Aire Blog

I think we are officially off and running. This Saturday past we participated in the Stagecoach Century 100 mile Team Time Trial. Felipe, Chris, Joe and I formed a 4 man team that works together to cover the distance as quickly as possible and at least 3 guys have to finish. Felipe and Chris are super strong so they did nearly all the work and also nearly popped me out the back in the process. It was all I could do for the first half to hang on for my life. We got the lead early after passing the team that started just before us and built into it for the first 35 miles. Going up one of the steeper climbs of the day right about that 35 mile mark Felipe got an unfortunate flat. Worse than that however was that when he went to fix the flat he noticed the seat on his new bike was dangerously loose. The seat had to be removed and reassembled as well as the flat changed. The whole process took all of 20 minutes. I used the time to slowly roll up the road in recovery mode to be ready to jump back on the Felipe/Chris express on the way home. As expected when they rolled up they rolled with a full head of steam. Our ride time of 4 hours 50 minutes was 9 minutes faster than the previous course record but when you tack on the down time for the mechanical we were unfortunately out of contention for the record and the win on the day. It was a great experience for me to race as part of a team and it was one of the more challenging things I have done as usually I race alone and as such, I race within my limits. Racing at someone else’s limit is a whole different type of suffer-fest. Thanks to Felipe and Chris for working so hard and thanks to Joe for being strong to the end.
So with that I am back in full on training mode gearing up for the Boston Marathon, Boise 70.3 and Ironman Switzerland (with lots of small B and C races in between). Today was a 2 mile swim and I am off shortly for some strength training and then a massage that will hopefully sort out the low back/lower extremities problems I have been battling since the holidays. This Saturday will be our second go of the year on the Computrainer system at Aire Urban and I will leading the session on the California 70.3 course. Pretty soon we will switch it up and start running the Wildflower course as well. Hope to see you down at Aire.