Solid Holiday Weekend

It was a refreshing weekend, with a solid 4 days off from work. From an activity perspective, I spent 3 of the 4 days getting some fun in either riding or running. More importantly, it was a great weekend for spending time with my family and relaxing. My cousin was married as well, and so the family grew again. Bruce is a fellow mountain biker, and although he's been a bit distracted (and probably will be for a while now) I wish him the best in his marriage. We also visited my wife's grandmother and great-aunt in R.I. on Friday, and spent a nice Thanksgiving day with my in-laws.

Thursday, Thanksgiving Day, I did the Manchester Road Race with a bunch of family and really enjoyed as usual. It was a much nicer day, sunny and in the 60's, than last year when it was very cold and pouring rain. It's hard to call it a race since with 15k plus runners you spend most of the time dodging people instead of running. Once again, we started at the back after waiting in vain to meet up with some family and had to wait over 7 minutes from the gun to even cross the starting line. It's a 4.7 mile run, with two distinct sections the first 3 miles are spent dodging people and working your way up a long hill. With about 2 miles to go, you head downhill and the crowd has usually thinned a bit. This is the point where you can really run and see what you have. This year with the beautiful weather it was still really crowded at this point, but I managed to set a pretty good pace and hold it for the rest of the race. I passed my brother, but never saw my uncle and didn't end up catching him. I'm pretty happy with my effort, having gone over a month without any running to speak of. It's gotten me in the mood to start running again, I think I'm finally past the burn-out phase of this summer. Congratulations to every one that was out there for the race.

On Saturday I went to Case Mountain for a mountain bike ride with a friend from work who I managed to talk into giving it a try. It was a bit of a mellow ride, we headed up the fire road before running out the blue trail and back for a bit. A very cold day, the temps were in the teens, I just tried to stay warm and feel the new frame on my bike. It feels differently then the old frame, but I need to do some adjustments before I can definitely say what the differences are. It did seem to climb differently, I think perhaps both the lower weight and the softer ride helped. It also could be entirely mental :)

On Sunday I also managed to get out for a ride in the morning. We were a bit rushed for time, but managed to get a nice loop in, including a new trail with some pretty good downhills. I didn't manage to adjust the bike much before we went out, so I was still feeling a bit cramped on it but it was still a lot of fun. I'm thinking of heading up to Tolland Bike to grab some new, warmer shoes and have Dave check out my fork.