Teamwork

The Zona has been a lot of fun this year but it has had some serious up and downs! Training had been going super well until last Wednesday when I woke up to realize my back pains has come back. I was pretty seized all day and training came to a halt. Thanks to a bit of help from all the boys at the house and a lot of P.K.’s Therapy I was back in action a few days later! This weekend I was back into it ready to go and my energy levels where at a serious high. I was super happy to be back training again. You could call the few days a quick regeneration..

First real run back this morning after the swim was in such a sweet spot. We ran at Sabino Canyon an old canyon bed with endless amounts of rocky trails. It was lots of fun to run along, following the river weaving further and further into the hollow canyon. All was great, felt awesome to be back running along the sickest trail. Snap! There goes my ankle right underneath me, with a shooting pain growing around my foot I fall to the ground. Within seconds all the guys are surrounding me asking how they can help. After soaking the foot in the river for a few minutes we come up with a plan on how to get me back to the car we left roughly 45 minutes ago. A-Mac, Sharpie and Aaron are in charge of navigating back to the van and figure out how to explain where we are. I had no idea how they were going to do that, I was barely sure that we were still in Arizona! They did a great job and reached help quickly. That left Austin, JP, and A-Russ to get a 155 pound gibble back to a road to be picked up. Austin was the first up to the plate. He managed to carry me over his shoulders, over rocky terrain even though I weighed more than he does. There I was one shirtless dude draped over another topless dude. Once we reached a sandy road, that somewhat followed the trail, Jp and A-Russ Jumped in to help out. A picture would have been priceless, One scrawny guy hung around the other scrawny guys trying to slowly make their way back to safety. We ended up reaching a spot where a local police officer threw us in the back of his truck and took us back to the van. Thanks so much to all the guys for all their help. It was a crazy adventure that started as an hour easy run.

Tomorrow I am suppose to swim in the morning then we are heading to kitts peak for a bike ride with a run off the bike. I am hoping to be able to swim and shove my ankle in a bike shoe for a ride, but not run. I am super tired of being at a training camp unable to train! A-mac is shaking his head at me right now for even thinking of training tomorrow as my ankle looks like a have a couple small golf balls under my skin where my ankle used to be. We will see how things go tomorrow. For now bed time, but here is a pick of the ankle....




P.S. Huge props to Kiki on her first world cup back and a huge victory, Congrats!

Life in 30 degrees

Sitting here listening to some sick new tunes courtesy of the bro I am just enjoying thoughts of the last week.


The zona Has been amazing thus far! We arrived here about a week ago to find out there would be 7 of us in a house. We had originally thought we would have two houses and when I first found out we would all be in one house I was nervous. I Look back now and laugh about it, it has been a great time with the boys. We have had a lot of fun together outside of the training!

The training has been crazy hard (in a good way)! I didn’t think the training could be as hard as last year, but it has been harder! We have averaged about 3.5 hours of riding in the last week. We are lucky enough to live about 30 minutes away from where we have met for the rides so an extra hour of riding is making us extra fit. We have done some sweet rides through gates pass, some awesome swims at the U of A pool and some nice runs along the river bed 5 minutes away from here.

Yesterday we had a brilliant day of training, starting with a solid 5500 yard swim. Got an opportunity to get some fast 25 short course yards in. Nice to get some super speed work going. We then had the “ultimate ride.” We left our house with just over an hour ride to Mt. Lemmon where our workout awaited us. We had one rep up to the top of the mountain. Lemmon is a spectacular 25 mile climb going up above 8000m of elevation. We started of nice and steady and enjoyed the unreal views that we passed the whole way up. 2 hours of steady riding later we reached the summit pouched and starting to bonk. After a quick stop at the general store at the top we started the best part of the day, the descend! Rolling down the windy descend you could not help but smile as you looked side to side, the scenery was wicked. It made it even better being able to go down the hill in a tuck position faster than the cars behind you! After a 45 minute descend, time to head home. Only 1 hour 15minutes of riding left. We reached the house 6 hours(just over 5 hours riding time) after leaving before the ride exhausted! A quick trip to Wendy’s and 4 burgers later it was bed time. The Camp has been awesome so far and I look forward to some more hard training and good times.

Some pics from lemmon....


The new kit!



The attack...


My Favourite mile!

The road To Zona!!!

So here I sit on the plane, about one hour away from one of my favourite places! Just starting to think about things and browsing through pictures from last year! I had the most amazing time last year, I not only got the most fit that I have ever been but I also had a lot of fun during and before and after training. Top Three things from Last year in order:

3 ) Short Course yards in the U Of A pool!

2) Climbing mount Lemmon with the boys after riding there and finishing the day as a 6 hour ride!

1) The Lemon house and all of the Edison brothers!

No Trip will ever be the same as any other, but as long as this trip is at least half as fun as last year I am in for a blast. Got some sweet new stuff to test out while I am down training in the sun. I am excited to Rock out my new kicks courtesy of the good old running room. I am also stoked to be looking sharp in my sweet new cycling threads from Riders cycle. They match Crush (my bike) perfectly. It is going to be awesome; we start the training off with a good swim at the University tomorrow followed by a nice sunny ride up gates pass which is an awesome climb! I managed to hurt my back this weekend and have been working to get it fixed. I have the fingers crossed that it will not be bugging at all this camp. After a few trips to Hasegawa this week all is feeling pretty good and I am confident that it should be alright!

Well, We are starting to descend in to Tucson. Time to shut down the Computer.

P.S. These blogs will actually be regular while I am down here in Tucson.