I'm taking a break from wrapping gifts.
Dallys, loved the pics of the Porcupine Trail. DS and DH want us all to go to Utah this year to ride our 4-wheelers and our Rhino. It would be tempting to take a mtn. bike too, but I'm a wienie mtn. biker. Yes, you can definitely do the triathlons as a relay. The cool thing about those events is that no one knows you are last because everyone is starting at a different time. I about drowned when I did a sprint triathlon up here in Susanville last year. It called for a 1/2 mile swim and I remembered that in 6th grade or some ridiculously long time ago, I could swim in the pool pretty good. But when I got out in the lake, I just didn't want to put my head in the water and was doing side stroke, breast stroke. I decided no, today I was not going to drown so I went back to shore. I did get to do the biking part and the running part. Of course, my score didn't count which was too bad because my bike time was awesome. I had not run once during the year at all and ran (slowly) the 4 miles required. It was a blast though. I highly recommend it. I didn't know that you rode horses. I rode for years and years, western, english, hunter/jumpers, eventing, fox hunting, team penning, reining and most recently dressage. I sold my last horse last year, but really don't miss owning one. Too busy with biking, golf, etc. I still have all my tack and horse trailer so who knows? Some friends of mine did a cyclocross race last weekend. They brought back pictures. They were riding in the snow. They said they had fun, but didn't look like fun to me. Might be your cup of tea though.
Suz, we have snow now (finally), but all of the roads are clear and shoulders are fine. We don't have that much traffic here anyway. Hoping to get at least a 15-20 mile ride in tomorrow. Keeps my butt toughened up. I thought the Carmichael Training Tape that we did was just okay. I think the name of it was Criterium. They had you maintain 90-95 rpms for a lot of it, never told you what gear you needed to be in like the Spinervals do. To me, a Cardio Coach is a lot more fun than Spinervals or CTS. Love Sean's voice and he really motivates me. Really, Suz, it sounded like you improved a whole lot this year and stayed pretty happy and excited throughout. It's tough to do that sometimes. I competed this year on the flat time trials and the hill climbs, winning both women's divisions, but hey, there weren't very many women riding at all, maybe only 5 in the flat TT's and that many in the hill climbs. I was hoping my second round of hill climbs would have improved times, but they didn't. I actually got slower, so maybe I wasn't doing something right. Oh well, it's all good. I did miss the days of long miles with my girlfriends where we had a destination in mind, took our own lunches and felt FREE! My dream is to someday go to Italy and cycle, eat great food and wine and see some sights along the way. Want to go? I listened to Wintersong this afternoon. It is lovely... Can't wait to put it on again.
Guess I'd better get back to the wrapping.
Jeanette