Bend, Oregon

We have been in Bend, Oregon for about one week now and have been loving every day here! Bend has an abundance of trail systems for hiking, horseback riding, running, and mountain biking that I have not seen anywhere else. The weather here has been sunny the whole time, and a bit chilly at night because its a high desert terrain with pine forests and sagebrush.

On my birthday on August 17, I went to a masters swimming session to put in a workout before a videotaping and stroke analysis with head coach Bob Bruce.

I haven't swam the butterfly for over a year, and I forgot how much of a core workout it is!

Bob Bruce is on the pool deck with his videotaping camera attached to a rod that is submerged to tape me underwater. All it took was 75 yards of sprinting for him to get enough footage.

Now its stroke analyzing time! Bob played the video in slow motion and explained to me what I already had down, and what I had to work on. My stroke was already well developed, but I needed to enter my hands in the water deeper, and have my elbows higher before I started the pull phase to be able to displace more water. And to put my head down lower. I have been able to swim 3 times after this and for sure it feels awkward, I was more used to gliding and the new style feels like I'm swimming to the bottom of the pool! But now its getting more "normal" for me, and I can tell that it's much better!

Then that night we went to a free running clinic hosted by FootZone.

We had to run a few times with our shoes on, then barefoot. Teague Hatfield, the host of the clinic videotaped us then did form analyzing for us too. I liked how he taught the clinic, very simple and straightforward!

The next day my dad and I went for a 4 hour mountain bike ride with one of my coaches the "Caveman" Conrad Stoltz. Bend is one of Conrad's favorite training spots for the summer!

The waterfall in the picture is Tumalo Falls.

Taking a quick blog picture break at the Tumalo Falls overlook.

Again, Conrad's biking skills never cease to amaze both me and my dad. He disappears within 30 seconds whenever he goes downhill without braking on the corners, and sometimes disappears even uphill too! As a coach, Conrad was very helpful, has a wealth of information and gave me many tips on how to become a faster mountain biker. But, I couldn't help feeling a little intimidated and like I have a lot of work to do to become even half as fast as Conrad. This is none of Conrad's fault, its my mind getting the best of me. Self-doubts are what I struggle with the most and it has gotten a grip on me sometimes (Okay I admit, more than sometimes!). So, after a couple of good eating-the-dirt crashes, I decided to just chill out and not focus on the negative and look at the positive. Some of the stuff I was riding I wouldn't have been able to ride a few months ago. When I overthink things, its never enough or those things hold no satisfication for me anymore. Its very important to me that I enjoy what I am doing, so I'm working on being in the moment as much as possible!

Dad and I went riding a couple days after our ride with Conrad and I made myself relax and ride the bike and direct it where I wanted it to go instead of a little habit of mine of going too fast to control which always ends up with me thundering down the rocky stretch, reacting at the last instant to brake hard at every turn, nearly missing the tree or the drop off....

I immersed myself in that training ride and enjoyed every moment of it! I even feel like I have improved a little more!

On one of our long runs, we went running on the Deschutes River trail besides the pristine Deschutes River with green trees all around and black lava on the river banks.

Currently we're still in Bend, we're gonna squeeze in a few more trail adventures in two more days before leaving for Portland where we'll be parking our RV before staying with relatives in Seattle for 3 weeks.