so I smiled.

At around 8.5 miles, I asked, "It's a 10 mile climb right?" And Adam said it was 10 miles from the park where we were going to ride from last week, but 14 miles from where we started from today. Ouch! My legs were hurting. Adam had fun sprinting to catch riders ahead of us and then circling back while I just kept chugging along and tried to enjoy the beautiful scenery. From far away the mountains look brown, but when you're in them there are so many beautiful colors to see. After the 10 or 11 mile mark it wasn't as steep except for a few places and I was happy to see my mph go above 8. At the top of the climb there was a cyclist rest stop and I was looking forward to getting there and having a snickers.
I was happy when I made it. My first time at a cycling rest stop :)

They had a donation box where you can put in a dollar or two and take a bar or Gatorade from the cooler and sit at picnic benches. It was a nice little rest before descending back down. On the way down there were so many cyclists riding up. Adam was right, we got out early and beat the traffic.

I took a nice long nap after that. It was a pretty relaxing weekend. After my nap I cooked up a tasty sweet potato Shepard's pie and then finally got around to doing some unpacking/organizing of my closet. I have more dri-fit race t-shirts and socks with dogs on them than I will ever need.

So now that I am back biking and swimming, what's next? Well, I want to go to masters swim 3 times a week. I'm not ready to get back on the trainer again and so I'm not sure about biking during the week since I'm not very familiar with the area yet and there is not a lot of daylight after work. I will likely have a mountain bike within the next month. I'm trying to figure out just where I want to put my focus next year and what races I want to do and where. I know I want to do some Xterra races and some road tris (Olympic Distance and shorter). I am tossing around the idea of doing the NYC marathon which would involve qualifying via half marathon before 1/31/2011. I have a lot of things I want to do, but just need to pick and choose the few things I really want to do, because I most certainly can't do everything.

And in case you didn't know...Ducks football is ranked 1st!