5/30/06
Every weekend should be a three day weekend. I got thing started slow and messed around with one of my bikes on Saturday morning, then went out for a nice 2 hourish road ride south of town. I did a bit of exploring checking out a road heading west that has been calling my name. It dead ends, but there was another chunk of pavement that looked promising heading further south... It got pretty warm during the ride, but was definitely cooler by the lake when I got home. Sunday I woke up to pretty warm temps and took off on the road bike again for Ino. By the time I got to Benoit, I was through a bottle, so I stopped for a refill at the pop machine. As I rolled into Ino, I noticed some people milling about up by the snowmobile trail, and realized it must be the Woods to Water Relay. I cruised up and said hi and asked around a bit about the status of things. I was pretty far behind the leaders apparently. I cruised east, hoping to catch up later in the course. I got way ahead of the race, and headed for home, a shower and a sandwich at the Black Cat. I checked in at the finish after lunch, and found out that the people I was looking for weren't racing. Probably a wise call given the conditions of the day. Monday, I headed out for a nice mountain bike with a group of about 12 at Namekagon. We rode a similar loop to a few weeks ago, doing about 4 hours of sweet riding. There are a bunch of pictures here. I got home and sat around for an hour before our Monday evening ride and some sweet pizza at Hugos. After the ride, I pretty much just vegged out. I'd say that's about the perfect weekend.

5/24/06
Hola. The CXC Coach's symposium was great. I learned a lot and met some good folks. I also got in a nice run Saturday evening after dinner. I followed it up by sitting around the campfire. Solid. There was a lot of good information over the weekend, and if you're a coach, you should be there next year. And CXC has some great vision and great plans for the future. We did a sweet ride of the Ojibwe trail tonight. It had gotten just enough rain today to be a blast, but was definitely firmer than when we rode it for the Cable Classic. It was also by far the warmest and most humid mountain bike of the year so far. It was nice to sweat. Nationals are indeed going to be going on the same weekend as 24T, but if the preliminary schedule is right, the races I want to do are Wednesday and Thursday, so I may try to pull off the double. There will have to be a lot of good training this summer if that is going to happen. This weekend has no firm plans right now, meaning probably a couple of long rides and some tinkering with the bikes. I'm out.

5/16/06
Well, I missed the chance to ski last week when it snowed in Ironwood and I have to admit I'm a little dissapointed with myself. I raced last weekend at the Cable Area Off-Road Classic. It was a great race and the course was a bit slick for it, which made things fun. My brakes were pretty much unusable for the second half of the course, so that made the second bit of singletrack a bit difficult. I had a pretty good race to finish 56th in 2:20. For perspective, Doug Swanson threw down a 1:43 for the W. Yeah, the gaps got pretty big. I was kind of gunning for a bit better finish, but I'm not super dissapointed either. It was a blast to ride. We turned things around right quick and got the bikes back in shape for the Poker Ride on Sunday. My ride was a pretty big responsibility. We had three guides, and our two riders were former guides. We had a blast. With a grand total of about 15 riders, I don't think the fundraising part of the deal went real well, but I think everyone involved had a blast. this next weekend, I'm heading down to Cresthill for the CXC coaching symposium. It'll be super educational I'm sure. I'll also be returning to the site of my first ever ski clinic, since I did a CXC clinic there about 10 years ago. The big exciting news of the week is of course the fact that nationals will be in Houghton the next two years. I don't know yet if I'll race, but I'll be there for sure for at least some of the festivities. I don't know Nationals or 24T would win if they conflict... Ciao.

5/7/06
Weekly updates seem to be the name of the game this summer. I'll try to get stuff up here more often, but no promises. I had a fun week of training. I'm working on easing myself slowly into running so that I'll keep my legs happy. Wednesday we went mountain biking after work and hit up the Rock Lake trail, which is just primo. Then we stopped at Helen's in Drummond, because everywhere else we stopped was not serving food or was closed. She heated up some pizzas and we were happy. Next Wednesday is Mexican night. Into it. Yesterday I put in six hours of biking- a.k.a. "ineffective ski training" We hit up our usual Saturday morning coffee ride, this time venturing up to Bayfield to the Blue Horizons coffee house. They had great coffee and I managed to snag the last carmel roll. This ride is normally one of the mellowest rides I do, but for some reason things got a bit feisty on Saturday, plus we hit some decent hills. When I got home, I gave Curt a call and he was all fired up to go mountain biking. So we headed down to Namekagon and proceeded to ride for 4 hours of mostly singletrack. Neither of us really had enough food or water for the ride, so we were both pretty worked when we got back to the car. It was a sweet ride though. There are a few pics up here. The first one is from the Wednesday night ride and the rest are from Saturday. I think that's all I've got for now. Ciao.