3 weeks to Leadville

Flying Dog has it all - beautiful quakies at the the top...

and wide open meadows at the bottom. I love riding these trails.

I tore this tire before riding the White Rim in a Day back in March and it's still holding air! I got my money's worth out of it and now it's retiring.

I was all smiles after only 1 hour of my 6 hour ride. Notice there are no more pics!

I just finished my biggest week of training that I've done in the last 12 months, and I have one more big week before tapering for Leadville. I've decided to go 2 weeks hard followed by 1 week of recovery and that seems to be working better for me. And instead of a 12 week plan, I've done only 10. That was more because I couldn't make up my mine if I want to just wing it on training, or call on LW to do her magic. Being the anal sole I am, I opted on a regimine instead of flying my the seat of my pants (sorry Chris & KC) and I lost 2 weeks of training time. I can't say I'm going to be faster, but I'm sure less burned out than I was this time last year. Hopefully, that will make Leadville more enjoyable and I'll have a better result than 2008.

Another thing I did this year was race less XC events and I rode fewer 100 mile/12 hour MTB races. As a matter of fact, the only mountain hundie I did was White Rim back in March and a road hundie 2 weeks ago. I expect that will help also. That doesn't make sense, does it? I rode 6 hours today in the Flying Dog/Round Valley areas and picked up 5600 feet of climbing and felt better during the last 2 hours than I expected. Maybe things are coming together.

From a fueling standpoint, I've been riding with Hammer Nutrition most of the time and feel I have a good routine that should be simple and effecient and cut down on pit time. I'd like to find a few solids to add, but haven't tried real hard to find them. I'm counting most on Hammer to get me under 10 hours.

So, now it's 2 days off and 5 more hard ones beginning on Wednesday, then the taper. That's the next carrot and I can hardly wait to taste it.