Batteries on the charger

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Originally uploaded by cbnystrom

No racing for me this weekend but it was a good one nonetheless. Fun rides, good friends, tasty food, and cold beer...and most importantly, family.

On Saturday I headed out on the fixie to put in some work that will hopefully help me out over the next couple of weekends. Between the wind, the hills, and the no-coasting I made myself suffer. It felt good.

That evening we met Team Poz (Jon & Tracy) at Frisco for a feast of chips, guac, salsa, black beans, mahi-mahi tacos, and tasty beers. Thor was in usual form putting away an epic amount of guac and black beans. He was also parroting back our descriptions of past mountain bike crashes. Good times were had by all.

Sunday we had a fun ride with Mel's girly friends Patti and Tracy. It was mostly social, but the pace was steady and we had a few frisky moments that allowed me to get in the sprints that I had skipped earlier in the week. After putting in some windy miles we stopped at Bean Hollow in EC for much needed fuel in the form of delicious coffee and muffins.

On the way home we ran into endurance mountain bike kahuna and the nicest pro cyclist you could hope to meet, Trek/VW Pro Chris E. (pictured at right). He was out for a mellow road ride around the EC hills on his mountain bike.

His season is done so he was nice enough to ride with us and discuss domestic things like kids and new homes. We also talked about the "No Dab" trail from 24 Solo...the one that is more hike-a-bike than ride-a-bike (and that's going downhill!). Of course, he can ride the entire thing sans dabs (thus the name). He gets a lot of praise for his endurance and meticulous preparation, but he's also an incredible technical mountain biker.

One thing I'm trying to get more consistent about is stretching and massage. I am not a good stretcher. This weekend I was excited when I was actually able to touch my toes. It's that bad. I'm going to do my best to make daily stretching a habit. I don't know if it makes me any faster, but it can't hurt.

For massage, I can't afford to get real massage so I rely on The Stick. It's cheap and kinda weird, but it does a good job of working out the kinks in the legs and lower back.

Now I'm going to rest up and recover this week in hopes of fresh legs for the Fair Hill race on Saturday. After getting spanked at Granogue I need to get my mojo back.

On Sunday afternoon Thor and I headed over to Rockburn for the haunted hay ride. He's been talking about this for over a week. Little boys are instinctually into tractors. I think it's programmed into their DNA. Anyway, we had an awesome time doing the hay ride, climbing on the tractors, and doing a ton of runs down the slides in the playground.

Nice weekend!