Practicing flexible

Well, its been 2 weeks since I decided that Buffalo Springs would be the end of my try at a comeback to competition. I have to say the transition has not been easy. First of all, my family is out on the east coast(we thought I would be training during this time) and not having them around is very hard.



I miss my girls, here is Cale out east looking at butterfly's

Second of all, when you have been in a routine of training for the past 6 months and pretty much that past 20 years, it is difficult to change that routine. Every day I wake up and think it is time to do masters swim practice or a long bike. Now that the goals have changed and my time is being taken up with other things I am practicing being more flexible with exercise. For example, instead of waking up at 4:30a and heading to Masters swim practice, I go to the endless pool later in the day and swim a 1k. I still love to exercise but I am doing a sport only if I feel like it, not because it is what I have to do or what is scheduled. I am sure it will take a while to be good with less training but I am sure that will come. I do know that it wasn't Hard to gain 5lbs! I am now 1/2 way to the 10lb gain that Mike said was a good thing.

Last weekend, I had some folks up for a weekend at the cabin. It was great to get out in the woods and mountain bike the bangtail divide trail for the first time this year. There was still some snow banks that we had to negotiate but the trail was awesome as usual and I still can't believe that some triathletes don't mountain bike! They don't know what they are missing. Nash and I even did a short ski run(on our feet) during the ride. The weekend brought a hike, rides, great eats and drinks and plenty of laughs. I even got some target practice in and planted some Raspberry bushes.( thanks to Steve for the help with the berries and Mark for some good pointers on shooting straight) Thanks to Steve, Mark, Nash, Carissa, Steve and Diana for coming up and keeping me company.



Nash and I contemplating our ski down a snow bank at the bangtail divide trail


Back to the cabin this past weekend brought more perfect weather( 80 high, 50 at night with clear skies. Dr. Pat Duey came up to ride the Bangtail trail. I had signed up to race in the Tour de Bozeman cycling stage(4) race. On Friday night there was a Crit at Big sky, and after thinking about how anaerobic this would be, I decided that an evening mtn bike ride at Bohart Ranch would be more fun, so I bagged the crit and road a couple of hours with Pat. The next day, I was signed up to do the TT down in Bozeman and later the main street sprints, but instead Pat and I had a big breakfast of eggs, bacon and special pancakes and rode an epic mtn bike ride from the cabin( skunk creek-bangtail-stone creek- back up Olsen- grassy mtn-cabin)47 miles in 5hrs 28 min with 6000ft of climbing. Early in on the ride, up skunk creek, we saw a herd(30-40 head) of elk(could not get a pic, those suckers move quick!) and after that we both heard a very deep bark that could of been a pissed off bear, combine that with some deer, horses, and 5 mountain ranges it was an afternoon of cool visuals. A perfect day on the trails and even the snow banks were gone! It was certainly an epic day! and after the ride we celebrated by firing some rounds of my AR-15.( way fun)



covered bridge/barn on Skunk creek road



Pat on some sweet single track



going down the grassy mtn switchbacks with the Bridgers in the background

Sunday, I was signed up to do the road race but instead I did some work around the cabin and took the day off exercise completely. So I blew $85.00 by entering the races but training the art of being flexible was probably more beneficial to my new transition.