Cannon Valley Trail

I shouldn't even talk about Saturday's run. It was a total joke. Molly couldn't run with me so I was on my own. The weather was crappy; very cold and raining and I just pussed out and couldn't run outside. So I went to the gym and jumped on a treadmill. Boy, was that a bad idea. A million years ago in this blog I wrote about going from running on a treadmill to running outside and how different it was. Well, that statement still stands. I ran for about twenty miles, a very frustrating twenty minutes. I did two miles on this dang treadmill and tried the hell to get the most out of it. I increased my stride, I increased the incline, nothing I did made it feel like I was running. I did sweat buckets though. I think that's the illusion that you're getting a workout on a treadmill. Every sweats like crazy because there isn't any air moving. It looks like your busting your ass. I got off the treadmill and ran around the track for a bit. At this point I was too annoyed and just stopped.

Sunday morning Molly and I drove town to Cannon Falls for a gorgeous forty-mile ride along the Cannon Valley Trail. This was just beautiful. We've had rain for the last few days but Sunday was just damp, no rain. Everything was really bursting with color.

The wildflowers along the trail were just beautiful. We'd come across other riders every now and then, but overall it was just us. Talking away. The other riders that we did see were so nice. Every single one of them said good morning, and they all smiled. It was really nice. I won't talk about how on the drive down we missed our first exit or when we started riding on the trail we went two miles out of the way because we started following the wrong trail, you don't need to hear about that. It was a great ride and I'm really looking forward riding it again. There were all kinds of great things to see along the trail... like the burned out trailer that I just had to take a picture of. I made Molly stand in front of the trailer and as I took the picture this woman walked by and said "Now why would you want a picture of that?" I just thought it was cool, but Molly said something like "So we can remember what we did." Which to me made it sound like we burned down the trailer. Just an odd moment.

The ride home from Cannon Falls was so great. We were absolutely pooped. We rode hard and it felt great. But what felt even better was that Molly made almond butter and jelly sandwiches for the ride home. I think everyone can agree that a sandwich always tastes better when someone else makes it for you, and this was absolutely the case. I was so hungry I could have eaten my shoe. That was the best sandwich ever.

All in all it was a great weekend. Next weekend we do our first mock-tri with the TNT group. For now I'll just do my regular training for the week and try to keep the swearing to a minimum.