Training Log Archive: Carbons Offset

16.5

Dirtbag Intervals

The plan was to do about 30-40 minutes of repeats of:
60 sec easy
30 sec moderate
15 sec hard

I felt really tired tonight. Listened to the body and turned it into a recovery jog. You don't always have to go hard every time, right? ;)

Then snacks and social at Valhalla Pure after, followed by beer and pizza and social at the pub night up at the Nordic Centre.

I was surprised to spot WandAR at the store after the run! I didn't realize she was out west for Sinister7. Got to socialize with her a bunch at the Nordic Centre. A big crew of runners went there and we hung out on the patio until we shut the place down.

Demoed a pair of the new Salomon ProMax that replaces the Salomon Propulse I have been using. Less front rocker on the new model and my fussy toes noticed it, so these won't be an option for me. I think I will have to go back to Hokas and hopefully they have made some changes so the inside of the shoe won't chew up my foot so much.

17.3

Rebound group ride. Lots of riders, split into two groups. Had a large group ourselves but most were a decent pace. Rode up EKG and Albertan, to the Meadow, then across past the warming cabin to lower Odyssey, off the jumps, then left instead of right and hit some newly cut loamy trail that ties into Skull Mountain for a steep descent down to where No Homers spits out alongside the drainage.
Rode back to the shop via hospital hill and rode the skinny board that often psyched me out. Then a bunch of socializing at the shop after.

Crazy thunder storm last night. Thought it might result in lightning strikes and forest fires. Some heavy rain but we were already in the tent by then.
Smoky this morning. The sun looks cool, glowing red through the smoke but the views are gone. Glad we had clear skies yesterday for the views of the part of the traverse I was most interested in.
More rock hopping and glissading today, and loads of spider webs between the boulders with big spiders in them. As we got closer to the resort, there were more hints of a trail to follow. Managed to get a free ride down on the gondola which saved us a long quad-pounding descent.

Used Carbon's new 58 litre Osprey Exos pack. It was bigger than I needed for this trip, but I wasn't carrying any group gear (tent, stove, pots). It was very comfortable and did just as well with a 2/3 load.

Had my best sleep in a while. That's good because today might be a big day and trying to keep up with these two machines.
As it turned out, we made good time even though it didn't feel rushed, just steady. We decided to take a nice long break up on the ridge before dropping down to our camp, in case there were more bugs down low.
I was really looking forward to today, getting up high, walking along some nice ridges, and seeing some new terrain west of what we have seen in Race the Rockies. It was a lot of fun to connect from one ridge to the next col, etc etc. Instead of dropping down toward Gorman Lakes, we stayed high along the ridge to the south. We weren't sure what the back side of it would be like for travel (the front side that we could see was cliffy, meanwhile the parallel ridge we had followed was walkable on the back side of the ridge), it turned out to be excellent. It was nice to stay up high and continue to enjoy the views. The forecast called for some possible showers but we only had a couple of minute-long sprinkles that weren't worth putting a jacket on for. Great day. Down to Holt Lakes which is ridiculousy gorgeous. I can't believe their isn't a major trail to these lakes, and photos in all the brochures, it is such a worthy destination. Had a some epic stone-skipping competitions, and tried to figure out how deep this lake is. There are some cool little cliffs (2 m?) on one side of the lake that would be excellent to jump from on a hotter day.
The Salomon Propulse did fine on all the off-camber stuff despite their high profile.