Training

I had a pretty good week of training this week. I had a bad start to the week with a lot of crap going on, but I was able to put that stuff behind me and focus on work and riding. Katie was out of town so being on the bike, or being at work was way better than sitting around at home by myself.

The weekend started out with a pretty great meeting with Mesa about the end of the year and going into next. They were pretty happy with how things went and are interested in keeping things going. Great way to start off the weekend in my opinion!

I had work on Saturday morning and the girls are doing a very good job in the gym right now. We are getting close to the season so they are working hard on getting their routines put together. The kids are for the most part on track for another successful year.

After work I had a long ride scheduled. 5 hours, with a lot of different types of intervals thrown in there. I had a couple long intervals at the start of the ride and my normal location for those was full of people. I have a loop at Forest Park that I can ride pretty well, but they were launching hot air balloons from the park this weekend, and the launch brings thousands of people. So with my schedule already a bit tight I needed to find a place close, and fast, and I just happened to remember we have a velodrome in the city! I have never been to the velodrome, but it has been given a nickname of Mr. Bumpy-face, and it turned out to be a good description. Even with the bump surface, it was still very fast, and fun. After that I pretty much crisscrossed all over the city to get what I needed to get done, done.

The next day Grant and I departed on a long ride out to Hermann, MO to try and watch a few of our friends race in the Hermann Cross race. We jumped on the Katy Trail in Creve Coeur and pretty much just hammered for hours. We made one stop to get water but we made great time. When we were about 20 miles from Hermann we decided to jump on 94 to get a little feeling back into our butts and hands. The trail is a little tougher than cruising on the street for hours. I thought that we were going to have a really nice flat and easy, but we ended up hitting some pretty decent sized climbs. For a few climbs we were pretty bummed about the climbing, but really it helped with waking up our bodies after the 3 and a half hours.

About a mile from our destination I cracked. I ran out of water about 10 miles earlier, and did not do a good job of eating the whole time. But luckily we were right at the finish and we pulled right up to a restaurant and scarfed down some burgers and cokes.

After we ate we headed over to the race and watched out teammates Bj, Jose, Luke, Mark, and Chris destroy themselves racing that silly CX race. I for sure like to watch but I have yet to catch that bug.

I am feeling pretty focused right now, and am already thinking about the next season. Not only in bike racing but in gymnastics too. Everything looks good coming up.