Putting in the Work

My goal for the Marathon World Championships in 2 weeks is to finish top half.  Racing 55 miles with 15,000ft of climbing against the fastest marathon racers in the world is not going to be an easy day on the bike!  The course has some pretty brutal climbing, but equally amazing scenery.  I'm also going to be racing to beat the fastest women in the world and 4,000 amateur riders starting 15 minutes behind us.  

It is also my goal to strengthen my relationship with God and with my Dad on this trip.  At home my life gets a little busier than I want it to be with work, training and all the other every day stuff we have to get done.  A week long trip to the mountains is a blessing for me and I'm looking forward to being in an amazing place buzzing with mountain bikers.

My training has been going well and we're getting close to the point where I just need to focus on staying fresh and healthy.  

Big mountain bike ride in the Santa Anas

Climbing repeats on the road

Fro-yo with my girls

Prior to the Grand Junction Off-Road I did 2 really solid weeks of training with a lot of climbing. Those weeks were each about 15 hours with 30,000ft of climbing.  It was a good boost for my endurance and had some intensity mixed in too.  

Then the Grand Junction race week included 4 hours of racing including the crit and cross country. 

After that I needed some rest and took it easy for 6 days.  

I jumped back into my finals 2 weeks of training with a 5 hour mountain bike ride with 10k feet of climbing.  I've done solid threshold and tempo workouts this week and will race the final CA series race in Big Bear tomorrow.  Next week I'll have 2 key workouts, one being a solid endurance ride, and the other a threshold workout.   

Then it's time to travel and taper down even more on race week.  Of course I've been doing this on top of full 40 hour weeks at the office as usual so it's been fairly hard work.  For most of us a 12-hour training week with 3-4 high quality workouts is an accomplishment in itself!     

Physically I can be top half at the World Championships.  I just need to stay healthy, have a good day and most importantly get my heart and mind focused in the right places.  

Check it out!

These mountains are the real deal!