Biking like a fish

With no running races on the immediate horizon (11 weeks until Birkie trail marathon) I have been taking a more relaxed approach to training the last few weeks. My hours have been down significantly, and my exercise has been all over the map. I've been doing more biking, a few running workouts, a bit more rollerskiing, and a little canoeing. One of the perks of not having structured training is that I can just jump into random events like the Lift Bridge 10 mile last weekend, a ladder track workout or a run in the dark with Jeff, or the Rice County Brew Tour, which some EMVC riders were embarking on. 

Seven of the EMVC crew met in Faribault after work on Friday and headed west looking for gravel roads, idyllic lakes, and cold beers. The route was almost entirely quiet gravel roads winding around gorgeous lakes (we passed 12 different lakes on our ride), and the stops were all small bars out in the middle of nowhere. The stops were pretty well timed so someone with my level of fitness and lack of alcohol tolerance could hold a slight buzz for most of the evening, which made the riding very pleasant. The weather was really perfect, a light wind, not too hot for riding, not too cool for sitting around drinking.

Nothing but lakes and cornfields as far as the eye can see.

Characters arranged in order of increasing seriousness

The pace stayed pretty relaxed and there were plenty of stops to regroup and pose for some photo ops. We stopped at 3 different bars before I left the group at about 10 pm at the North end of their loop to make the trek through the darkness back to Northfield. I haven't been riding at night since the spring, and I was very pleased with how my headlamp held up. The light I had on my bike barely made it an hour, but my headlamp picked up the slack no problem and visibility was not an issue at all. Once the alcohol wore off with about 10k to go I noticed that my legs were actually pretty tired. I guess speed work on the track and 90k of biking in a day will do that. 

Headlight ready for action

The next morning I woke up and decided that Friday night was so fun I would do it all again. So I headed up to the cities to join my friends Kevin and Jallie for another brew tour. This ride had less biking and more drinking, but surprisingly my alcohol tolerance seemed much improved from the night before so I was able to keep up no problem. We started at Fulton brewery right near Target Field. The second stop was Boom Island Brewery where I had a rasperry wheat beer that had a nice sour taste to it and a cuvee that was super smooth despite being almost 11%. After that we went to Indeed brewery where I ran into a bunch of my brothers friends out for a bachelor party.

Boom Island Brewery, my favorite stop of the day.

It was a lot of fun riding around Northeast Minneapolis, since my commuting and exploring back in college took me on many of these roads, so there were fun memories of first learning my way around the big city under my own power, and experiencing a city by bike is nothing at all like experiencing it in a car.

City Scenery, no cornfields to be found.

We eventually made our way over to St. Paul to BangBrewing, which is nothing more than an insulated grain silo filled with brewing paraphernalia and a couple of picnic tables outside. After this stop we got some food and I ventured back home to re-hydrate and rest up for Sunday, which was the first Vakava over-distance ski of the year.  What does it say about me that even when I go on a bender it involves a lot more exercise than it does drinking? Endorphins are better than alcohol anyway.

BangBrewing. Simple but effective.

I did get some more serious training in this week as well. Wednesday were skate and classic time trials at Vakava. My skate time was dismal, over 14 minutes and 2 minutes behind Nate. My classic time was actually 30 seconds faster than my skate on a double pole heavy course. I'm really not sure what happened there, but I know it means I need to keep working on skate technique and power. I did a run afterwards with Jeff, Rob, and Nate at Afton, a fun test for my headlamp which hasn't seen much action since I got it. Friday was a fun track workout with Jeff and Meghan McGree. I need to start back into VO2 work soon. If I'm going to bring my half PR down I really need to be doing tempo work at a faster pace, so that means getting a bit more speed in the legs and pushing that threshold down. Sunday was our first long rollerski for Vakava, so I got to reacquaint myself the the hills around Afton.