And Summer is Quickly Coming to an End.....

Took the Boy to his first Baseball game.  He was so excited.  That was fun.  Well, as fun as baseball gets I guess.  That's him in the orange shirt waiting for a ball to come his way.

July is the worst.  I love all of the seasons in Utah, but the month of July is my least favorite.  It just gets too hot in the valley where I live.  Wildfires burn like crazy throughout the west which almost always means we see smoke and have to breath it.  Plus, fireworks aren't my favorite either.  I know, I'm un-american.  Our solution for July has always been, and was again this year, to get out of the valley somehow.  Either in the local canyons or our week long vacation to Bear Lake.  This solution makes July tolerable.  And now it's almost over.  In fact, today is the last day and to tell the truth it really wasn't that bad.  I got to ride my bike like crazy and that's never a bad thing.

Now that July is over I'm beginning to freak out over the upcoming plans for Ultimate Challenge and Lotoja.  Especially Ultimate Challenge.  It's in about a week so there is nothing I can do now more than I've already done.  One thing that has been bothering me is my position on the bike.  I switch things up earlier this year to a more aggressive position thinking that I could figure it out with a little experimenting.  I trained and experimented for nearly 2 months before reverting to my old position midway through our Bear Lake trip.  I just got tired of the numbness in my hands.  Everything feels good again but I haven't trained all summer in my old position so I'm a bit worried about that.   I think I'll get another bike fit beginning next year with the hopes of figuring a better aggressive position for me in the future.

So, Ultimate Challenge.  It's crazy this year.  I thought I was going to die last year when I did it and now they've made it even harder with more climbing.  Almost 13,000 ft.  That's a lot in one ride.  And the climbs are very steep at the end.  And everyone knows, climbing at the end of a ride is much more difficult than at the beginning of a ride.  I'm excited at the same time.   It's always a crazy fun ride.  And it's fairly relaxed being that it's not a race.   Lotoja is different in that respect.  You can feel the tenseness in air at the start of Lotoja.  With the nerves building for Ultimate Challenge I have to remind myself that it's just a fun ride and I can just consider it great training for Lotoja.  But at the same time, I would be mortified if I didn't finish.  One way or another, I will finish.  And before the pro's too.

On another note, we bought our season passes to Snowbird earlier last week.  We have to buy them early in order to get the best deal.  Whenever we buy them I get excited for skiing, even if it's 100 degrees outside.  I think we'll try to pick-up our passes this weekend.  Pray for a big snow year.  We are due.

Up the climb near Bear Lake.

Cool little Tabernacle (not a church) I found on my ride into Paris, Idaho.

Looking down Butterfield Canyon.  I've been climbing her a lot lately.