On Monday, Helen and I returned from a bike trip through the Tuscany region of Italy with Backroads. It was a wonderful trip! Despite cycling mammoth hills every day (2000 ft up, 2000 ft down, all day long), I managed to gain 10 pounds. Imagine that – eating Pizza and drinking Chianti Reserva day after day with reckless abandon and you will gain a few pounds. Oh well – it’s back to a serious training program for this cowboy.

Helen and I are doing the Las Vegas marathon on December 2nd, so I really need to get my running form back. I designed a new training program that will hopefully convert me from my sluggish present self to a lean and mean marathon machine. My goal is 3:15. My training program is here if you care to look it over.

I am also biking an hour everyday to maintain a cycling base plus 3 days of weights (2 days of legs and 1 day of upper body). My goal is to really pursue the Greenland Ice Cap crossing in the spring. Tons of stuff needs to happen first, but I am going to assume that everything will work out as I have planned (ha, ha, ha – good one!), and I want to make sure that I am really super ready for the biking volume that I will need to have as a base. If I can break the 8 day crossing record, it may end up being a solo RAMM-type of effort -RAMM is Race Across America where solo competitors cycle up to 20 hours per day for 8 to 10 days in a row racing their way across the US.

My daily hour of base cycling is now on the mountain bike which is probably what I will end up using to cross the Ice Cap. My goal is to cycle to the gym 5 days per week regardless of what kind of nastiness winter wants to throw at me. This should get me used to various wintry surfaces, and dressing appropriately. It snowed again today – but this year I am actually really looking forward to the snow and cold. Learning about winter biking, camping and survival is kind of exciting.