And the week begins....

This morning's ride was an easy affair. Nine showed up and the pace stayed in the 22-23 mph range on the parkway. When it came time to take my pull, I didn't ramp it up very much and barely stayed over 24 mph the whole time...I saw no reason to make everyone work too much to keep up. I did a quick 1.2 mile (2 kilometers) run after I got back, doing it about a minute faster than I had just seven days earlier. That was a surprise.

Jonnene is starting her second week at work but she'll be busy all day...an hour's swim practice at LSUS, work all day, and a PT patient to work with tonight after work. Then, if she wants, she could go to a ladies-only bike repair seminar at the local bike shop later. She might want to sleep late tomorrow morning! She is also in training mode for a triathlon in early August and will most likely do two tri's during July as part of the training (Jefferson, TX and Dallas, TX).

I'm looking at spending most of the rest of the summer training up for the district time trials in September, with a goal to break an hour in the 40 kilometer distance (24.8 miles). I've never done it and I'd like to do it at least once in my life. It's tougher as you get older. I think I'll do the Texas district age-group championships in early August to see how the training is going, plus a couple of smaller time trials in Monroe and Shreveport. I might do a road race in Tyler, Texas in July but who knows?

I also have a time trial that I'll be race director for on July 7th. With less than two weeks to go, I have to get things together and get 'er done. It shouldn't be a problem to run the actual event, just getting prepped will be the big deal. And I'll have to reserve a port-a-let!

It was a slow weekend for me. I opted not to do the Tour de Louisiane in south Louisiana due to overall costs, time constraints, doggies, and other stuff. However, members of my team did make it down to Covington and they did pretty well. We took 1st and 7th in the GC in the Cat. 1-2-3 stage race, and got 3rd, 9th, and 10th in the Cat. 4's. A most excellent result and I applaude the guys on their success! If I had gone, I would have done the Masters 35+ races and based on the results, I think I could have finished 15th or 16th overall...all things being equal. I would have done pretty well in the TT stage based on the times I saw, and then it would have depended on my fitness in the road and criterium stages.