Tuesday, July 21st, 2009
After slapping down the deposit on my new ride, I vanished from the interwebs (and work in general) all last week for a much needed vacation in the white mountains of New Hampshire. Since I didn’t have my road bike with me or a pool, it turned in to my own little mountain running camp for one.
Me, my girlfriend Sam, and about 10 other friends from college settled in to a little cabin in the woods for beer, BBQ, hiking and late night dance parties. The whole week was kicked off with a canoe-camping trip that totally set the tone for the rest of the week.
Canoeing down the saco river and setting up camp on the beach was a blast. 
A tent, a canoe and a roaring fire to roast some hot dogs after the sun goes down = perfect.
We set up shop back at the cabin for the rest of the week and every morning I woke up first (I can rarely sleep past 9am, even on vacation), made some pancakes and headed out on a run before anyone even slid out of bed.
The running trails and views were amazing. On my first long run, I ran by two cyclists on a long straight road. They slowed down and I was expecting them to ask for directions. As they rolled by they said “Watch out, there is a cop about 50 yards up on the left. Be worried.”
I was confused, because I could see about a mile ahead of me, and there was no cop in sight. There wasn’t ANYTHING. Even so, why would I have to worry about a cop? It took me a few seconds to realize that he said CUB not COP. As in BEAR cub. This is bear country, and I’m not eager to mess around with a black bear cub, especially when I know the momma bear can’t be too far behind. Very quickly my slow easy run turned into a tempo run as I booked in to the other side of the road and rushed the last 3 miles back home. I never ended up seeing the bear, but I was completely fine with that.
The very next morning, on my run while everyone else slept, I was only about 400 meters from home when I turn a corner and another black bear (NOT a little cub) was walking right down the road in front of me, only about 20 meters. Thankfully he was going the same direction as me and he never saw me. I know that black bears aren’t that aggressive, but I didn’t want to take my chances and picked up the only big stick that I could find near me. Unfortunately, it was completely rotten and practically disintegrated as I picked it up.
I wasn’t sure what else to do, so just yelled “SHOO BEAR!” a few times to see if it would scare him off. He didn’t even bat an eye and just wandered off into the woods near another house. After waiting a few minutes until the coast was clear, I hustled back to the house to finish my workout with some hill repeats on the road right next to our place. I figured staying close to home probably wasn’t the worst idea at that point.
Running in to wildlife while running is always fun, especially when you come back in one piece. Still no moose sightings though. I’m working on that one.
The next day we hiked up Mt. Stanton. The trail is only about 1.5 miles to the top, but goes straight up. It took us almost an hour just to get there. At some points it was more like rock climbing than hiking and we were using trees and anything we could grab on to for support. It was a killer quad-busting workout and logged it in my workoutlog despite the fact that we were basically crawling for half of the time. I got wicked sweaty, so it counts and the views made it totally worth it.
We later drove up the Mt. Washington Auto Road, the tallest point on the east coast. It has the world’s worst weather and the highest recorded wind speed at 231 mph! It well above the tree line and serious business! It was about 65 degrees at the bottom, but about 40 at the top, in the middle of a cloud and felt like it was about to start snowing. There is a bike race up to the top every year. I’m already mentally committed to it. Sam thinks that I’m nuts, but I think it would be AAAAAAAAAAmazing! 12% average grade for 7 or 8 miles. Hardcore, but doable. Right?
The highest mountain I’ve mountain I’ve ever climbed is the Kancamangus Highway (2855 ft) but Mt. Washington is 6,288 ft. More that twice as high. It definitelly puts this whole thing in perspective.
It was also the only time in my life that I’ve ever been so high that I can look DOWN and see a rainbow. It was crazy.
Here we are above the tree line, with still another 2,000 feet of elevation to go. The top of the mountain is hidden off in the cloud up there.
Once I got back home and settled back in to the real world, I headed out to the LBS to pick up my new tri bike! Thankfully vacation kept me busy enough where I wasn’t sitting there biting my finger nails, waiting to take her out.
Isn’t she purdy?
I swapped out my pedals, we did some measuring on my current road bike, did some adjustments on the P2 and I jumped on.
We played around with the seat high, fore/aft and the handlebar position a little bit and I was good to go.
I was actually surprised about how simple it all was. We set everything up to be more comfortable than aero, and as I get more used to the aero bars, I can play with things from there to do some fine tuning.
Now it is time to take this baby out on the road!
Sam even likes the bike so much that she wanted to jump on when I brought it home. Seeing a 5 foot tall girl try to mount a bike made for a guy who is 6’1″ is pretty entertaining. It made my night. She did put her foot down and made sure that I knew the bike wasn’t allowed in bed, but I’ve still got to work on that part. 
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Tags: cervelo p2, triathlon bike fit | Posted in Life, Running, Triathlon | 2 Comments »
