The Lesson of the Day

Actually, today I had several lessons! The good kind. After a morning of a 45 min spin on the trainer, cleaning (getting ready for next weekend's halloween party) and a little college football, I headed up to Denver, well, really Highlands Ranch if you want to be picky. First was my swim lesson at SwimLabs. This place uses endless pools (the equivalent of a treadmill for swimming) and mirrors and cameras so you can see yourself from all angles. The coach/instructor then gives you feedback on your stroke and you can watch what you just did. They also have "stock footage" of ideal swimming so you can see what you are supposed to look like. Yeah. I have a ways to go. But they did give me something to work on. I actually signed up for a 4-pak so I have 3 more lessons - I'll go every 2 weeks. I figure that is enough time for me to work on the drills and improve, but not too long in case I'm not doing something quite right.

After that I drove over to Littleton for my drum lesson with David from Littleton Drum Studio. It was actually in the back of a music store - they had tons of used stuff for sale. Wow. Anyway, I had a 60 minute lesson - we started at the beginning - the basics of drum set playing and went through some lessons. Even though I already know how to play, it didn't take too long before we found a "hole." So now I have more things to work on! I like how he incorporates actual music into the lesson. It's quite a bit different from when I had lessons back in high school! He had all the stuff on his computer so he just printed the lesson for my notebook. He also had a flat screen mounted to the wall and used iTunes to pick songs related to the particular lesson. I'll enjoy this. I'm hoping to find 30 minutes about 4 days a week to practice.

The drive is just a little over an hour, so it wasn't too bad. After dinner Tim and I carved our pumpkins. A devil face and a howling wolf. Hooray to the guy who invented carving templates!

40-miler

With a projected high of 75 degrees, sunny skies and not much wind, who could resist a bike ride today? I joined up with the Bicycle Village group ride - we met at the store and headed out at about 9:30am. Since the store is just a few miles from my house, I decided to ride there instead of drive. Then we headed out on what turned into a beautiful ride through town. For those of you who are familiar with Colorado Springs, we headed out from the store, winding our way to Vickers, then Flintridge to Dublin. Dublin west to pick up Woodmen near I-25, then up Woodmen to Rockrimmon to Vindicator. Then we chose to climb Flying W, which is a little hill of 200 feet elevation gain in just over half a mile. Fun! Well, it was beautiful on that side of town with the rocks, hills, rust and orange and yellow vegitation and the ride down the hill is a blast! Next we wound our way to Garden of the Gods and over to Balanced Rock. Then it was time to work our way back home, which we did through Old Colorado City and downtown Colorado Springs. Hooked up to Mark Dabling to get back north (woodmen and I-25) then back over to Dublin and I just headed back home on Vickers instead of stopping back to the store. My total ride was 2:53 and 40 miles. I was planning on a 25-30 miler with perhaps not so much climbing (3300ft). So what, my legs are a little tired now. But it was too good of a day to not be outside as much as possible! I wish I had a camera with me to capture some of the fantastic fall views. I'll try to remember next time!

Running with the pros

Tuesday night is Jack Quinn's Running Club and tonight we took a field trip to the Boulder Running Company for PowerBar night. We ran the typical distance (5k) and was joined by pro athletes Josh Cox and Amanda Stevens. Mark (a co-worker of mine) and I got to run the second half with Amanda so we chatted a little about triathlons. She'll be competing in next month's 70.3 World Championships in Clearwater. After the run they held a Q&A - normally I don't have questions, but since it seemed people were a little shy, I asked the first one - what is their favorite meal the night before a race. Pasta and stuff with carbs. Not a whole lot of protein. My personal favorite is chicken and rice. Whatever works! They had some great advice on training/race nutrition, stretching (of which I need to do more!) and such. It was nice to have a change of scenery from the typical downtown run and of course it's always great to be able to meet some pro athletes!

Weekend Report

Started the weekend off with a 23 mile bike ride on the east side of town. Pretty flat with less than 900 feet of elevation gain. Then some cleaning, a necessary evil. Florida State played Miami at 1:30 so I watched the first quarter before heading to Mimi's for lunch with some Taekwondo friends. Next was some shoe shopping (shoe carnival is right next to Mimi's) for shoes for Saturday night's event - a fundraiser gala for the Pink Ribbon Foundation. The local Porsche Club raised money for the foundation so the group had a table. It was at the Hyatt Regency in Denver (Tech Center). There was tons of stuff up for silent auction, including signed sports memorabilia, wine, paintings, spa treatment and all sorts of stuff you'd expect. There was also a month of drum lessons. I guess it wasn't the most popular item so the starting bid had been reduced when I saw it. I thought it might be fun so I bid and won! :-) So this week I'll see about scheduling those at Littleton Drum Studio.

Alpine Mountain PCA members, Jim McDonald, Dave Arnold, Tim and me, Chris & Kathleen Lennon.

Today (sunday) we slept in - I got up at 9am! Haven't slept that late in a long time. Typical Sunday of getting groceries, but then we headed up to the property with Mars and Juno to see the leaves. I forgot the camera, but here's one my brother took Saturday in the mountains. Our property is probably less than 20 miles from this photo - same terrain.

Ate a steak lunch with some friends up there at our "chateau." By the time we got back it was time to get ready for another week. This was certainly a weekend that went by too fast.