Double Whammy

Yesterday
Distance: 54.7km
Duration: 02:46:16
Calories: 2434
Terrain: Service Roads

Today
Distance: 89.7km
Duration: 04:55:30
Calories: 3868
Terrain: Service Roads with single track between

June Mileage: 584km

Twice the blabber in one post, you can consider yourselves lucky. Went for a ride in the afternoon yesterday, get some mileage in these legs of mine after the technical course during the middle of the week. I ended up spending quite some time on the saddle but there was not much excitement going down as the trail was all service roads making it a slog all the way. Did go through one of my favorite places though, Nahal Kziv. Beautiful valley where you can still find some water a green during this time of the year. Everything is tinder at the moment and you sort of expect a fire to break out just from the heat of the day. We're getting close to the forty degree celsius now and the air is hummid as hell, thats basically 104 fahrenheit. We havn't even gotten close to August when things really get uncofortable. The nice thing about leaving in th eafternooon heat is that it gets cooler as you go along, not much but every bit counts.
This morning rolled out the door for my big ride of the week and I swear the temperature was the same as the afternoon. Spent almost five hours pedalling away up to Misgav, my group training area. Erez was taking some work collegues for a farewell ride and asked me to join to help keep the engineers under control, they have a tendancy to turn forrests into brindges and there would be none of that today. I was planning on riding there for my weekly ride so I would join the group and then see how the legs felt. Did some great single track up and down the mountain which I feel is already like my back garden. Stumbled home with almost 90km on the odometer and was stoked. The legs are tender now but I'll go for a easy spn just to get the boold moving aroudn and a complete rest on Sunday. Have a fantastic weekend.

Fun in the Sun

Distance: 77.4km
Duration: 4:10:22
Calories: 3575
Terrain: Hilly but mostly on tarmac, did about 1000m of climbing in total
June Mileage: 316.6km

My work had a Fun Day as their annual day for the workers in the factory. My first idea popped into my head that it would be fun to spend the whole day on the bike but somehow I still had to make an appearance. The next best thing would be to commute and this I did. I ended up with quite a few kilometer's under the belt for the day including the climb over the Carmel Mountains, twice. I really wanted to put in some big kilometers and am trying to work up to doing 100km at lest once a week, normally it will fall on a Friday or a Saturday. My base is a point I really need to work on if I want to compete in the Expert level so before the races kick off again, there's a lull now becasue the heat is stifling at this time of year, I want to get as many kilometers on the dirt so that I get into the groove of being in the saddle for so long. The ride though showed me I have some way to go because by the 60km mark it felt as if I was sitting on a piece of PVC!
The ride itself was pleasant to say the least but my idea's of arriving by dirt were laid to rest at the first turn where I wandered down a track that ended in a dead end. Knowing full well I'd have a full day of riding plus the added activities from the actual Fun Day I decided on a route I was more familiar with, a knarly technical uphill I had climbed and so did it in reverse to get down to the coastal plain. From there a followed the trail next to the train track, which was flat and took me to my destination.
The day involved building rafts to race against the various departments. We luckily had someone who knew his knots and had a raft of titanic qualities within minutes. I was selected to be one of the rowers and we made our way to the buoy's to retrieve the bottle that would ensure victory. Well that was how it was supposed to happen. We got about 3/4 of the way when my manager jumped off the front to get the bottle by swimming, blatant cheating but as I was everyone had the same idea. I jumped in the water to turn the skiff around only to forget that they had attached a rope to the raft already to pull us back in. Needless to say they pulled faster than I could swim and I found myself with a bit of a paddle back to the shore, the bottle still not on the boat. We then decided that throwing the bottle would be the best bet so played relay to get it to shore. The rest of the day was spent wallowing in the shade, beer flowing freely and food on the way. I stayed clear of the beer as I still had a ride back and didn't want to be wobbling around the road.
My return journey was less adventurous as I left at 13:00 with the sun beating down. I must have drank close on three liters of water and about as much thrown over my pip to keep my temperature down. Note to self: Do not ride in mid-day-mid-summer heat!! The climb was less hectic than the morning as the gradient was not as steep but it was longer. I enjoyed the day and and thinking about building a set of road wheel for my mountain bike. I reckon I could commute to work that way and it'll come to about 100km but on the road the round trip will take four hours.

