Back from AZ

This trip was awesome! I kind of felt bad leaving my brother alone but it's was only going to be 2 days and, quite frankly, I bet he was thrilled to have a little more freedom than he's ever experienced with both my parents and I a couple hundred miles away haha. Murphy's Law, yesterday at the Swami's ride, he happened to hit a big rock and fell, resulting in some pretty gnarly road rash and a cut hand. But his bike and him will live to see another day, thank GOD!!

I arrived in Phoenix around 6pm Thursday and Gus from CEEPO picked me up and we headed to his house. There I met his wife and three kids, all 20-24yrs old and into triathlon which is very cool. The other neat part is that they are from Mexico City but moved to the States when their kids where really young, just like my family, so it was cool to have that connection. I felt like I was at one of my aunt & uncle's house in Mexico :)

Anyway, Thursday was pretty much spent just chatting and getting to bed early for 6am swim at ASU pool. Gus and Bettina (his wife) started a training group about 10 years ago called Racelab (www.racelab.com) so the workout was with their group of triathletes. Bettina is the head coach and I was amazed at the personalized care and detail that she gives to each one of her 30+ athletes- amazing! Everyone was super friendly too.

After the swim I headed out with two of the Racelab guys for an hr run on Tempe Town Lake- we all kind of drifted apart after w/up into our own pace. Then we caught up with the rest of the gang at Einstein's for some breakfast.

Once the morning workout was over, it was luckily time to be indoors and away from the soaring 100+ temps. Mind you, I loooooove the heat, but there's something about desert heat without the relief of humidity that makes me feel like I'm choking hehe.

So off to the CEEPO offices it was :D There, Gus and I picked up my new bike! I cannot described how stoked I was. After getting scammed into a horrible position on my previous bike and stripped of my Durace components, given a 56/46 front-knee-ruining-chain-ring, and struggling to find comfort from there until now, I was practically teary-eyed to see my sweet Killer CEEPO frame full of SRAM Red :) :)

I'm sticking with 650s, although, the Killer frame is temporary as they hadn't gotten in the Katanas or Venoms and Gus wants to put me on either one by the end of this month. The geomtry is very similar to the Killer so nothing would change other than wheel size and that's only for the Katana.

Moving on, we went back to the house and spent the afternoon building it up and then I went for a small neighborhood spin to feel it out. WOW! The first thing I immediately noticed is how balanced the bike is. It's like subconsciously I was putting in effort to keep myself straight (lateral balance) before but now every movement I made went simply to power me forward.

For dinner we all went out to Pita Jungle and then came back quickly to hit the sack as we had to be up at 3:30 to be ready to ride South Mountain at 5am- yikes! It was a 2-3hr scheduled ride that was best done before 9am to avoid scorching temps.

I slept really good so it was no trouble getting up merely an hr before my usual wake up time. We arrived at the park and rode a flat/rolling section to warm up and then climbed S. Mtn. which was roughly 6 miles up, some gradual, some pretty steep parts near the summit. I had time for 2 more repeats but opted to ride the flat section out and back the remainder of the time and cut the ride short to 2hrs. One, I had a new bike new position and didn't want to aggrivate anything. Secondly, my knee worked pretty hard on the climb and after 2months of dealing with this injury I cannot be stupid enough or afford to set myself back again. Yay I made a smart choice ;)! I enjoyed every second on my CEEPO. It was extremely comfortable and once I got rolling that thing just hammered, it felt FAST.

After that ride we went out to breakfast and then back to the house to pack. It was truly a phenomenal weekend and I am sooo thankful to Gus and his family for welcoming me into their home.

I'm off to Edge Monday morning to get my powertap wheel on it, get the bars cut to my comfort and will be ready to rock it this weekend at Carlsbad Sprint.