A New Year, a new post

Been a while since I've put fingers to keyboard and posted here. I hope to do a little bit more of that in 2014 so my 5 regular readers have something interesting to view. :)

2014 is going to be an interesting year. For the last two years, I've been focused for a few months on one specific event, and then went off on my merry way for the remainder of the year. I raced a few more events in 2013 thinking that regular riding and residual fitness from my TI training would carry me through. That certainly held true at the Royal 162, but didn't necessarily hold up too far beyond that. With the Tour Divide as my goal in 2015, I'm looking at training and events from an entirely different viewpoint. While I have some goal events this year, they are all a means to an end. Unfortunately, the number of events I'm going to enter this year will likely be lower, and I probably will not travel as far to race this year as I have in the past.

I got a well needed mental cleanse done during October and November, which I needed, especially after a cold wet attempt at RAID at the end of September. I rode for fun and just when I felt like it. I had some fun rides with my wife on her new Fargo and just generally took it easy. During my break, I contacted JJ Bailey from Zoom Performance and talked to him about Tour Divide. I'm happy to say that JJ and Zoom Performance will be helping me get me ready for my attempt at TD. I decided that I was ready to start hitting things seriously in December, which was good, as Mark has indicated that V10 of TI may be the toughest course yet. The extra month of training will probably be needed at the end of April.

Training for December has been different. A weak core let me down a number of times in 2013, and if you want to improve, you need to train your weaknesses. This has meant hitting the gym at least twice a week for strength training. Lots of core work, plus some upper and lower body strength training as well. I've also had one day per week that has been a "non-bike" workout of my choice. Since I don't have access to a pool, I've been hiking or running with a couple of friends, usually at 5 AM to accommodate their work and family schedules. The riding has been a mix of intervals on the trainer and some 2 hour base rides just to get used to riding for longer periods again. Some of these have been outdoors on the fatbike if the weather was reasonable, and some have been on the trainer. I ended up with 47 hours and just shy of 670 miles of activity (run, bike, trainer) for the month.

January has arrived. This means a few changes in the stable will be happening. My 2014 Ti Fargo should show up this month, after an anxious few months. I'll be selling off my current 2010/2011 steel Fargo after I take delivery of the Ti model. I will also be selling my 650C Bacchetta Corsa and associated accessories. It's a fun bike, but it's not going to much use over the next 18 months, so it should go to someone that will use it. I may or may not replace it with something else in a couple of years.