Ascending to Heaven

Distance: 46.8km
Duration: 3:17:22
Calories: 2621
Terrain: Uphill for more than half the way on loose gravel track
June Mileage: 197.5km

As you can see by the heading I certainly enjoyed yesterdays climbing. We climbed and climbed for what seemed like hours. My legs were feeling yesterday's practice a bit but after spinning the legs a while they were ready for the days exertion. The gradients got up there in the high twenty's at times but the granny gear came out and I just kept going strong. Great feeling this last week while climbing. What used to be tough climbs are now much easier and I find myself simply gliding up the hill's. All good and the ankle was not a worry the whole time.
We started the day in Gilon, a small communal village where Erez stays. It's situated on a hill so we descended from there and then headed east toward Carmiel from where we would make our way up to Kharashim, a village similar to Gilon. I will keep the route in mind becasue we climbed for a long time before reaching our destination so this makes it a great route to get some climbing done. From there you over look the entire area and the valley bellow, full of olive tree's and in the distance the ancient city of Akko.
On the way down we hit a bit of tarmac where I managed to hit a top speed of 63.7km/h. Great day out and really looking forward to the next weeks training.

Single Track

Kilometers: 13.2km
Duration: 1:11:52
Calories: 967
Terrain: Single track in the hills, rocks&drops, bit of pumping. Very dry and packed. Either up or down no flats
May Mileage: 192km

Great to be back on a bit of single track. Been bit unmotivated lately and yesterday didn't go out for a ride. Two reasons for that, firstly the football game went into overtime and penalties and then I was just to lazy to get out in the afternoon. I hate myself afterwards when I don't go out but was pretty tired after not getting much sleep, I knew this becasue I get really grumpy when I'm tired and I was a real grouch in the afternoon.

Back to today's ride. Went out with Erez and Omri into Misgav, one of the top area's for cycling in Israel and the place of last years Championships. I can also add that this is our training ground so I loved getting back after been out of practice for over a month. So played around but I was very gentle on the Achilles and had to jealously watch as they were working on the technical pieces. As you can see we didn't do much but jst going out and playing around in the hills was great fun.

Return

On my bike for the first time since getting back from the trip. Been six days since I've been on a bike and more than two weeks since I've been on a bike weighing race weight. We were carrying an extra twenty kilograms around on our touring and the bike was an old beater which added another five kilograms to the tally. The achilles has still, excuse the pun, been my weak spot for the week. I've been limping around trying to save them from as much action as possible. Quite difficult when that basically means I would need to be off my legs. Well I made sure to take it easy this ride and did a ride with Ofir and Omri so they were also still fresh off the long ride. Decided that hills would be detrimental to an quick recovery but still wanted to get back on the bike. We went up to Ein Tamir, translated as Tamir's Spring. You go up a canyon that has a old crusader castle protecting the way. Montfort basically means strong mountain and is one of the old crusader relic's left in the region. A beautiful castle built of white stone and nestled inside the oak forest's endemic to this area. We rode here because the road is pretty flat with a gentle rise to the spring although there is one kicker but I really took it easy up the hill and rode as slow as possible in the lowest gear. So the round trip was about 30km, I didn't have my heart rate monitor with me because I still haven't transfered everything from. Was a bit of a blessing, one less thing to worry about. We got to the spring without any problems and Ofir's girlfriend Orli had joined us. Glad she came along because the pace was more manageable for me. We had some coffee, sandwiches and then a dip in the ice cold mountain water. Quite unimaginable that there would be a place like this in a dry country like Israel but these places exist and its amazing to find them hidden away. Like jewels where in other countries they lie scattered all over. I hope to show more of these gems as I find them. The racing has taken me away from the fun part of riding and to get back to these roots is brilliant.