TGI-weekend! Sorry I’ve been slacking on the posts lately, it’s been a crazy week trying to work as much as possible, commute to Denver, train, figure out my daily schedule, sell stuff on ebay, etc. Things have been pretty good. I started my internship at Xcel Energy in Denver a week ago and am not racing for a few weeks. YES!

Well, I’m off to go do a sweet yet torturous 4-5 hour training ride. Can’t wait to climb all those hills and check out the view. I’ll bring my camera so you can enjoy the views too.

It’s so cool looking, I even took two photos of it. This thing rides sooo different than my old bike. It’s really smooth and sweet.

The Titus Modena… a newer road bike designed by Titus.

“New for 2006, we’ve thinned up the aluminum lugs by over 30% and opened them up even further with Titus signature diamond cutouts. The result: lighter weight and increased performance. Sprint faster, climb longer and attack harder-the Modena has what it takes to keep you out front.” www.titusti.com

Brittany Walker, Sonya Looney (moi), Janis Sandlin, Lynn Bush. (I was an “honorary tough girl” for the weekend)

Me…git it!

The set up

I have been a bad blogger this week, but I had a lot going on. So last weekend was the Iron Horse road race. I left Albuquerque and made it to Durango on Friday. Adam’s parents were renting the top floor of a sweet house out in the country. The view was perfect. Sat morning was the race. I started out feeling pretty good and when the pack split up, I was able to stick with the fast girls. They surged again and I dropped off along with a few other people. I worked really hard and caught back on only to get dropped again. I kept chasing, but all of a sudden I couldn’t get out of zone 3. I felt so terrible on the bike and my legs would produce no power whatsoever. After that, I just tried to enjoy the scenery and cheer on all the citizen riders. I was pretty disappointed because I KNOW I could have done really well at that race. My average heart rate for the race was 20 beats lower than usual resulting in a very embarassing result. Similary, Adam had tough time and felt horrible like me. Maybe it was something we ate! I attribute it to just being damn tired from racing. We hung out in Durango for a few more days. I did some awesome mountain bike rides. Sometimes i feel like I’m in love when I’m flying down some awesome singletrack in the trees. I get butterflies in my stomach, have an effortless smile on my face, and feel so light and happy. ha.

The view from the porch at the house in Durango. Durango is my favorite place in the world.

Durango has so many sweet outdoor stores. This one, not so sweet, but I had fun playing dress up with all the lame hunting gear.

Me and my sweetie at our favorite park in Durango. It’s been hard coming back to Boulder after being able to see him for a month. sniff

My car was loaded down. Stuff in trunk, bikes loaded to the ceiling in the cab!

I drove back to Boulder this past Tuesday and got home pretty late. In a way, it was so nice to come home and not live out of my suitcase! Boulder is a great place to come home to as well! I didn’t have much time to relax. The following day, my NEW ROAD BIKE came in the mail and i was running around all day trying to get stuff done. I’m still building my bike, but am ALMOST done. I’ll DEFINITELY post a pic of my sweet machine tomorrow. It is such a big upgrade from my frank the tank. I started my internship at Xcel Energy on Thursday. I was dreading the commute, and it was worse than I expected. I left at 7:20 AM and what is normally a 25 min drive in no traffic was a whole hour and twenty minutes. I was in hell. I waited till after six to leave and managed to avoid traffic. friday, they sent me in a trouble truck with a worker so I could see how they fix stuff when there is a power outage. That was a good day…got paid to sit in a truck with AC and see different parts of Denver. From work, I drove out to Castle Rock. I did a 24 hour race called 24 hours of Elephant Rock. Some friends of mine needed an extra teammate so I happily agreed. I even got to be on the news twice. I almost accepted their team offer for the year, but chose Titus. It’s called Team Tough Girl which is an all girls team and I think will be rocking next year. They have already done a tremendous amount for being a first year team. Anyway, one of the girls on our 4 person team was sick and essentially couldn’t race. It was just to be the 3 of us. When I was taking one of my turns at 3:30 AM, I just laughed. Only a crazy person would be out at 3 in the matin to put themself through a world of pain. The course wasn’t that great, just sandy doubletrack, but I still had fun. My legs felt like rotten meat sticks during the night laps, but come dawn, I was feeling pretty good and turned over some smokin laps! Our team did great! Despite having only 3 members, we still won the 4 person team category and beat a LOT of boys too. I think overall(all categories, both sexes), we got 5th. There is nothing like passing dudes wearing a pink jersey. One time I even said, “Excuse me BOYS!” haha I was pretty tired last night. The race was from 6 PM Friday to 6 PM Saturday. I got 20 min of sleep in 40 hours and rode about 100 miles on a mountain bike, so I was beat last night. Today I got to just relax! I am taking a 3 week break from racing and will try and get in some quality training and some fun on the weekends!

The 24 hr race venue

More photos from the 24 hr race coming later…

I’m enjoying tunes by Gavin Degraw lately. I better go to bed. I have to get up at 5 in the morning to avoid traffic on the way to work. booooo Back to the life of rotting in a cubicle. Cubicles really are like being in a padded room at an insane asylum. Considering my last name, I guess it’s not entirely inappropriate.