Into the Week

It's been a tiring week here at mi casa (my house). We're watching a lot of the Olympics, actually more than I thought we would. I was wowed by the opening ceremonies that the Chinese put on but my favorite is still the Sydney Olympics of 2000. It felt a little more genuine (if you take out the modern pop music they tossed in) and was of a more hearty style. The competition has been pretty good, wished they showed more of the cycling (of course!) and I saw nothing of the time trials. I doubt NBC will show much, if any, of the track cycling.

I've spent this week doing my workouts for the time trial in September following a workout plan that a friend here put together for me. The first week is always the worst and I can feel it in my legs. Last night was five single-kilometer efforts to get my top-end speed up. After Tuesday night's speed-fest with the team, I could never get my legs spinning fast enough to get past 27 mph on any of the efforts. With this workout I only get Sundays off with easy, high cadence rides on Mondays and Fridays. The rest of the week is speed and endurance work...oh, joy. Tuesdays and Thursdays are on my road bike on the team rides where I'm supposed to sit in and treat it like a motor-pace training effort, leaving Wednesdays and Saturdays as solo go-fast rides.

The Wife got the new triathlon/time trial bike she'd been wanting for quite a while. A nice Kuota K-Factor (you can see one here - click on #3 in the selection box and you'll see the color she got) and it's a sweet looking bike. She test-rode it for a week and decided to go with it, but got the aerobars changed out for something she liked better and a different saddle. She's now in the process of getting the kinks worked out on fit and other little things so that it rides perfectly. That usually takes a few rides to several months to get it right but it'll be ready to go by the time triathlon season comes around next year. It'll get it's first taste of action when we go to the TT championships in a few weeks.