2nd half of summer

My summer has really been divided into two halves plus a little at the end. The first half was spent writing a few papers and getting ready to teach. The second half was very busy and spent finishing a paper and sending it to a journal and teaching. Tomorrow I am heading to NC to get Nici and head back to TX with her. It has been a long summer with her working in NC and me working in TX. It is amazing to think that we just had our 4th anniversary on Thursday. It seems like yesterday that we got married.


While I am not looking forward to summer being over I am looking forward to Nici being back in TX with me. I will still have 2 weeks until I have to start teaching in the fall and about a week until I will have to be back in the lab full time.

I had hoped to get 1000 miles in on the bike and a tt and a MTB race but I settled for 800 miles and no racing. It is odd that about the times that the races came around my legs were feeling pretty weak but afterwards they were feeling better. This last week I was able to make it to the KOW ride (race) and I stayed on the lead group much longer than usual. I was able to stay at the front and watch a bunch of cat 1 and cat 2 racers play out team tatics. Amazingly I am a member of one of the two teams that was controling the ride. When I saw a teammate being pulled back to the group form a break away, I came very close to attacking and trying to form a break of my own. I quickly realized that I was doing everything that I could to simply stay with the group so attacking was out of the question. At least my head knew what the right thing to do was, even if my legs could not do it.

Hotter than Hell is coming up and despite my plans to not do it this year I am ready for another shot. Hopefully I can finish in under 4 hours this year. I was very close last year so maybe with my legs starting to come around I can do it.

Well I am off to North Carolina in the morning and I can't wait to see my wife and not have to just talk on the phone.
North Cakallacky here I come!

A tale of two rides

It is amazing how different two rides in the same week can be. A few weeks ago I was planning on doing my first time trial as a way to get back into racing in a way that would be very unlikely to result in a crash. The weekend before I had done some very good hard rides and my legs were feeling good. I was unable to do my usual Monday night recovery ride because I got stuck on campus later than I should have been. By Wednesday I went out on my usual KOW (king of Wednesday) ride (race) and my legs felt horrible. I got dropped much earlier than I had wanted. After a slow ride home I decided that it was not worth the $40 and getting up at 4am on Saturday to drive 2 hours to go to a 40K time trial just to come in dead last.

That Saturday I got up to do my usual ride and felt much stronger than I expected. In fact I stayed on to the lead pack about 10 miles longer that usual. My best Saturday ride the year!

I was disappointed with not racing that day until I looked at the time for the cat 5 racers and the winning time was around 1 hour. I know that I could not have finished in 1 hour so I felt ok with my decision. Hopefully some consistent training over the next couple of months will put me in good shape for a possible TT in the fall.

I have decided to give the Hotter than Hell another shot. After last years ride I figured that I had checked it off my list and was not planning on going back but I am getting than itch to go again. Plus a number of my friends are planning on going so I can't pass it up.

One of my riding friends is planning on making his racing come back (to a cat 3) next year and will be training to do so. I am going to try and put a training schedule together for us and get my self in back in racing shape so when I can start racing again I will be able to get to a cat 3 in a season.

Enough for now, time to go to sleep and attack the last week of being in TX without Nici.