Century w/45 miles on dirt + 7 flats = EPIC

The end of my rest week is approaching, and I’m not sure if I‘m quite ready for it to end.
I spent the first few days sleeping, getting caught up on stuff, and watching old people play golf in our back yard. Yeah, we live on a freakin’ golf course!!!


I was starting to feel fully rested by about Wednesday, but then yesterday, I couldn’t resist the temptation to join my teammates for an epic. I’m not sure if I can even call it an epic though, because compared to a lot of the rides that I’ve been doing this year, it’s just like any other day. The thing that did make it epic however, was the 45 miles of dirt/jeep roads that we rode. Now if I were to take the ol’ MTB out there on these roads, it would’ve been a piece of cake. But 120 psi and 700x23 tires, made the downhills sketchy and fun… I got that high speed dirt lovers on the edge of your chamios fix that I’ve been craving from all the asphalt I’ve been on lately. Yes, my MTB friends, as I was shredding those dirt roads on my road bike, I felt a bit nostalgic and was dearly missing my mountain bike.

I guess this “es un muy popular” place to cross the border. My Canadian teammate Dustin en route through a hot smuggling route for illegal immigrants.

Not only did those skinny tires make the descents hairy, they also pinch flatted on just about every rock they hit. I think we totaled about 7 flats between the four of us. Wes took the prize for the most with four, and Dustin was the only one not to pinch a tube. All those flats caused quite the delay and put us pretty behind schedule. So once we finally hit the pavement again, about 50 miles from home, we got into formation and rode in a paceline (TTT style) full-on. I felt like I was back with my collegiate mates killing it during TTT practice. It also showed me how strong the rest of these guys are. We haven’t really gone out and hammered together yet until yesterday, and all three of these guys (Frank Pipp, Wes Hartman, and Dustin MacBurnie) have got some horsepower… that’s pretty damn motivational for me.

Today we put on a clinic for TargeTraining. We basically rode slow with some weekend warriors and talked training and racing, and tried to share our knowledge. We’ll do another one tomorrow… it’ll be fun.

I’m only in Tucson for a few more days, and then I’m off to Oxnard, CA for some more training to get ready for the first race at the end of February in Sonora, Mexico.

Cheers.