Doug and Anya's Team In Training: Training Update

It is amazing how much time studying, training, and doing everything else life requires of us takes. So that is my pitiful excuse for not posting in a while. 3 weeks ago our weekend training ride was canceled due to a tropical storm coming through, 2 weeks ago it was raining and lightning on Saturday so the training ride was postponed to Sunday, and then I was sick on Sunday, and last week Doug and I were in California for family visits, a wedding, and finally...a truly challenging half-century (yes...that's 50 miles).

Now that all the travel and craziness has ebbed, I will be back to giving everyone who has been so generous in helping me find a cure for blood cancers updates on how things are going. The big news is that thanks to you, I have raised $1,805, more than 35% of my goal. However, there is still a long way to go, and I need you to reach out to all your friends and tell them about the great work the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society is doing to help find a cure for blood cancer!

I thought I'd share some stories from the road. We were out in California for a week, and really needed to get some training in. So we managed to get both cross-training and our long ride in over the course of the week. I have to say, the cross-training was much more exciting than the usual go to the gym type of thing. We hiked in Yosemite for our cross-training! Here's a picture from about 9,000ft at the top of Cathedral Pass:

Just in case folks were wondering, we stayed in Curry Village overnight so that we were able to see both sides (Tuolumne Meadows and Yosemite Valley), and get in some hiking on the Yosemite Valley side before most of the tourists. The scary thing is we were staying in the tent cabins that this week were hit by avalanches...but fortunately we were there last week before the avalanches happened. But waking up nice and early allowed us to get this great shot from Sentinel Dome of Half Dome:

But the real training happened on Monday, where we stayed in Sonoma, rented bikes in Napa, and with the help of the nice folks at the bike shop found a route to ride a 50-mile training ride. And there's where the fun began. First of all...never rent bikes when you've been training for endurance rides - we were both miserable very quickly, as we were not used to the geometry of the bikes. Second of all...make sure you know what the terrain is going to be before you set out on a loop. We started on our loop, and after about 10 miles of climbing (I mean ALL climbing for 10 miles), we realized between the bikes and the hills, there was just no way we would be able to do our 50. We made it to this gorgeous lake before we turned back though:

But we didn't give up! Instead of doing the loop, we rode back to the Silverado Trail and rode out until we hit mile 32 on our odometers before riding back: