Took yesterday off, as my stomach was hurting pretty badly on my race day(Sunday) and yesterday. It was still a bit off this morning, but I managed to get 69 miles with 6400' of gain in today.

I was worried I was going to have a really bad day on the bike, but it was quite the opposite...I was drilling it all day, had a solid average power over the 4 hours, and even set a PR on a segment that climbs between miles 50 and 60. I'm down 25lbs from this time last year and even 10lbs down from my peak "race fitness" late last season, so I'm stoked about how I'm climbing right now.

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So I spent most of the day at the hospital, my very dark black coated dog decided he was going to lay out on the floor and my wife got up to get some water and boom, tripped over him, hit her head on the dresser. Luckily, nothing overly bad, no stitches needed, but she did have a very mild concussion. She was upset that I took her to the hospital ER, uhhhh get over it woman, your not young anymore. They kept her over night to watch her, did a couple of test and scans to make sure no internal bleeding or anything like that. So I have been up since 5 am Thursday, nervous energy, can't sleep, walk the dog for 3 miles, still no sleep, decided to hop on the indoor bike, did 56.5 miles 1800 ft of altitude gain. I was killing it, legs are sore, still can't sleep, so off to melatonin land should be zonked out here very soon.

^ that's a long day, & you still managed to put the hammer down on some isolated miles!

ya know, if you were to have been in her shoes & communicated your feelings of being upset for being taken to the ER, she'd gave you an ear full.

Some nerve she has! lol j/m hope she gets well soon.

Exactly, and that is what I said.... but all is well today. Said light is not bothering her today, so that is good news.

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Weather cool and wet, so took my gravel/commuter bike rather than my road bike. Still a good ride.

After a long week of just indoor mileage, I was able to get outside once the rain let off today. Pretty productive ride, I was shooting for a little higher intensity and got it...set a PR on my local "benchmark" climb, which I did in 12:48. That surprised me, as I did squats,deadlifts,box steps, lunges, and some other core stuff this morning. I'm kinda interested to see what I can do if I hit it fresh...it's just cool to be rolling with this positive momentum I've had in recent weeks. The time might be just a bit skewed, as I did it on my UCI-illegally light climbing bike. IIRC, according to bike calculator, this thing is worth 10ish seconds on this climb compared to my "daily-driver" road bike.

Anyway...30 miles, 3500' of elevation gain, 15.5 average mph.

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114 trainer miles this week including intervals, endurance and high intensity distance.

Yea I hear you... I ended up with 168 inside last week and a few outside.

Took a advantage of a break in the weather and got out for some miles today.

104 miles, 9k' of climbing, and an average of 16mph.

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30 fakers with 3000’ climbing. Knees a bit sore which is not good. Changed setting in ZWIFT to Max resistance which equals real life percentage grades rather than default of 50%. Why did they do that?

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38 miles 1500’ on a mtb. Atmospheric river due Sat and Sun. Back to ZWIFT
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So the weather got warm here this week, but I did 80ish miles in doors, but did 104 miles outside today. Of note, I realized my hand is not happy with the outside riding and is still tender where I had the surgery on it. So will be staying indoors for another couple of weeks to give it more time to heal.

Just a couple of zone 2 Zwift session since my big ride on Tuesday. Finally got outside and back to racing today...it was billed as a "dirt crit," basically a short XC mtb race, but not quite short-track xc. While not normally a technical course, it turned into a mud bog today. Standing water all over the course and I was spinning and drifting everywhere.

It was only 10 miles of racing...1st place was 15 years younger than me and turning some very fast lap times. I've got another race tomorrow, that's more important to me, so I backed it off and made sure to consolidate 2nd.

Good on you competing with the youngsters. Hopefully the wisdom of age will prevail next time.

I did 1.5 hours of Zone 2 on the trainer, while watching Griselda on Netflix, after yesterday’s mountain bike slog.

Thanks. The wisdom of age is probably what kept me in 2nd. This was a really minor race in my overall calendar, so I made a conscious decision to not leave everything on the course and save myself for the next day. Although playing it safe only got me so far. There were lots of crashes out on course, but I kept it upright almost the entire course...I still slid out in some rocks with about 2 minutes left in the race, luckily only some minor scrapes and bruises.

I've been doing quite a bit of zone 2 trainer time myself. I used to just try to "ride lots" and wouldn't think about zone 2 that much. After incorporating quite a bit more zone 2 last year, I'm now a true believer about all the current zone 2 hype.

38 miles is a long ride on the MTB. Even on my XC bike, a mtb ride feels like twice the road miles.

Run the minor races as practice - but second ain’t bad. Better luck Sunday - and no crashes.

I always felt that running a dual suspension bike with knobbies was tantamount to riding twice the distance on a road bike. Appreciate the validation or we both are nuts.

stuck in a zone 2 rut the last decade. works when you're doing 400-500 miles (or more) a month. when you're doing less...not so much.

17 yesterday and 41 today. Signed up for my first bike race (9.2 mile TT) so been riding to get used to the clip-ons.

I guess that's partly why I'm into it. Since partaking in zone 2, I've been able to up my volume. I'm going to pass 600 miles for January and possibly hit 50 hours of workout time for the month. No way I could do that if I didn't have some easy days.

Anyway...day 2 of the double-header XC racing weekend, we even had a WT road pro in attendance. 17 miles and roughly a 14mph average for me, good enough for 2nd in my class. I ended up on the wrong side of a crucial split on lap 1, I hammered down and eventually caught/passed #2 and 3 on the last lap, but the leader was long gone. Since stepping up and racing with the big boys, I've learned that there is no room for tactical errors.

Took advantage of some epic weather today...average of 64F, which is exceptionally nice for mountain weather in January. I took it a bit easy today, as I wanted a little recovery for tomorrow's ride. Anyway, 30 miles and 4000' of climbing.

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72 miles and 8600' of elevation gain.

Did a local scenic route through a bunch of Forest Service roads today, these roads may be unridable until May, depending on the snow forcast...so got the miles in today. I was going to make it a loop, but got turned around because of snow at the 5500' level. Turned it into an out-and-back, I usually take the gravel bike, but took the more compliant of my road bikes(with 30mm GP5000) today and was rewarded with some Strava segments...and no flats either with tubeless(oh, that's an argument for the other thread lol.)

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Oh man you ride a Canyon (a very complimentary thread) and you ride tubeless (an equally non-controversial and complimentary thread). You live life dangerously - must be that thin air at elevation. ;) It must help your flatland racing. Love the pics.

A quick 16 miles at 18.6 MPH

Here are the sad facts:
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The last entry sums it up… “HELP”

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A wet 10 degrees today. Felt more like swimming than riding for a good part of the ride, but still had a great time celebrating my birthday.

Very dangerously, I own 5 Canyons.:eek: 4 of those, plus my Santa Cruz XC bike, are tubeless. Despite all this, I'm somehow okay. I am running Amazon TPU tubes in the clear-coated Canyon in my previous post...mostly because of the weight, but also because I had superfluous non-tubeless tires.

Living at elevation is like legal blood doping lol. I really like doing events at elevation, I just don't experience nearly as much power loss as the valley guys do.

Thanks for the compliments on the pics. I've lived up here almost my entire life, yet I still take a bunch of pictures on every ride. Awesome days like today, only make it harder to go back onto the trainer.