Ring it up

I have my first structured training ride of the season under my belt. It took some doing and was accomplished in less than ideal circumstances but it happened. Yay for me. On top of that, this morning while waiting for B to wake up I did some cyclo-core work and some push-ups in anticipation of not riding today but when B got up she requested a trailer ride to school. Being the model dad that I am, I quickly agreed, got everything together and we hit the road. After dropping her off (less than a five minute ride), unhooked the trailer and TT'd it into the office. I have to admit, the route from her school to my office is awesome for a quick hard effort. It has a significant (for coastal maine) amount of uphill with just enough down and flat to allow a few quick breathers. Add to that a good shoulder and constant traffic and it makes for an ideal hard tempo effort for me. I've found that I usually do my best hard training on busy roads because I find myself going a bit harder for an audience. Turning it up to 11, if you will. For example, on Saturday, on my way to my parents I had to ride through downtown Augusta. It's not most people's ideal riding locale but I loved it because the traffic traveled just slightly faster than I could thus allowing me to try to keep up with traffic, add in a few rolling hills and a couple of high speed (on a bike) traffic circles and the result was me having my hr pinned in upper zone 5 for 10 minutes straight. Good stuff.

Those of you who have been racin rick fans for long (not likely) may remember that a couple of years ago I had a sweet Van Dessel single speed that I had used for commuting. The story behind it is that my brother bought it used and then I traded him a road bike that I wasn't using for it. Eventually, he began to miss it so I gave it back to him as a Christmas/birthday/christmas/birthday present. I now, of course, miss having it too. To rub things in a bit, Rus sent me this pic the other day of the shiny new red wheels he got. They're nothing fancy but for a meat and potatoes commuter bike, they are perfect. I miss my VanD. It's weird that such an inexpensive bike could stir such feelings.