Last Month

Although it was tough to leave family and friends Nat and I headed down to sunny warm Tucson to start to get our early season training underway.
The first week in Tucson had a little bit of everything. After spending 3 days in a car you can imagine we felt a little rusty for the first couple of days. We did a couple easy rides and swims kept the running to a minimum while our legs got rid of the rust built up over the off season.
The weather was perfect the first week here, we did not see a cloud and it was close to 70 every day. I think the first cloud we saw was exactly a week after we got here, we didn’t know what to do.
We have been here for 3 weeks now and can really feel the fitness coming back. We have been riding a lot more, this last week we got up to almost 400km and starting to run a lot more. One thing about Tucson is there is never a shortage of running trails. It is a runners paradise, all roads have wide gravel shoulders or if you want to drive a little out of town there is an endless maze of trails and you will never be able to run them all.
After coming to Tucson for the last 3 years I am starting to really know my way around but I am still finding new places to ride and run. Today we ran at Golder Ranch and followed the 50 Year Trail then went for a ride and headed up Oracle Road and decided to take Hwy 79 north towards Phoenix. We found a side road and followed that for a few more miles. It was such a quiet road through the middle of the desert. Unfortunately I had mechanical problem, a stick came up and took out my derailleur which in turn caused my hanger to come out of place which ended up smashing into my rear dropout cracking the carbon. Needless to say I had to hitchhike home. The third car to go by picked me up and brought me back to my car so it was not that big of an issue besides my broken bike.
The next week looks like it is going to be much of the same, perfect weather without a cloud in the forecast, slowly getting back into shape and enjoying the time here more and more.

Until next time