What a couple weeks! We spent Memorial Day weekend and this past weekend in NH, training in some pretty beautiful, quiet areas. On Memorial Day we hiked up at Franconia Notch (up Old Bridal Path and Falling Waters). It was a nice mid-season switch-up with some amazing views. These photos don’t quite do it justice, but I tried:

• Speechless movies

That’s how INSANE the wind was up at the top! Chrissie and Tim are just leaning into it. It was pretty intense!

This weekend we stuck to the basic swim-bike-run, but still had a blast! On Saturday, Chrissie, Jesse, and I were bombing down a hill when a moose stepped out into the road. A real, live one! Luckily, we were talking and therefore going a bit slower or I’m relatively confident that I would not be writing this right now. I didn’t notice antlers on ol’ Bullwinkle – I was too distracted by the stilts he was perched on. I always thought moose were bulky, with thick, muscular legs. Nope. Their bodies are like horses, but their legs are 8 feet of bone wrapped in hide. I really think I could have walked clean under the goofy bugger without ducking. It was so COOL! He looked at us, and, asI reached for my camera, Chrissie warned (as she tried to ride her bike in reverse), “He’s going to beat you up!” Instead of putting up his dukes, he turned and walked back into the woods, one long-ass stride at a time. Because I’m a little slow on the draw, you’re going to have to use your imagination. No picture.

I do however have this gem:

We saw this out on our ride. Someone actually painted that sign and put it in front of their house!

At the end of the weekend, we loaded up the car, locked the bikes on the roof, and headed home. We were moseying along, making our way down 93 south when it happened. There was a noise from above. What the?! We both looked up just in time to see Tim’s bike take leave of the roof rack. Holy!! Tim pulled off onto the shoulder, and we both hopped out. ”Wait here,” he shouted as ran down the side of the highway. I watched as car after car swerved into the breakdown lane, narrowly missing the bike as it lay helplessly right in the middle of the lane. There was a break in the traffic and Tim ran onto the highway. I could see him picking things up, so I assumed the pedals or aerobar extenders had snapped off. He’s got a race in a week! Once he got back to the car, I saw that neither the had snapped off. Actually, it looked as though it had landed on the left pedal and balanced there. The bar tape was not torn at all, the frame wasn’t scratched, the SRM was fine, the wheels remained true. There were two casualties: the side of the left pedal was worn flat, and the left wheel-stay snapped off. The latter was not a result of the crash, but was instead the cause of the dislodging. How do we know? Because it was still in the roof rack! Couple lessons learned here: carbon stays are nice, as long as they stay intact, and locking the stays onto the roof rack does not mean that the bike is locked on. Not sure that there’s much that we can do with these lessons, but they were learned none the less!

Inside Man trailer Night of the Running Man move

Up next: Rev3 this Sunday. I am so excited! Not only to race, but to spend the weekend with my little sis’!! Road Trip! Yeah, it’s only a few hours, but it’ll still be fun! Psyched!