No more coasting; Race Across the Sky.

After Sunday’s awesome 42 mile mountain bike ride, I found myself feeling pretty beat down yesterday. I had some soreness and pain in my knees, my lower back and even my ankles. I was also very saddle sore. Most of my mountain bike rides these days have been in the 10 mile range, and I believe my longest ride since I started using Strava was around 20 miles (until this past Sunday, of course). The lack of any recent truly long rides was very apparent judging from how shredded body felt yesterday. Before Strava I was regularly putting in 26-30 miles each ride, and I need to start getting back to that.

I was humbled to see that Jim Beyer (one of the guys I rode with on Sunday) was back out at Santos yesterday for another 22 miles. There’s no way I could have done that yesterday. I’ll tell ya what, when I saw that Jim was back out there yesterday riding it really inspired me. I’ve got to start training harder and get out of my comfort zone.

You may recall from yesterday’s blog that Jim participated in (and completed) the 2011 Leadville 100. This race is also known as “Race Across the Sky”, and the 2009 and 2010 races were documented on film. Jim told me that these DVDs are incredibly inspiring, and I can’t wait to get them in my hands. You can pick up the 2009 race on DVD (this is the year Lance Armstrong participated), and the 2010 race on DVD or Blu-ray.

Today I’m still too saddle sore to ride my mountain bike. I am going to get 14 miles in on the trainer, and definitely plan to hit the trails again tomorrow.