Dog Days of Winter

Ah yes, there’s nothing that will make you feel so fast as wearing all the clothes you own with a Camelbak Racebak filled with boiling water, motoring a heavy mud/ice encrusted full suspension mountain bike down an icy snow packed farm road while doing threshold intervals.  Yes.  You go so hard and have to find some satisfaction in getting up to 9 mph.  If theres a tail wind.  But its better than the alternative of sitting on the trainer inside!  Every year here in Boulder there are ALWAYS 2 weeks around Christmas time where it gets really cold and snowy and wintery.  You cant train outside for a couple days, and then when you hope it warms up for a few days like normal, it gets up to about 32 degrees for the next two weeks.  Never quite warms up and only melts minimal snow and ice from the road.  But you still gotta ride!  That 2 week period that crimps my riding always comes, of course, during the holiday week when I have a Xmas party to go to every night for a week.  So youre tempted by all this yummy fattening sugar food that you really cant eat too much of because youve only ridden 6 hours this week! Damn! Oh well.  Thats why they pay me the big bucks right?Yesterday I killed some training time with Nathan at Rocky Mtn Cardiology getting the annual UCI mandated cardiac testing done.  I did a stress ecg on a treadmill of all things.  Now Im a pretty fit dude, but going 195 heart rate while RUNNING is not something I do to0 regularly.  My legs were definitely about to give out and send me flying off the treadmill long before my heart an lungs were!   Im also looking forward to the opening of the new indoor velodrome here in Boulder.  That will surly be another great way to beat the winter training grind! Heres a picture of me maxing out on the treadmill.           Thanks for checking in