After Work Century

On Memorial Day the weather was pretty crappy...40's and rain all day. So I ended up spending an hour and a half on the trainer. I really don't like riding a trainer at all.

Tuesday I had a rest day planned, but ended up riding about two hours, but mostly just riding around town doing errands.

Last night I left work at 4:30 and rode to Nenana and back. That's a great ride. It's a little over 100 miles with really good pavement and shoulders, not much traffic on weeknights, and a lot of long'ish hills. Last night was pretty windy and (of course) it rained several times. But the ride took just under 6 hours and I felt pretty good and fresh the whole time.

Not much to take pictures of on my last two rides so I'm posting a couple of my favorites from this years Iditarod Trail Invitational.

This is Rocky with a bottle of vodka we found on the trail between Nicolai and McGrath. It had been about -40 F, but was probably closer to -20 F when the picture was taken. But the Vodka is still almost completely frozen.

This is my favorite picture from the 2007 race. We are on the South Fork of the Kuskokwim River, maybe 5 or 7 miles from the Rohn checkpoint. It was probably -10F and the wind was absolutely screaming. We'd been going straight into it for the last 25 or so miles. We were being pelted with snow and sand from the exposed gravel bars. We couldn't ever seem to stay on the trail for more than about a quarter mile, and were constantly hitting open leads and "new" ice that is not that much fun to cross. It was brutal. When the picture was taken Rocky was trying to shelter himself from the wind enough to eat...and it just wasn't working.