Okay, so part two of the Pug trip report never materialized. Something with distractions and a little thing called Facebook. It goes kind of like this though:

We rode out of Cedar Falls to Eldora while my achilles got worse and worse. Sometimes high cadence on the pedals helped, sometimes low. We left Eldora and rode through the wind farm North of Roland stopping frequently to rest/stretch my ankle. Just after dark we arrived in Ames and I subsequently took the next week off from running and any serious biking. After that week off my Achilles improved significantly and I haven't had any problems since. I have been stretching more than in the past though.

Since then I've been focusing on the Arrowhead 135. We've had good snow up until this last week and I'm more prepared than ever. Not that that guarantees anything.

I've done two ski races to prepare for the AHU. The first, on December 19th was the Tuscobia Ultra. 75 miles of mostly flat snowmoblie trail in Northern Wisconsin. I finished, just barely, with bloody blisters on my feet. Since then I've lost a toenail and gotten new boots that fit a lot better. I actually tried to drop out of the race with eight miles to go, but since there was no cell phone coverage and Tim, the race director, wouldn't let me give up when I saw him I managed it. There was also something about hallucinations in the middle of the night, but anyway... The second race was Lance's Triple D on January 9th. 50k of flat snowmobile trail from Dyersville to Dubuque. No problem. The new boots work.

The Arrowhead is in one week and I'll try to get a race report up in a reasonable amount of time.