Ruby, Don't Take Your Love To Town...

I love Thanksgiving dinner, a time to eat and embrace the fact your pants no longer fit. In the last 7 days I've had 3 turkey and dressing filled meals, including two on Saturday evening. We had a huge feed at John & Amy Perry's place on Saturday around 5:30pm, then headed down the Diagonal for another feed at Scott & Kim Turner's place in Boulder. Granted the second meal was more of a sampling since we were completely stuffed from our last meal just 2 hours ago, but I still managed to have some turkey regardless. The real coo was getting lots of turkey from the Perry Thanksgiving and then scoring a huge dish of stuffing from the Turner's dinner. Now if only I had scheduled another on Sunday where I could have grabbed some mashed potatoes...

Despite my efforts to propel my weight into uncharted territory, I actually dropped a couple pounds this week. I've been very regimented in my training schedule, only breaking the routine once in the last couple weeks and that was to try Jill's "core" excercise routine that she does. Well lets just say that wasn't so pretty...I looked like a 5th grader trying to play in the NBA. While I never really got short of breath from the excercise, my brain started overheating from trying to keep up and follow the overly cheery instructor. We'll just say that the core training wasn't exactly for me.

With the great weather this weekend, I broke the monotony of the trainer and headed out onto the open road both Saturday and Sunday. Saturday I took Ruby (the name Jill & I have given to my Specialized Roubaix) out on a 25 mile ride towards Lyons. A nice easy loop with a few rolling hills, but nothing too taxing. An easy Zone 2 spin for 1.5 hours through the countryside between Longmont and Lyons.

Heart Rate And Elevation for Saturday's Ride



Sunday I jumped at the chance to get Betty the Yeti (both my bikes were recently anointed with names) out of hibernation for a easy spin on the Teller Lake trails between Longmont and Boulder.

One of my Dad's favorite expressions is "Never bring a knife to a gun fight". Well bringing my 6" travel Yeti to Teller Lake was like bringing a bazooka to that knife fight. Teller Lake has nothing at all even remotely technical, and we saw more cyclocross bikes than full suspensions, but with the fork in 110mm mode and the RP3 in firm mode Betty rockets through the smooth stuff pretty well for a chunky girl.

Of course not satisfied with the ridiculous physical advantage or 50 less pounds, The Punisher broke out his Stumpjumper hardtail instead of his dual suspension Maverick just to make me hurt a little more. We actually took it very easy, never really pushing above 60% till the final climb to the car. We actually had a woman gap up to us then proceed to hammer by us on the climb, but we just let her go. I doubt John has the experience to get passed on climbs much, let alone by a woman, so I was glad to allow him to experience life as a slow climber.

Heart Rate & Elevation from Sunday's Ride


Short week at work, and great weather. I'm guessing that for the next three days my body will be at 1515 Arapahoe, but my mind might be somewhere in the foothills ripping down some singletrack. Rumor has it we might be outta here early on Wednesday, and if that happens I'll definitely be finding my way to a dirt trail somewhere.