The drill: wake up, rice protein powder + collagen + green powder drink, French toast and coffee, pack up and ride at the Cottonwood Valley trail network. Highly recommended. Repeat.

Following today’s ride, we shared the mostly complete serving of tiramisu from last night. Note that tiramisu is a highly purposeful, professional, carb packed option to refill empty glycogen stores.

Later, we took a drive down a residential street to a park with a great view of Red Rock and ate lunch. For example…

Got water at Smiths grocery store by refilling some gallon bottles. $.35 per gallon and no more plastic. I am not sure I’ve ever used a water vending machine!

I’m still tired from Wednesday’s ride at Cowboy Trails. In all my mileage is way up; usually I take 20 ish minutes to mostly haul downhill at home and get picked up at the bottom by Mme Awesome who was walking up or a 30 minute trip around the essentially flat road that circles Lake Merrit. Neither ride is physiology tough; here, so far anyway from there, there is no shuttle, my rides are longer and I clearly have work to do.

Las Vegas is not just a city of gambling, 24 hour parties and general debauchery: there is a serious contingent of road and mountain bikers. Riding solo and in peloton, road bikers are all over the place once you get outside the city. At the Cottonwood Valley trailheads at prime riding time I have surely seen over $50k in bikes hanging out. Including what is being ridden? Who knows. (That said, I was the only biker at Cowboy Trails.) The truth is I could happily ride here for a long time with all there is to offer.