The Plan

For the last seven weeks I've been trying to balance that urgent need to get back to racing shape with the immutable pace of healing and the inadvisability of putting myself into situations that might result in an inopportune crash. The Plan, at least after the first couple of weeks, has been to ratchet up on a weekly schedule. I've been riding regularly for a couple of weeks now, but a lot of it has been kind of tentative. So I decided that this should be the week to get back to a more "normal" training routine. Maybe this weekend I'll even venture out to the Giro Ride.

It is really starting to feel like summer here in New Orleans. The morning temperatures are creeping up to around 80F, the humidity is high all the time, and the winds are mostly gentle except in the afternoon thunderstorms. Sometimes I wish for those thunderstorms to develop just because they tend to cool things off a bit. So this morning I didn't hold back too much on the long levee ride, and as I expected I felt like I was running a little low in the power department. I was taking pulls at the prevailing pace, which today was in the 25-26 mph range, but I definitely couldn't maintain the effort as long as I'd like. No big surprises there, I guess. Brooks was out riding his TT bike because his regular road bike is taking a FedEx trip to Boulder where he's going for a few days later in the week.

I've still got a lot of followup to do from the Tour de La. There are some photos I want to get up onto the website right away. The post-event reports have to be done and submitted, the results have to be uploaded to the USAC database, the LCCS scoring has to get done, and eventually all of the club race equipment cluttering up my basement needs to be reorganized and made ready for the next event. I've got a couple of big deadlines at work right now, though, so some of it may have to be on "hold" for a little while. Such is life.....