Leaving on a Jet Plane. .. . well in an Excursion

Heading out to Colorado tomorrow for some snow and food. I will take the whole week off from training and do nothing but eat. Sounds like a plan!!!!

Quick post for this weekends adventures. Earlier in the week, I had the wonderful idea to see if we could ride in Coach Greg's garage and suffer through whatever workout he thought of. He sent out a 3 hour workout to see what I thought. . Sufferfest was the word that came to mind.

We had a solid group, though not a lot of people showed up. . as you see in the picture, the dark, humid, smelly garage just doesn't seem that appealing to that many people. :) Those who mad it were, Scott, Pepper, Pepper's daughter, Dave Corwin and Coach Greg.

Looks fun doesn't it!!?!?!?!? Pic is from my Blackberry. .. so sorry for the quality. We spent 3 hours sweating like pigs and watching American Flyer. . .

Saturday night we had all the family over and Amy's friend Shannon was here from Portland on her way to Spain. We had a great dinner and a good time together.

Sunday morning I wasn't feeling like doing much running, and thought about doing 10 and calling it a day. I am just getting over a cold and it was cold out and blah blah blah. .. I started off slow and just didn't have what I did the week before. . . but we all have days like that, right?!?!?

At the 14 mile mark I decided to suck it up and finish, because it is always easy to quit, and I am not taking the easy way out anymore.

Got 19 miles in and "loved" every minute of it. I strongly believe that the days where we don't feel great and don't want to be there, are the days that we need to keep pushing, even if it isn't our best day. 19 miles is a long way no matter how you look at it. . and I got it in. Can't take that away. . .

Well, we are off in the morning. . so everyone take care this week, train hard/race hard. . while I am eating donuts and drinking Dr Pepper.

Later!

February????

I need to start taking pictures at some point. .. I know. .. :)

WOW! I must say, that heading out for a ride Saturday morning, it didn't feel like the normal February day. . . No, the temperature was 55 degrees at 7:15 AM and it only got better from there. I rode up and met the guys at White Oak Plaza in Blue Springs. There were 5 of us all together, apparently no one else go the memo that we were going to get a taste of April in February. We headed south on 7 Highway but were shortly stopped because someone (either on purpose or accident) left about 40 framing nails in the median. 5 bikes and 40 nails and you no something has to give. . . Randy got a flat and while he was fixing that Dave and I went back to the nail deposit and threw them all in the ditch, so the next group (I am positive there would have been more) didn't ride through them and experience what we did.

After fixing the flat we headed down 7 to Colbern and then wandered through Lees Summit till we hit Todd George road that took us south to Greenwood. We took a right on 150 Highway (we need to find an alternate route) and then headed over to Ward Road that took us up to our pit stop Lees Summit Bike Stop. Curt was there and nice enough to open the doors for the team at 9:00 so Randy could restock on tubes/cartridges and get some air in the tire. Curt even did a wheel truing of my back wheel and we were off again. We headed north through Lees Summit and took the outer road off of 291 till we hit Woods Chapel and then headed the long way around Lakewood. At Lake Jacomo I took off down the outer road to head home and the rest went through the park back to White Oak. It was a great day of cycling all around with some surges, good hill climbs and basically good moods all around. I think everyone was loving the weather and just being outside again!!!

Sunday, I met up with the normal run group, but this time we had the honor of having the Lees Summit/Blue Springs Tri/Run group meet up with us. I think we had 12 guys in all and that was without about 3-4 of the other regulars. . . it made for a great run and the time flew by as we got to chat with some new people and just talk about the upcoming season. Everyone got in between 12 and 20 miles and even though it wasn't as warm as it was on Saturday, the 40 degree weather was a nice change from the 12 degree weather that we were accustomed too!!!!

2 Gears, 3 hours with baby and then 16.4 to cap it off

Here is a little recap of the weekend . . .

Decided late Friday night that I needed to ride early Saturday morning instead of with the whole crew Saturday afternoon. I am the type of person that likes to get the workouts for the day started in the morning, not at 1:30 PM. So I sent Dave C. a text to verify he was riding in the early morning and to get the ok to tag along. Saturday morning I took off from home at about 7:15 AM with 32 degrees, wind and a little frost/ice on the pavement. I could tell right away that the route we had selected would put us in the wind's furry on the return trip. .. but Dave's only response to that, was "yeah, it will be tough". Understatement of the year. . . . On our way out to Buckner, I heard a snap come from Dave's bike and shortly after the statement "my cable snapped, I only have two gears". So from there on out, Dave had his 50/34 in front and the 12 cog in the back. For a normal rider that would have meant just doing their best to get through the day, but to Dave it meant . .I will ride harder and faster and show you how much better I am than you (in a good way of course).

After our turn at Buckner to head back to Independence/Blue Springs we were met with the onslaught of the West/Southwest wind. . . Speeds quickly dropped to around 17 mph (if we were lucky) and the brutal pedaling began. We finally made the turn off where I would head home and Dave would return to Blue Springs and I asked if he wanted a ride home, he said he would be fina and turned off to head up Crenshaw, which is one of the steepest hardest hills that we have. . . with of course only two gears. Dave is a cycling champion.

Saturday I volunteered to watch Kloden for about 3 hours so Amy could go with her sister and friends to see a movie and out to lunch. Kloden and I had a good time together and he slept for about half of the time in 30 minute segments and ate for about 20 minutes. All in all we had a good afternoon together.

Sunday morning's run was slated for the Blue River (probably one of the least nice places to run in the city) and I decided that 16 miles was the order of the day. Long story short, I got 16.4 in and averaged just under 8 minute miles. I am happy to see my run getting stronger, just hope i tall pays off come summer. :)