I'm Back

OK, so it's been almost a week since my last post, sorry! It's been quite a hectic week and there is a lot to tell you.
First, my sister Kathy welcomed Jax William Kimball into the world today just before 8 AM. Everyone is happy and the little one is doing well.
Funny enough, I received the call while I was in the middle of my LT test at the Boulder Center for Sports Medicine. So we both had doctors poking and prodding at us. How did the test go? One word, TERRIBLE!! I actually felt better than I thought I would though. See, on Tuesday I went to Boulder and ran some hard tempo intervals with THE GANG, then a short rest, and went hard on the bike. Wednesday was a hard swim, moderate/hard bike and Thursday was a long run of 90 min in Boulder with THE GANG again. We started pretty fast at 6:45/mile, then some of us, myself included, backed off to a more reasonable pace. We did finish hard though with the last 20 minutes at 6:20/mile pace. After a short rest and some espresso at Michael Stone's place, thanks for the pick me up Michael, I rode up LeftHand Canyon, a 17 mile climb, back down, and then some more intervals on the flats. Add in some big weights on Tuesday and Thursday and I was COOKED. I woke up Friday and felt like death warmed over. Friday's swim was cut way short, I did nothing on Saturday, Sunday was a 20 minute run and Monday was a 30 minute swim. Even after 4 days off easy/off I was still in the hole.
It was stupid to do. I knew I had the test coming and I should have backed off on either the run or bike. Doing both of them at the same time led me to a nasty place I have rarely been. So, the test was not necessarily a throw away, but it did not really show what the 12 day Arizona trip did for me. Oh well, we learn from our mistakes. Plus, I now have Neal Henderson of the BCSM checking in on me weekly to give me advice and keep me from doing stupid things. We set up a weekly schedule for me to follow and will adjust as the race schedule dictates.
The weather here is AWESOME! Just over 70 degrees today, but I am still resting until Saturday. That's OK, it gives me time to organize my garage and weight/core room, work on the bike, do some grocery shopping and keep the blog updated.
I have really dialed in the position of the new rig as well. I am running about 13 cm of drop and love it. I feel so strong and powerful when I am on the bike that it is hard to keep it in check!
That's the past week in a nutshell. I promise not to have another long lapse like that. This weekend I plan on hitting the mountains so I will post some pics from that.

Keep Learning,

AJ