Chickleta - My SBRing and other Adventures

My article "The Last of the Mohicans" was published on BikePanel yesterday. Like my other articles I translate it to English (with some changes) for my blog. All the photos that were not taken by me are the same as the ones used in the article and are posted at the courtesy of Butch Phillips the event photographer who graciously shares some of his event photos with me. This post is way way overdue, but I was waiting for the article to be posted. The Last of the Mohicans (or Almost Last) The La Ruta experience (that I wrote about back in June) brought back memories of how much I love riding my mountain bike, the epic trips to the desert, the black and blue bruises (well, didn't really miss those, but they come as part of the deal ;-). So, I decided to do something about it, and try to incorporate into my already busy race schedule of triathlons and road rides some mountainbiking as well. I signed up for the Mohican 100 , a one day marathon mountain bike ride that tak...

Sunny but chilly and windy day on the IM Wisconsin course With 2 weeks to IM Chattanooga, this past weekend was the last long training weekend before my 2 week taper leading to the ironman. The plan was to head to up to Wisconsin and train on the IM course and then cheer on our friends and other athletes racing IM Wisconsin on Sunday. With a season of training that had more downs than ups I though that on top of being there for our friends and teammates, cheering on other athletes would help inspire me for my own race and help boost my confidence. Saturday Morning at Lake Monona My workout for the day was 1 hour open water swim followed by a 4 hour bike with 3*60 min at 75-80% of LT effort intervals (slightly harder than IM effort). With lake Michigan being too cold for me to swim, we woke up early and drove up to Madison, WI, planning on swimming in lake Monona, knowing that the water temp will be warmer than lake Michigan and there will be plenty of other swimmers there...

I have 3 weeks until Ironman Chattanooga. This is when I usually reflect on my season and do an evaluation of where I am fitness wise to come up with a race plan and a pacing strategy. However, this year, in the last few weeks I have been struggling. Struggling with my training, struggling to get into the right mindset, to stay focused and to find motivation to train. This past week was especially bad, and on Sunday I reached my breaking point. I was ready to throw in the towel and cancel my hotel reservation and not even give it a try. While I managed to do the run workout I was supposed to, I could not find the motivation to go for a ride. I was feeling sick to my stomach from stress. I still am a little bit. I do not feel as fit as I want to be at this stage, I am not as confident about my training and work and life have been very stressful on top of everything. Unlike the previous years, I am letting this lack of confidence paralyze me and impact my focus and even worse my mo...