D-town

For the last week I've been kicking it in Durango at my Teammate Andy Guptil's house. Durango is beautiful right now, it's incredibly green, and the weather's been great. It took me a while to feel recovered from the Joe Martin Stage Race. I think racing at sea level, and then coming to a high elevevtion adds a day or two onto your recovery time. I ended up spending the first half of the week resting. Thursday I finally felt ready to open the legs up again so I did about 25 minutes of LT up to the top of Coal Bank Pass, which is around 10,500 feet. It's crazy how much harder it is to do intensity up there. Later that night I went down to Pagosa and soaked in the hot springs. That was great for the legs.

I didn't hit the training again until this weekend when Guptil, Shriver, Phil Zijack and I decided to ride from Durango to Silverton and back both saturday and Sunday. We were about five miles short of Silverton on Saturday due to some bad weather rolling in, but we made it on Sunday. Both days had around 10,000 feet of climbing, were just shy of 100 miles, and much of the ride was above 9,000 feet. We held a steady tempo the entire ride, so by the end we were all feeling pretty worked. Guptil had a BBQ at his place sunday night, so to top off a perfect weekend, I grilled up a fat half-pound elk burger with sautied onions and mushrooms, avacado, cheese, lettuce, tomato, and plenty of ketchup. Yum.

Me, Phil, and Andy restocking the fuel supplies at Needles Store.

We met up with some Locals at the top of Molas Pass at 10,900 feet