Fitness Training News

Monday, May 7, 2007

Love that Colorado Weather If you live in Colorado you know we had some crazy weather this past weekend. Lots of rain, snow, sun, and wind, all mixed up together.

I had planned on an early morning long mountain bike ride on Saturday but ended up with a short but very hard road ride, instead. It seemed every time I started to get on my bike, the sky opened up and let go of a lot of rain.

As it turned out, I hiked with my dogs, Kayla and Lucie in the rain Saturday morning for an hour and then met my friend Shannon to hike with Kayla's brother, Kiptu mid-day.

Finally, I jumped on my bike at about 3:00 and rode the long Nelson Road Loop as fast as I could push my legs. I was lucky because the rain came down in buckets just as I was finished.

Sunday was a much better day and I rode a 70 mile ride with my friend Cheryl. We decided to stay close to Boulder and do many local area loops so that if it began to rain we would never be very far from home.

We headed out north of Boulder to hit the Fruit Loops. From there we rode up to Rabbit Mountain and into Hygiene. The weather was still good so we did a loop I call the "Square Loop" just north of Hygiene towards Cater Lake and then you come back onto Highway 66.

From there we worked our way over to Airport Road and onto the Diagonal. Nothing too eventful here but a quick way back into Boulder.

The ride was great because we were able to catch up on what each of us had been doing since out last ride. Not too many notable things to report here. Just another great weekend of riding and hiking brining my total miles for the season to a little over 2000. Hiking hours with the dogs, maybe about 250 hours. Could be a bit more as I some times hike them more then once per day.

Looking forward to a long ride on Wednesday with some friends. We are going ride a loop of the up-coming Ward 150. The Ward150 is 3 loops of Ward to Highway 7, down St. Vrain to Lyons, up 36 to Left Hand Canyon, up Lefthand and back to Ward. That unoffical official ride will be at 6 AM on May 19th.

That's all for now. # posted by Michelle Grainger @ 12:32 PM 0 Comments

Tuesday, May 1, 2007

An Awesome Weekend!

Oh what a great weekend! You just can't ask for better than we had last Saturday and Sunday.

Woke up Saturday morning and the day was already warm. After a nice hour hike with my two dogs, Lucie and Kayla, I rode with a friend and client, Michael. I knew we would have a perfect mountain bike riding day as the temperatures in Boulder were going to be in the 80s.

We went from my house and headed for the Switzerland Trail, taking the southern side up to Sugarloaf Mountain. Only a little bit of snow on the sides of the jeep trail but a fair amount of mud.

Our plan was to head all the way to Peak To Peak and then head north and find more things to ride and play on. Well, that didn't turn out very well. At about 8600 feet (thank you Garmin 305) we hit snow. A lot of snow. So much snow we would be hiking for a long time. Since we really just wanted to ride and not find adventures, we headed back down the way we came and up the north side of the Switzerland Trail towards gold Hill. All pretty dry here and the riding was perfect.

From Gold Hill Road we headed towards Gold Hill. It was there that Michael saw a Lynx or small Bobcat. I, of course, looked up into the sky when he pointed upward (meaning up the road) and missed the site of the day.

After playing around for a while and looking at trails for snow pack, we climbed up to Sunshine Road and descended to a trail that connects my road with Sunshine Road.

I finished up the day with a little over 30 miles and about 5200 feet of climbing.

My dogs (the girls) were to have me home because we got to go for another hour and a half hike and everyone finished out the day feeling good and tired.

Sunday's ride was to be a 100 miler on the road.

This time I rode with hubby, Steve, and our Tri friend Alicia. For both of them it was to be there longest day on the road bike in 2-3 years.

we decided to head out to Masonville as everyone told us it was 50 miles there and back. Wrong (Garmin again) it was something like 44 miles there.

We had a slow start as I had a flat tire at the very start. Wouldn't be out last one, either.

The ride out north from Boulder is beautiful. Lots of farm land, rolling hills and not much wind that day.

The only part of the ride I had not remembered is the water dam just before Masonville. Alicia and Steve made fun of me here as it is rather a big feature to miss. Come to find out from some other riders is that it was built about three years ago. That's the last time I had done this ride.

Once in Masonville we headed for a few miles north to add some miles and then turned around to head home. that's when I hit something it the road and had a big blowout. Lucky for me it was my rear tire and I was able to stop pretty quickly.

Steve had to help here as the tire needed a really good boot job and, of course, he is really good at that.

As we were about to start back up Alicia's front tires sizzled down to a flat. As it turned out her rim strips had worn away and Steve (thank you Steve) fixed her rim, changed the flat, and off we went.

Once back into the area of Hygiene we had to add a 15 mile loop somewhere, Steve picked going up St.Vrain. Great choice on any other day. This day was just too hot and long to do this loop. All of us were a little cranky until the end of the descent into Lyons.

We stopped at the store in Hygiene where we got Cokes and something to eat and headed into Boulder.

The end was uneventful and Steve and Alicia finished their longest day in years and thus, both were quite happy.

Once back home, the girls were happy to take the last bit of energy out of our legs heading up into the trails near our house.

Can't wait for another great weekend with rides, hikes, and friends. # posted by Michelle Grainger @ 8:39 PM 0 Comments

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