Long Time Gone

It's been three long weeks now,
Since Blowout Mountain blew me out,
But I'm gettin' it back on the dirt now,
But I'm takin' the long way 'round.

The last week and a half has been insanely busy with work craziness and getting back into training, so I'll try to be short 'n' sweet as I can on the catch-up.

Last week was essentially cycling rehab for me as I ditched my scheduled workouts and just tried to get back in the habit of getting on my bike ever day. Work was really stressful and just getting on the bike for an hour or so a day was about all I had in me.

Saturday I returned to formal training with 3 hours on singletrack at Brown County State Park with 4 X 3 minutes hill repeats thrown in the middle. It was hard and kind of clumsy at first, but it helped me get my dirt mojo back and allowed me to earn my first Big Ugly Black Bruise of the season:

I've been thinking that my blog needs more pictures, but as you can see, my camera phone quality isn't the best. You get the idea though.

Don't worry; it wasn't a bad crash. I just banged my leg on the handlebars after my bike came to an inadvertent stop trying to roll over a large root.

Sunday Chrysa and I went to the course for the coming weekend's XC race to pre-ride and there happened to be a dirt TT going on while we were there. They were paying well and there was only one other expert woman so I decided to enter. I was doing really well until about halfway through I blew a tire and managed to pinch a hole in my replacement tube trying to change it. Doh! I ended up walking the rest of the way back, but I got $40 for it, so I can't complain.

I'm getting pretty tired of going on long walks with my bike, but I supposed that when I finally make it to the La Ruta I will be the most experienced hike-a-biker there.

Finally, tonight was more hill reps on the mountain bike, but I opted to do them at our local mountain bike park which is within riding distance rather than go to Brown County. I already used way too much gas over the weekend and have a lot of driving to do on Saturday as well. The problem with having such a nice trail 30 minutes away (by car) is that the local trail is falling into sad disrepair. It's located next to some low-income housing and there seems to be a very high scary people to mountain biker ratio, so I don't really like going out there by myself anymore. Tonight was okay as it was a little cold; there were no hanger-outers to make me nervous.

So with that, I will leave you with one final low quality picture:

This is a very important purchase for mountain biking season: bandages that match my team kit! If you're going to beat the crap out of yourself, you might as well make it look cute, right?