It's coming

This weekend is the first race of the season. I'm heading down to Phoenix, AZ for Valley of the Sun. Friday is a time trial. Lucky for me, our Lip Smacker team time trial bikes are in. I'll be riding this bad ride down there with a disc wheel on the rear and a Zipp 808 on the front.
Saturday is a road race. From my understanding, there's almost 500feet of climbing per lap - watch out! Sunday is a criterium. This should be a good first race of the season. It will be a good indicator towards what I need to work on.

That being said, I've been doing lots of riding. Guess that's what happens when you have lots of free time on your hands. Thursday, coach and I went out for a pretty hard 4 hour ride. I rode in shorts and a jersey.

We headed East of town for some flat riding before heading back into the hills. Awesome view of the snow caps (and Long's Peak).

Multi-tasking :)

Saturday I hit up the Oval group ride again. It was (in my opinion) a disaster. They changed the route to avoid riding on a busy stretch of rode. This time, we headed straight on to a "gravel" road. When I hear the word gravel out here, I think smooth and hard packed because that's pretty much all I've seen here. I know what real gravel roads are like from back home (Iowa). Anyway, this gravel road was like a gravel road in Iowa. Huge rocks, loose gravel, washboards, the whole works. Definitely not ideal for a carbon road bike. I like to consider myself a mountain biker (at times). I did not like the gravel at all. Anyway, some heavy hitters showed up. Tom Danielson came up from Boulder. Jonathan Garcia was out as usual. Most of Team Legacy was there. Anyway, you get the jist. It was FAST. I lasted 45minutes. Pretty bummed about it, but I still got in another 4 hour ride.

Sunday I headed out for another solo 4 hours. I did my Carter Lake ride. It was cold, but pretty nice out still. When I was heading back to town, I noticed dark clouds rolling in from the East. Not good. Luckily I made it back before they let loose.

Heading up Carter Lake hill. Ouch! It's steep! You start in your 39-25 at about 280 watts.

The clouds heading West over Horsetooth Reservoir.

That's all for now. We leave Thursday morning for Arizona. Hopefully the weather holds out. Also, I will be heading to France on March 9th until April 9th. We will be living in Limoux, France. There's 4 other girls going on the trip. Should be a great experience. Thanks for stopping in!
-A