Chelsey's last day before the serious life changing surprise....

T minus 10 days till day one of the hardest race any of us have ever encountered. We promised each other, that after today we are tapering. No more 15 mile runs or 45 mile bike rides. Only smaller workouts, lots of sleep and lots of good food until we begin the most amazing suffer-fest of them all.
Our morning started at 7 am with a wake up call from Daniel. After rolling out of bed, filling up our water bottles with accelerate and Nuun, and stuffing our Ibex jerseys with raw rev bars, Gu and chomps, we were out the door and onto our bikes. It was a beautiful morning to be riding up into the mountains. It has been raining here for the past couple of weeks so all of the flora and fauna are at there best. I love California when its like this. At the top of our first 10 mile climb we ran into some local riders. Dan, being the friendly guy that he is, asked them where they were riding. They told us and then asked us the same. Dan spouted out our route and they returned with "uh, that's ballsy", which turned into the quote of the day. k
For a good portion of the ride it was hard not to talk and day dream about our upcoming Patagonia Race. However, as yogis we of course make a consiouse effort to be in the present moment, with the help of the beautiful green, lush Santa Barbara mountains, amazing single track descents, grueling up hill climbs and amazing sights from the top of the mountain- it wasn't hard to get back to reality. The ride, one of Daniel's favorites, was very much like a bike leg in an adventure race. There were never ending hill climbs, countless river crossings, Jason's shock blew out causing him to crash on the technical downhill, we stopped for some very scary, exposed acro play and Dan broke his chain. All of this and more is what we expect to happen when we race, making today a very successful training day! 45 miles and very tired lactic acid filled legs later, we arrived at Daniels house. After a recovery aloe vera smoothie and a hot shower, (two luxories we will not be experiencing during our race) Jason and I went out to walk the boardwalk and eat an amazing meal. A few hours later we returned to our race staging headquarters (aka Daniels house) to widdle away at our "to do" list. Us YogaSlackers love lists, with out lists and google docs I don't know where we would be right now. It is now 8:30pm and I feel like it is midnight, tomorrow is another full day starting with a 6:30am mysore yoga practice and then it is off to the ocean for some kayak rescue and dry suit practice. I have no doubt that it will be comical.