The day or two (or ten!) following a big event can be an interesting time depending how your big event turned out. Last year, after a flat tire ruined Superior Man 70.3, I was super bummed and beat myself up for not being better prepared and knowing how to change that flat tire. Like this year, my triathlon was the first stop on a vacation, so my post race blues were spent in Northern Minnesota along the Gunflint Trail submersed in Mother Nature. My happy place. Canoeing in pristine water and hiking amongst local wildlife helped tame those post race blues.
This year, while in the lovely state of Colorado, we headed north to Rocky Mountain National Park after my triathlon to continue our road trip. I had a different kind of post race reflection this year. I was still bummed and disappointed in my result but cramping from going too hard early and giving it my all is much different than a flat tire ruining your race.
We drove and enjoyed the beautiful entrance into RMNP, ate lunch next to a waterfall, and found a prairie hike to undertake for the remainder of the afternoon. It was the perfect active recovery day and, even more so, being in the mountains and enjoying our time outside.
We stayed in a tiny house in Lyons, CO at WeeCasa Resort and I loved it! I want to tiny house someday and was so excited when my husband found this resort. We were one of ~20 tiny houses in this resort (kind of like campground area) with the river and red rocks as a backdrop – gorgeous! We enjoyed great BBQ, Oskar Blues Brewery, journaled for our travel blog, and went to bed early.
We enjoyed day two in RMNP – epic drives, lunch sitting over a cliff, and did a couple more difficult hikes as my body was another day recovered. We enjoyed another evening in Lyons and night at WeeCasa.
We headed back to Minnesota via Mount Rushmore and Hill City, South Dakota. Sturgis Motorcycle Rally was in full gear so we were surrounded by more motorcycles than I’ve ever seen before. It was great people watching 🙂
It is now one week post race and it is my first Saturday without a training plan to follow and no races scheduled. This is weird for me. I haven’t been training plan free since February! But I’m okay with this and excited to bike to brunch again and go on some other non-race focus rides around the Twin Cities Metro. We rode one of our favorite routes, down and back to Harriet Island, a thirty-six mile adventure for that first Saturday post race ride. This was my first time back on my bike since Ironman 70.3 Boulder and I still had fatigue in the legs. On the contrary, my husband felt great, so for the first time, I let me fly ahead and I just stayed back and cruised in at a slower pace.
No training plan gave me the opportunity to ride my bike to work every day which I only did once in week during training on my easy cycle days. I love to multi-task so I love the idea of biking instead of driving and getting my exercise (and listening to podcasts, of course)! Biking to work was important that first week back as we spent our evenings packing and moving! Getting in our exercise and vitamin d during our commute was definitely a key to maintaining a positive attitude during the evenings of packing and moving – we weren’t struggling to fit in (or miss) an after-work workout – it was already done! Huge bonus!
Moving day came and went without any issue; we just moved 2 miles from our old apartment to a new place about the same size – a far cry from a big downsize last summer! Being in a slightly different location gave us the opportunity to start our rides from a different spot and explore new roads. A trail detour led us way off course and we were forced to ride and non-bike friendly roads and got a honk or two! Yikes! So there was more sidewalk riding than normal and more work to be done to plan and explore our new area!
No Comments