Day 3

The wheels fell off. Too knackered to go out for a ride at 9pm so it all ended a bit quickly. Ah well.
Went for a run on Tuesday night, 2 min hill reps * 5.
Wednesday night ride - petit tour de Moel Ici.
Thursday - run around padarn lake.
Friday - nothing again.

30 in 30 - Day 2

An unexpected nice (ish) day so I fired up the road bike for it's first outing in months. Back roads to Bangor, then Llanberis and home. 1h 45. Felt knackered since then. Still, only another 28 days left. They're forecasting snow tomorrow....

30 from 30 - The start

Well, no posts for some time, can't be bothered to fill in the last few months, sorry.

So, I fell into agreeing to some stupid challenge to ride atleast an hour a day for 30 consectutive days. March is going to be an interesting month.

Today was Day 1, met papa Makin, 360, Benji, and The Midget at Llanrwst for Midget's birthday ride. Did the Marin + Deviations to take in little lakes and Green Gulley - 2 1/2 hours of much fun. 1 down, 29 to go.

Snowdonia Marathon

I suppose I should say something about this, it's not everyday you do a Marathon after all. I didn't take the whole training thing too seriously - did a lot of biking, obviously, went for a couple of long runds (2 -3 hours) and even did a few runs on the road. I thought I'd be OK to get to the finish, but I wasn't sure how hard it would be.
As it turned out, I felt good for the first 17 miles, then my calves started to tighten up. I briefly thought about stopping to stretch, but thought it woldn't make a lot of difference so carried on. By 22 miles my legs really didn't want to run anymore, so I did my best to ignore them. The descent into Llanberis was quite painful and with half a mile to go I had to have a little walk. Once I'd finished I felt fine (well, relatively), apart from my calves which were shot to pieces.

Finished in 3h51, in 317th place. I might do it again, but next time I'll do more road running beforehand :)

Beer

Haven't blogged for a while - too busy or too lazy? Maybe a bit of both...
Anyway, I'd meant to post something about american beer, which was broadly speaking very good. New Belgium was particularly ace.

Mmm beer.

Soda Creek Revisited

September 20^th shall henceforth be known as 'Better than Hiking Day'. We set out to ride Soda Creek trail together – rode up Tiger Road, Horseman Gulch, Soda Creek, then took the bus back to Frisco. Messed around taking lots of photos and had a generally good time.

In the afternoon we drove up to Breckenridge, had a wander around, then I went and rode a bit of the colorado trail that I'd missed yesterday. To be honest, I think the accidental ride to Keystone was better, but it was good to check it out, because now I know.

More Colorado Trail

I rode out to do another bit of the Colorado trail while Sue headed for the more modest Flume Trails just north of Breckenridge. After a painful amount of climbing (there has been a pattern emerging here...) there was some very cool riding down some switchbacks, all quite alpine-esque I thought. After a while I began to get a bit concerned that the regular Colorado Trail waymarkers had disappeared. Having given the map to Sue I was relying on the guidebook to find my way around, now that I wasn't sure where I was the guidebook wasn't a lot of help. Sure enough, I ended up in Keystone – I'd descended into exactly the wrong valley. Oh well, it was a fun ride.

I then enjoyed a hot hour first trying to escape from the Keystone Ranch Golf retreat – all fenced in only one road in and out, no signposts. Ended up riding into silverthorne as I couldn't find a bus stop anywhere near Keystone. Eventually got back to the RV at Gold Run, very thirsty.

Meanwhile, sue had been having a great time on the flume trails and at 40 years + 1 day old experienced an epiphany – that riding bikes is more fun than hiking. So the plans to slog up Quandary (one of the 14er peaks) where shelved in order to spend our last two days in colorado squeezing as much fun as possible out of the trails.

Late in the afternoon we drove up Boreas Pass road and rode the Baker's Tank Loop, which was a nice way to spend an hour or so.

Went out for a day late birthday Mexican, Burrito del Mar and Margarita Gold – we need more Mexicans in our life.