Newness

After spending a wonderful Thanksgiving with my family and never leaving the house by car (I love holidays like that), I joined a small group of Swampers Friday to mark another set of new trails at Boyette. My trail building expertise has expanded greatly the past few years, but this was a great opportunity to add "planning a trail" to my quiver.



The yellow lines are the newest trails in the northeast corner of the park: Pandemonium across the top and Sidewinder down the right side. The red trails are what we marked. I was awed by the beauty of this tract. Hilly and shaded by pines and oaks, the ground is covered with ferns. The layout of the hills and gullies will allow for some sustained climbs and downhills. It looks like it will add 3-4 miles of trail when finished. They're working out the logistics to get a couple of excavators out there Christmas week to rough-cut the corridor, then we'll go in and finish the trail by hand. I know a lot of people decry trails built by machine, but the extensive bench cutting required for this trail would take months. With this plan, we'll be riding it in January. Sounds like a good plan and I'm hoping to take Christmas week off so I can pitch in and learn even more.

I think my Mad Max post generated the most comments ever on my blog. It's great to see so many dog lovers out there! Max is integrating into the household quite nicely, even though he thinks our cats exist solely for his entertainment. We had him neutered last week and despite wearing a lampshade all week, he still managed to rip out the stitches in 5 days. We also learned that he has a very sensitive stomach, which is totally opposite the iron-clad digestive tract Fontana has. A couple of raw Turkey necks for Thanksgiving resulted in projectile diarrhea and a trip to the emergency clinic Saturday. He was back to his lunatic self by Sunday afternoon.

Max's endurance training will resume this weekend. It's tough to get to trails during the week, so I'm thinking of dusting off the Rollerblades or even *gasp* running to get him some weekday exercise.

Hopefully all this exercise will be good for Fontana too. All the loaves of banana bread and bacon stolen off of grills at races have gone to his midsection and he is officially fat. He's on a strict dog food-only diet and will no longer be allowed to roam at races. Please accept my apologies if you were a victim of this little thief. He spent his early life scavenging for food to survive and I think the scavenger instinct will be with him forever.

If you see me, DO NOT FEED ME! No matter how charming or starved I look, I need my svelte figure back to keep up with Mad Max.

On the training front, I have officially lost all my fitness. I've started commuting to work a couple of days a week and am back in the gym. I start throwing the big weights next week. Hopefully I'll have a 12 hour race to get ready for in Florida in February. If not, I might have to get into some XC roundy-rounds before enduro season kicks in.