TJ Woodruff ONLINE

John and I made the drive up to Flagstaff Saturday morning so that we could get in a couple mountain bike rides. Flagstaff has all of the right ingredients – singletrack, dirt, trees, rocks, altitude, and views. None of which are in short supply and we even found a spot or two of snow to ride through. The terrain at 9000+ feet  is challenging physically and also technically, so it’s super easy to lose yourself in the moment. At one point I had to remind myself where I was and what month it is – such moments are the best therapy.  John and I used to ride mtb’s back in our Eau Claire days, but it was pretty cool to see him ripping the technical stuff out here. The guy’s got skill! I on the other hand felt a little out of sorts, but managed to hold my own for the most part.  It’s been a slower than ideal return to the bike after having the teeth pulled, but hopefully I’ll be full strength sometime soon now that I can eat again. As we pre rode the State Finals course Sunday I got a pretty good bonk going before slowly finishing out the course. John on the otherhand was still rockin’.

This Saturday is the Arizona Series Finals and the course will make for nothing short of an epic battle. It’s got a huge amount of climbing, but it’s also extremely technical so it’s going to take some serious skills to stay at the front. Hopefully I can be up there, but the locals will surely have their advantage.

Thanks to Steve for showing us some of Flag’s finest. Next update will be the race report. Stay tuned. -TJ

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 13th, 2008 at 8:51 pm and is filed under Training Report. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.