At the end of June, I was fortunate to schedule a tri along with my daughter's softball tournament in Denver, CO. The race was the Lake to Lake Tri in Loveland, CO. An abosultely beautiful venue, with probably the most scenic bike ride I have ever biked. Fortunately we received a blessing of a cloud cover for most of the race, especially since the Denver area had been hitting the mid 90's most of the week.
The race started with a 1500m swim in Lake Loveland, followed by a 30 mile bike loop with hills and rolling plains, and finished with a 10k run out and back along the lake.
After the race we finished up the weekend with road trip up to Estes Park, and enjoyed an amazing Colorado sunset.
A couple of days of recovery, and it was back to traing for my first off-road tri, Xterra Snow Valley. This tri is not a very long tri; 1000m swim, 10 mile bike, 4 mile run. However what the race lacked in distance, it packed in punch with elevation!!! Swim was at 7000 ft, the bike was a 2 loop coarse with over a 1000 ft elevation gain each loop, and the run was mix of grueling ups and downs - more like a run/hike.
My times were OK for the swim and run, however I got absolutely worked on the mountaing bike. Definately not my strong discipline and was easily 30-40 minutes slower than the best times!! Overall I had a great race, and enjoyed the scenery in the moutains when I wasn't sucking air..... Definately going to give this race another chance to kick my a--!
And I thought I'd throw in a picture of a ride we did in Idyllwild the weekend before Xterra. Amazing trails on that moutain, and will definately be back.
