Day 7 on my last 30 Days to Leadville
Hard to believe time is going so fast all of the sudden. Seems like I train and train and train and train…. for this one big race and now I’m starting to feel the burnout.
Quite a few months ago when I first started training I just jumped right in and felt like I could tackle the world. I knew I had a long way to go and have been more than willing to pay my dues to get to where I need to be.
Here’s a sample of what I have done:
- Drastically changed my eating (started eating tons of greens with every meal and cut back on fast food). Also, I got rid of sugar except for one “cheat” day per week and no white bread or chips, either.
- Did kettlebells 4x per week (resulting in 10% to 6% body fat within a three month time period)
- Ride hard – every time I ride, I ride hard. There isn’t much recovery spinning, the majority of the time I was pedaling as hard and fast as I could. I ride every day but Sundays… usually a 1-2 hour ride Monday through Friday and then a 50-100 mile ride on Saturday. I like to mountain bike once or twice a week, but feel like road cycling gives me a higher intensity workout all the way around.
- Signed up for the Utah State Championship MTB Series. I knew I needed to not just start learning how to ride a mountain bike, but I needed to get some races under my belt. This has been a TOUGH thing for me to jump into and learn, but it has been well worth it. I don’t know how many of you are like me, but oft times I sign up for a race and that’s “THE BIG ONE” but I don’t race leading up to it very often. This leaves me with a lot more pre-race jitters and a lot less experience than I really need overall.
- Got my 14 year old son Cobe involved in cycling. Has been absolutely awesome to have a partner to ride with all the time AND to watch him grow in cycling. He is becoming a cycling machine!
- Have talked with experts, non-experts, and everyone in-between about fueling on the bikeand have developed my strategy for just that. The races I have been in and the long rides on the weekends are helping me fine tune that.
- I attended the Leadville 100 MTB Camp and rode the entire Leadville course so I could become familiar with it and know what I am up against. Frankly, I want to finish in 9 hours or less and right now I will be cutting it REALLY close. I need to shave off another 30 minutes to feel great about the race, and I am getting limited on time!
So… that’s just a few things I can think of right off the top of my head. All in all it has been quite a year and I have to admit that my ambition is waning. I feel less and less like getting on my bike and riding my guts out every day and know I have GOT to make this final push to the end to accomplish my goal!
