O' Canada

Back online after several days in Central Ontario on vacation with my family. In Northern New York now for a couple days and then back to Alaska.

Got in some pretty nice mellow 6-9 mile runs this week and one interesting bike ride. The ad for the bike rental place said that they carry "high quality, very well maintained bikes." I guess that statement has a different meaning in middle of nowhere in Ontario than it would have in most places. The first bike had a bottom bracket just about to fall out of the shell. When I took that one back they gave me a second bike which I rode for about a mile before I discovered that one of the pedals was about to separate into several different pieces. Finally the third bike was "rideable" but it turned into one of those rides in which you just want to get back so you don't have to deal with such a crappy piece of equipment anymore. The trail was actually pretty fun and the weather was great but as soon as I got back to the trailhead I took the bike back to the shop with 19 hours still remaining on my 24 hour rental. I didn't even want to keep the bike until the next day because I knew that I might be tempted to ride it again and it was only a matter of time before I got so frustrated with the damn thing that I threw it in a swamp and ran away.

After that I stuck to fishing, running, and relaxing the rest of the week and am pleasantly surprised with how my body is feeling after taking the past month very mellow. I kind of wish that I had a race to focus on sometime in November or December because my body and mind are both ready to get back at serious training but I have nothing lined up until February. The hard part is going to be taking my training slow enough to peak more than 5 months from now and not sometime before that. If I get it right though and trail conditions fall into place things could go very well for me in the ITI.