Outdoor riding / playing catch up

Hey all,

I had a great weekend of riding. Earlier this week I saw the weatherman(or woman) give us a good report promising sunny skies for the weekend. Chuckie gave me a ride to do on Saturday and on Sunday. Gotta ride outside while the riding is good our winter aint over!! So saturday I got my trainer tire changed put on my extra outdoor riding apparel and headed out the door. I headed out to Langdon first. There was extra gravel on the roads and a bit of water from some snow/ice run-off, but as soon as I got out of the city the roads were actually pretty nice. The temp was about 8-9 degrees and I made it to Langdon and kept going. There wasn't much wind as I could still cruise over 30 into it. Hit Strathmore, filled up the bottles with some gaterade purchased at the esso there,.... or is it petro. Oh well it doesn't matter. I had an interesting conversation with one of the gas attendants. She was outside having a breath of "fresh air" and started talking to me about maybe qualifying for the olympics? I don't know why I bothered, but I did manage to explain that one there is no olympic IM and two I'm not quite at that level. I think she caught it and wished me well saying she hopes I qualify this year!! So starting out again is always a bit tough, but the ride home was a bit quicker since I now had a bit of wind at my back. Made it home with a good average speed too, with out any hard riding.

Sunday I met Curtis and Greg near the corner of sarcee and Glenmore trail. We headed out there on the way to Bragg Creek. We should have met at Greg's, the shoulder there had lots of gravel on it so some of the time we had to ride on the yellow line. Oh well as soon as we got out of the city limits the shoulders cleared up and we could put our heads down and cruise not having to worry about gravel so much. Greg rode his aluminum silver bullet and didn't want to get into the aero position. I guess he figured we'd be cruising in easy to Bragg and back? I had other plans so I put my head down and got into a comfy yet steady IM pace. If he's gonna keep up he better get down in those aero bars!!! ha ha right Greg? Not much wind out on sunday either. On the way back Greg and I got into a nice pace line. We are pretty even right now in fitness so it worked well to trade off pulling 30 secs in front not hard but a steady push, then move over and let the other through to take over. If you guys have never pace lined on a tt bike you gotta do it!

Fast forward to yesterday I had a bit of trouble fitting in the workouts. The night before I waited till late to get my lil 30min recovery spin in and that made me not want to get up early to get one of my hard sessions done. Side note; Chuckie is pure evil some days giving me two hard sessions!! Oh well it was my fault for leaving them both for after work. It was hard, really hard. The first was the ride, indoors again cause the temp isn't quite high enough. Manged to get through it ok, not too hard aside from the last 10min @ 290W and 95Cad. That hurt a bit. But then a couple hours rest and off to the gym for an hour run 40min hard. I made it though!! and managed a pretty snappy pace too! That was late again, but I managed to get up this morning for a swim. So I'm caught up, I felt like I was slipping behind in my workouts, now all I have is a hour easy run tonight. Trust me my legs will need the easy pace and with Curtis along it should be fun! Lesson I learned this week(one that I'll probably have to relearn at times since I have so little motivation in the mornings) if there are two hard workouts, do one in the AM. Chuckie tells me it's ok now(my crazy training hours) but later he'll specify times. Ouch!! hee hee Over and out,

DP