October

It's been nothing but more work and a couple chill weekends here.  Fighting (actually resting) a tough cold at the moment so I can be 100 percent for our long weekend to Zion coming up in a couple days here.  Only 1 ride in the past week has me anxious for some mountain biking, but that will have until after the Zion trip.  The photos pretty much cover what we've been up to...

 A solid 40hrs with this view

 Countless bars, this is a good one!

 Top of the world - my 1 ride for the week

 View on the way home - more of this to come with the time change

 Beth and her snacks

 Beth's friend Brenda's work on display in Laguna

Our Halloween runner

Off week

Off week from the blog - logging too much computer time as it is

World Bicycle Relief

Don't forget to give a few dollars if you can.  If you give $20 right now instead of getting dinner out tonight it will go a lot further than you think in creating opportunities for someone in Africa.

http://www.profundraiser.blogspot.com/

Tri

Beth had a really good day and took a solid win for her age group at the OC Triathlon Sunday!  It's a tough (hilly) international distance race and the course really shows who has it and who doesn't.  It was fun spectating for a change, especially T1 where hardly anybody knows how to get on their bike smoothly.  Beth is the type who trains all the time and only races occasionally, so it's especially cool to see her have a good result.  It's also good to realize that it's possible to just enjoy training and being fit even if you don't race often!  That's a little hard to understand for us cyclists, but probably a lot healthier lifestyle then feeling a need to race all the time. 

Things are staying busy at work and I'm up to about 2 1/2 weeks off the bike.  I was hoping to get some fun mtb rides in this week, but somehow strained my hamstring pretty bad over the weekend.  I don't even know what caused it.  Only about 3 weeks until time changes and then I'm not sure when I'll be able to ride during the week. 

At least I have a good one planned for Saturday...  If you're in the area come join us from the Quail Hill trail head at 8.  We'll hit a pretty cool route though Laguna Coast Wilderness and El Moro to the coast and back in about 25 miles and 3500 feet of climbing.  Tacos and beer to follow at Sharkeys...

Off season in the real world

Well the off season is a great break from training and racing, but the reality is that those of us with jobs in the real world end up staying almost as busy as we were in the main part of the season.  Now is the time to get caught up on stuff that was put off because I was too busy riding on the weekends to do them earlier in the year.  First on the list is fixing up our 2000 Rodeo so we can get another 10 years out of it.  The cool thing with commuting to work half of the time, and using our other car for all our trips, is that I put less than 5,000 miles on it per year. 

Working is the main thing taking up some extra energy the last few weeks.  My racing wound down just in time for things to get really busy at work...  The non-profit fundraising world is seasonal and for 3/4 of the year works pretty well around the race season.  The busy time for fundraising events is the late spring (the 1/4 that's not so great for racing trips) and in the fall. 

This week I finally took a full week completely off the bike and didn't feel too worthless because of it.  Over the weekend I actually enjoyed sitting on the couch while thinking about all the cross racers out there about to take off on another hour of discomfort.  Let the good times begin!