Today, I was back in the saddle of the bike I know and love. It did take a bit of adjustment since my bike is better -er- different than the MT bikes i used in Guatemala. For instance, I almost lost it when i slammed on the brakes and discovered significantly more gripping power than I had become accustomed to during the last week.

My ride was progressing nicely, I was easily staying at 18-19 mph during the straight-a-ways and keeping my average speed above 17 mph which would give me a time of under 32 minutes. Unfortunately, it had rained and cutting a corner to avoid a jogger onto a bridge caused me to invent the wooden slip’n slide. The wreck nicely bruised my right hip and ripped my rear derailer completely off my bike. The fun part was then carrying my bike back the mile and a half to where I had parked. Hopefully it won’t take too long to get my bike fixed.

6 Mile Bike Time – 32:00 pace

UPDATE: The bike shop had to order parts so I won’t get my bike back until Aug 2nd.

I’m back! Trying to take advantage of the “blood-packing” that naturally takes place at higher altitudes, I went for a 2 mile run today. It definitely took longer for my breath to get heavy and I recovered much quicker than previously, but I was hoping for even more progress. Perhaps the long journey back caused some back sliding.

2 Mile Run Time – 18:34

Got internet again. the shift key on this thing sucks so i’ve stopped using it. yesterday we kiyaked or however you spell that. And that was pretty much it so i went for a 25 min run in the afternoon. the villagers got a kick out of the crazy gringo running down the dirt road. today we did a half day hike up “golden hill”. it was steep with really loose dirt so it was interesting. then we hike around the city as a tour — oh yes and we got to ride in the back of a toyota pickup which is apparently a taxi down here.

I suffered several setbacks on my training ride today including a two foot diameter tree across the trail, a set of RR tracks that threw me out into the road (luckily I missed the oncoming traffic), and a construction project that cut off the end of my route. Thoroughly ticked off about how this hindered my pace, I decided to begin my multi-event training and ran two miles today as well.

9 Mile Bike Time – 35:15 10-15 min later 1 Mile Run Times – 9:29 & 9:37

Set a new (recent) record for the mile. I started from a different place on the track where I run so that I could use the 100 yard markings to help set a 8 minute pace. I have also been using these markings to do interval training for the last few days.

1 Mile Run Time – 8:07