A lucky Save

I haven't quite managed to shake the stuffy nose I picked up last weekend, but it hasn't slowed me down much this week anyway. I am starting to ramp the training back up in preparation for the Birkie trail marathon and a fast half sometime later in the fall. This weekend was just easy base miles though, and none of them running. With ski training starting to ramp up for the year I'm going to have to manage my training load a bit more carefully over the next couple months. Last Wednesday was the first harder Vakava rollerski interval session on Burlington road in St. Paul. I remember this workout last year and thinking at the time how hard rollerskiing felt compared to running. I had much the same feeling this year. I know it will be the opposite come March when I start running and it will feel so hard compared to the easy glide of skiing.

Which is harder, the correct answer is the one I am not trained for.

Saturday morning was the Tour de Save. This is a ride that the Northfield bike club puts on to raise money for suicide awareness. The ride used to be called the Tour de Nick, named after a club rider who committed suicide. A few years ago the club teamed up with the SAVE foundation to extend the reach of the event and last year changed the name of the ride. It is a great event and one I always try to fit on the calendar to catch up with friends in the Northfield bike community and to support a good cause.

This year I was off to a late start and without a working computer at home I couldn't easily check on the rides meeting point. All I had to go on was an overheard comment over the cube wall at work on Friday that the ride would use some of the same roads as the brew tour a couple weeks ago.

I was a bit confused on where I was going

So I set out to ride some fun gravel roads, and if possible to find some other riders. I followed some roads that I knew for a while, then not finding anyone decided to just work my way west until I got to 50km, then head back home. I found a full water bottle on the side of the road, and since it was sealed and I was thirsty I picked it up and used it to refill my water bottle.

But I found what I was looking for - fast gravel

I was on a bit of nice new pavement when I saw a small crew of riders heading the other way. I had successfully found everything I was looking for on the ride, except the start line I guess. I tagged on the back of the pack, and almost dropped off again right away. I had been keeping a leisurely pace, and the rest of the group seemed on a mission to ride each other into the ground. I managed to hang on, and a few minutes later we rolled in to the rest stop that was set up at the far point of the ride. After leaving the rest stop the pace was a bit more sane for a while, and even included a stop for whiskey shots after riding through the Riverbend Nature center. Then the pace picked up in fits and starts, but I was finally getting used to the speed and was able to throw down with a couple of the speedier riders at the front of the pack. I was still no match for Galen on the bigger climbs though, he has been training hard and it is paying off for him.

Eventually I ran into these fine folks

Thanks to the wonders of modern technology I could actually go and see how lucky I was to run into the other riders out on course. Strava has an Activity playback feature that lets you play back an activity (as the name suggests) and see other users who have uploaded data on a similar route. Here is my replay from Saturday. If you track me and Galen you can see where each of our rides went and when we met up. If I had been a bit slower I might have missed them altogether. This is a fun feature and one I intend to play with more in the future. (Here is my Grandma's marathon playback, another fun one since there is a lot of other runners with data uploaded).

Near the end of the ride

After the ride I was able to drop off my donation that I wasn't able to deposit at the start. I was justifiably (and jokingly) chastised by the event organizer for missing the start and not signing a waiver. They still let me eat though, so I built myself a couple of very tasty cookie sandwiches. The recipe is simple, take one pretzel bun, cut open and line with peanut butter. Then take the cookie of your choice, put it in the bun, and enjoy. I tried a chocolate chip one and an oatmeal raisin one, they were both equally delicious.

Oatmeal Raisin Cookie Sandwich!

I have at least temporarily fixed my computer, thus I could put up a blog post with shiny pictures, and do other fun stuff like upload my GPS data to my training log and see my friends adorable baby girl on Skype. My PC is still a bit unstable however, so I am now starting to make plans for a new system build, which is always exciting.

Last weekend was also the first long classic rollerski of the season. I was feeling pretty good despite the long ride Saturday, and had a lot of fun striding the hills around Afton. As an extra bonus we ran into Andy Brown and Josh Doebbert who joined Nate and I at the front of the pack.