Slacker

I'm a total slacker and haven't updated my Live Journal for a while. Maybe I just have nothing to say.

My brain is running low on memory, so I can only remember back to last weekend.

Saturday: The snow wasn't looking too good, so I decided to stick around town and go for a ride with the Peloton Cycling team. Unbeknownst to me, only two of the team members were going to be there and they decided to leave 45 minutes late. That would have been fine but since they didn't know I was coming, I didn't know this plan. Whoops. So when I arrived at the meeting place and so nobody I decided to go ride with Christine for a while. One of the things planned for the team ride was a 30 minute time trial, so I split off from Christine for a bit and did one myself. The purpose is to gauge your lactate threshold heart rate limit for use in training. This particular test is one suggested by Joel Friel (author of some good training books) and used on his website (which is a Peloton team sponsor), www.trainingpeaks.com. For what it's worth, my average heart rate over the last 20 minutes of the test (which is what you're supposed to measure) was 180. We ended up being out longer than planned (2.5 hours, ~40 miles), but Christine stayed out with me the entire time. It makes such a huge difference sometimes to have someone to ride and chat with, so I'm super thankful she changed her plans and rode with me instead of going climbing.
Saturday evening was the Peloton team meeting. There was one more of the Cat 3 racers I hadn't met yet, so it was nice to finally meet him. There's only one other Cat 4 on the team besides me, which kind of sucks. That's all the more incentive to upgrade quickly I guess, but if all the cat 3's are as strong as the ones on our team, I'm doomed to have my butt kicked for a while when I upgrade.

Sunday: Again the snow looked questionable (be quiet Annette), so I stayed home for some more riding. This time it was with a group that I hadn't ridden with in quite a while, and we rode from Loveland to Lyons. The temperature was pretty good, but the wind really picked up. It's a great pleasure to ride with such intelligent cyclists. When we were facing a headwind we formed a good tight paceline, with each person taking a brief pull at the front before rotating to the rear. When the headwind turned to a crosswind as we turned a corner, we strung out across the road in an echelon without even barely breaking formation. When the wind really picked up on the way back, we had a pretty solid rotating paceline going. After riding with people who were not at all interested in riding efficiently, this was like a dream. The full ride was about 60 miles and we were all pretty beat an wind-blown by the end, but I'd say it was worth it.

Monday-Wednesday: Blech, work! What can I say? It's work. I've been tracking down some problems in our audio circuit that are really driving me nuts. It's a good thing I didn't look at the snow report before I went to work this morning, otherwise I would have been "forced" to go play in the powder. I only hope it keeps snowing so I can get in some good back country riding this weekend.