Sore Back

Arrrrgh...the sound I make when I bend around or over the wrong way. Last night I did one of the hardest rides I've done in a long while. It was Tuesday Night Worlds, which is always fast, and we had a wind out of the northwest at 12 mph, gusting to 21. Jonnene wasn't motivated to ride that evening and with the wind as it was she elected to stay home and relax. I needed to get some miles in since I did NOTHING over the weekend and there's a tour ride in Marshall, Texas this Saturday...might need to train up a bit.

The usual route for Worlds is a 29-mile loop southwest of Shreveport we call the Linwood Loop. The first six miles go due south which meant we had a sweet tailwind starting out but the rest of the ride was pretty much into the wind which wasn't so sweet. As we entered into the final four miles of that six-mile stretch, the speed never went below 30 mph...I remember moving up to the front at 32 mph one time to get around another guy and somewhere out there I maxed out at 35.2 mph. And I still got dropped! I ended up with four other teammates and we kept the pace as lively as we could until we had to turn into the wind. The rest of the time we mostly kept a 20-24 mph speed into that wind and we didn't enjoy it one bit. We caught JP halfway thru so that gave us one more guy to help with the paceline. But it was hard, pushing a lot of big gears, climbing hills with a headwind, going slow on downhills with a headwind, and trying to get back before it got dark. Including the cool-down part of the ride we averaged a tad over 21 mph for the night. I went home feeling really tired but generally pretty good. I woke up this morning with one heck of a pain in my lower back and I knew it was from the ride...pushing big gears bent over pulls on the gluts and those muscle go into the lower back. So there you go. Still hurts now but it'll be fine tomorrow.

I ran 4.7 miles this morning at an 8-minute per mile pace and my back let me know that it wasn't pleased. But my Achilles tendon in my left leg handled it pretty well (I've been dealing with a sore tendon the last few weeks and that's not pleasant either). Right now it feels very good, almost normal, but we'll see how it is 24 hours from now.

Got a new radio put in the truck today. How come new stuff always sounds so good? Like when I have the truck serviced it seems to run so well...or when you put new tires on the steering is like when it was new. Then you get used to it and take it for granted until the next time something else is done, and then it's all good again.