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Weekend in the Desert

Elizabeth and I went to Palm Springs for the weekend to get a little R&R out of town. It was Coachella weekend out there but just like when we made the trip out there last year, neither of us had plans to go see any music.

Last year I was getting ready for ultra season so I did two long desert runs, but this time, with Wildflower right around the corner, I brought the Guru and got out for two decent rides. The cycling out there was a nice change for a weekend. I found good quality, low traffic roads with bike lanes or nice shoulders. The area is surrounded on all sides by mountains, so the views are nice.

I skipped the really steep climbing in favor of some steady-grade stuff and spent a lot of time in aero on long straightaways.

I ended up doing different variations on the same ride both days.  It was nice riding out there, but I wouldn’t trade our rides in the Santa Monicas for it.

My goal for Saturday was to ride 50+ miles and then run for at least an hour. I was hoping for one of those confidence-inspiring race-simulation workouts. The ride went great and the run started off good enough, but I completely fell apart after only about 25 minutes on my feet. My legs just didn’t want to move. I was having serious flashbacks to my marathon “run” at Ironman Canada. It was hot (low 90s) and I was probably dehydrated. I’d trained pretty hard last week (including a fast, hard run with some speedster Coyotes in Sullivan Ridge/Canyon on Thursday) so my legs were pretty beat up. And, sometimes this just happens. Better that it happened on Saturday than during Wildflower, right? I ended up doing run-walk intervals for another 20 minutes and then called it a day. I spent a little time feeling sorry for myself about the busted training but with some cheering-up from friends via Twitter, I got over it.

After a dip in the pool, a nice long nap and a gigantic dinner, we all got ready to go out to a Coachella party. We didn’t even get to the party until midnight! I felt like a 22 year old. And a rock star. The party – The Neon Carnival – was a blast!

There were a bunch of carnival rides and midway games.

And it wasn’t even that crowded. I went down the slide and rode the swing:

and went on one ride that felt like “superman”:

Then we played some midway games and did some fun(ny) people watching (hipsters always make me laugh). I got home a 3AM!! I haven’t done that in ages!

Sunday morning, after not nearly enough sleep, I got up and went back out on the bike. It was another hot morning and I was pretty tired, but I ended up having a good, strong ride.

After refueling, I went to hang out by the pool where we found this little guy swimming around:

What do you do with a turtle in the pool? The chlorine can’t possibly be safe for it. There was no way it could climb out of the pool. So I carried it over to a water hazard on the golf course. I’m still not sure if that was the right call, but it was definitely going to die in the pool. I’ll keep my fingers crossed for a long turtle life!

And now, it’s less than two weeks until Wildflower!