Last weekend, this weekend, then off we go....

Last weekend we biked the White Rim trail - something different for us, as we'd normally just drive the White Rim to get to climbing areas, not pedal along with no climbing gear in sight. Here are some images from that journey:


It was fun, but now I'm ready to go climbing. Not this weekend, though, as I made the mistake of signing up for a marathon a couple months ago, and on Sunday I'll have to test my mettle on the roads around Steamboat Springs. I know I'll be excited once I'm there, but right now I'm not all that psyched; I'm nervous and I'd rather be heading to Maple Canyon or Donner Summit or Yosemite. Live and (sometimes) learn, I guess.

But after this weekend, it's climbing season. Well, actually, it's just time to hit the road and travel. I took this new job because it allows me to work from anywhere, to be in Bishop or Tuoloumne and still do my work and be as connected as I am at my kitchen table in Utah; it's time to take advantage of that benefit.

Before that happens, though, I need to remember that, in climbing and in life, when one thing goes wrong, it's not cause to throw in the towel and quit. It just means I have to put my head down and try harder. Things go wrong, and, in the moment, it sucks. But expanding my scope and looking at the situation with a bigger perspective usually helps, usually makes that moment seem smaller, less important, just one among many.

This weekend, on the White Rim, I my quads burned as I pedaled along on a trail that Brad said was, "all downhill." Fighting to stay upright through deep sand, pedaling so hard my heartrate was probably in the two-hundreds, I begged to differ; it did not feel "all downhill."

But that was just one small section of the whole trail. That specific place in time involved a climb, but stepping back a bit and looking at a broader stretch of trail revealed that, truly, the route did lose elevation. A slightly bigger perspective yielded a descent. Had I considered only that one moment in time, only that section that saw me sweating and breathing hard, I would have disagreed with Brad. But I took a step back, looked at the tail as a whole, and the thing didn't seem so bad. Lesson learned (for now).