Keith, Raquel, and I met up for a quick 9 mile mountain bike ride after work yesterday in Keystone Canyon. I forgot to start recording the training session on my Forefunner until we had biked into the canyon a bit so it looks like we only did 8.58 miles.

Here’s the profile:

Here’s the topo (clicky!):

Tonight I’m going on a run - first time in a week or so! Need to stay focused for September races!

Today’s mountain bike ride was a bit of a slog. Keith nor I had our minds into it so we spent most of the time leaning over the handlebars while cranking uphill. We did get in some fun downhill singletrack but unfortunately we kept having to stop to let uphill riders pass. I was able to ride the off-camber sections much better this time around but I still have some work to do before I can ride those sections perfectly. I did have a bit of a wipeout today though…In a narrow windy section I was barrelling downhill when around a curve came an uphill rider. I hit the brakes fast and had almost diverted around him when a rock threw me back toward him. Luckily we didn’t crash into eash other but I still got a bit dirty/scratched from the incident.

My bike needs some work on it - I need to get some new brake pads and some new cables. Need to get in perfect condition so I can bomb the downhils! (Yeah, right!)

Got my stats from the Forefunner imported and all the fancy whizbang graphs and such made. It looks like we did 6 miles in an hour and 18 minutes. The elevation profile looks killer but it’s really not that bad!

Elevation/distance/time profile:

Topo of the route:

Keith and I met up yesterday afterwork for some mountain biking in Keystone Canyon. Unfortunately, I forgot my new Forerunner so I was unable to track our distance and speed but I’m guess we did somewhere around 10 miles of biking. Keystone Canyon is gradual uphill until you reach a plateau and from then on it’s short strenuous uphills to get to certain parts of the BLM area. We climbed a steep uphill and then rode the downhill back to the the mouth of the canyon - then we decided that we felt good so we turned around and climbed another uphill and rode that back down all the way to our cars. It was a fun time but very tiring.

Tonight I am meeting up with him again for a 6 mile trail run. Afterwards I’m headed off to REI to see Rebecca Rusch (a prominent adventure racer) give a clinic for the Big Blue Series!

I met up with Dave (of http://www.adventure-race-reports.com) today for a mountain bike ride in the Lagoon Valley Regional Park near Vacavilla, CA. The ride is, more-or-less, an out-and-back up to a summit and then back down again. For some reason on the way up I got pretty tired and sweaty and was just having a rough time of it. I had to stop multiple times and finally we took a long breather in the shade to relax and catch out breath. Then we went up to radio tower at the top and Dave pointed out the various Sierra and coastal landmarks that we could see from the top. All in all it was a fun ride but I gotta say it’s already starting to get hot in the California central valley!

Ritwik, Shelley, and I met up for mountain biking on the trails in old Ft. Ord near Monterey, CA. The trails there are sandy but the singletrack is super fun in some spots (especially if you stay on the right trails). We spent a bit of time trying to determine route choice and found that trails #33/34 are to be avoided since they are way too overgrown. Sometime I’d like to go back and take a bit of singletrack down to Pilarcitos Rd - I’ve ridden that section before and it’s way fun.

Chart of the elevation profile:

The topo map with route color-coded by elevation.