Sitting here at this moment with a slight discomfort in my left side, I’m really glad I’m right-handed. Funny enough, it’s the fact that we *have* a strong side that our weak side tends to pick up the pieces left behind by accidents and sloppiness. Every injury I’ve had in my life due to weakness of some body part other than skin has occurred on my left side. That includes tendonitis of the foot from over training, broken middle toe from a heavy machinery accident, meniscus tearing due to a genetically loose ACL, dislocated shoulder from instinctually choosing to ram the left shoulder instead of the right into the groomer run at 50mph. Poor left side, Daddy’s here, everything’s going to be aaaaalllll riiight. Oh wait, more on that later…

More good times, more good training. Summer is finally here! Yippee!

Government Peak

The Government Peak Hill climb is the first local hill climb of the year last Saturday. It runs slightly up hill for a little less than a mile, then covers 3700′ of unforgiving vert over a total of about 4 miles. In other words, it’s friggin brutal with friggin lazer beams. Going into the race I had no idea how my relatively strong cardio vascular fitness was going to carry me in this race. I knew I was OK for skinning quite fast, but was curious how everything would balance out. As it turns out cardio will carry you well up higher in the climb, but to get into the zone without first having to recover from a lactate meltdown you are going to need some specific hill work. Sam Hill was the obvious winner from step 1, and I led the pack for the beginning with Trond Flagstad knowing that if I had any chance to make up some time on everyone it was going to be in the flatter part. Sure enough, about 2 or 3 minutes into the climb my legs felt heavy and nearly started squirting non-pasteurized death milk. It was so bad that I was convinced that I was going to have to stop and rest at some point in the race, and I just mellowed out for a while and recovered. Luckily they came back around and I managed ninth. Looking back it was pretty darned good for my second hill climb and without any specific training. Thank goodness for hindsight!!! (that’s three !’s)