North End

Our women's team did the north end of the lake today. South to I-90, then across to Bellevue, north to Kirkland and up Juanita Drive. It was windy. We felt really fast through Kirkland when we had a tailwind to our backs. We decided to take it easy and head back on the Burke Gilman trail. Two of my teammates are racing cross tomorrow and didn't want to go too hard. I warned them that we would have to stop and pet the yellow cat half way down the trail. We went by slowly and didn't see him but then I looked behind me and saw that a pedestrian had lured him out with food. We circled back and both cats, Scampy, and his black and white friend, Orca were chomping down the food like they were starving. They are pudgy enough though that we know they are well cared for. We gave them some love and then headed home.

Turkey Day Ride

I went on the annual Thanksgiving day ride to benefit NW harvest. We had a good turnout with a variety of teams. It was fun to see everybody again. I don't get to see the racers from other teams much during the off season except in passing.

Faces of Cross

Check out my photo in the "Faces of Cross" photo collection by Matthew J. Clark. I did tell him I wasn't a cross racer but he wanted to take my picture anyway. :) It was pretty funny when my cross teammates discovered that my picture was in there.

http://homepage.mac.com/str8films1/MFG_Portraits/large-11.html

More good weather

Right now light rain with minimal winds is pretty good. It was 41 with light rain on Saturday but we were happy not to have 50 mph winds and the torrential rain that they have been predicting all week.

We had our team party on Friday night before the ride. It was fun to be with everybody off of the bike and meet people's spouses.

Sunday was more rain so I ended up doing a solo loop up the golden gardens hill. I saw some kyakers who were just getting out of the sound. It didn't look like the minded the weather at all. I've noticed that people are more friendly when they see you out in the rain.

computrainer night

We had computrainer night in the garage again. I had a couple of friends over for a real good sweat fest.

We did 3x8 minutes with a 15 second surge every 2 minutes and then back to tempo. I held the 8 min at 210-220 watts with the surges at least 240 watts. Very hard to settle back in to tempo pace after a surge but the surge itself is not hard.

My legs feel wobly now.

Training fun

Last Wednesday one of my new teammates came over and we did computrainer together in the garage. It was great to have a training buddy! Mark made up a workout for us and we did progressively harder 5 minute intervals. The last one was a real grind (220, 240, 250 watts)! We are going to do it again this week too.

Saturday was really cold. I checked the weather at 8:30 and Woodinville and Renton were still both below freezing. We played it safe and did a loop on Mercer Island again to be a little warmer. We got in some good pacelining practice. On the way home we went through the arboretum. I like to have the team sprint for the bridge at the end because it's good practice. I played "motor" and led them up to the sprint point. It was like doing a keirin on the track! Everyone had fun.

On Sunday I watched the cross races at Woodland Park. I had teammates in every race! I watched for about 5 hours! It was fun but cold! I had to run up and down the hills to keep warm. It was at Woodland Park which is a great venue for cross races. I hope they have more races there next year.


I watched with my friend Kari from the track and her dog Josie. Josie did a little dance every time she saw one of the racers from the velodrome. It was very cute!


My teammate Bendan was able to ride over these barriers on the uphill!



The crowds were big!

Edmonds Again

We managed a dry ride again today, despite the forecast for 80% chance of rain. Yesterday they predicted strong thunderstorms and they were completely wrong! I rode inside for nothing! And I got a flat on the trainer.

I rode with the guys up to Edmonds today. We took a different route back this time from last week. We traded off being ride leader because we each knew a different segment of the ride. It was a team effort. I had some shifting problems at the beginning but the guys fixed it and adjusted the derailleurs for me.

I really like the Edmonds ride. It has some good hills and nice scenery. The hill called Innis Arden is a leg buster though. If you go that route save some energy. It's as steep as the back side of cougar mountain but not as long. I'm looking forward to discovering more new routes out that way.

Last week I went to the Washington State Bicycle Association meeting for all of the racing team presidents. We heard the CEO of USA cycling talk, Steve Johnson. He told us about their vision for bike racing and how the local scene and the bigger picture were connected. It was interesting to hear about our sport from the national organizer's perspective.

Elechlons

Yesterday there was a 70% chance of rain. I thought we would be drenched for sure but there were only a few very light sprinkles. It was a great day!

It was windy as we crossed I-90 so I taught my teammates how to echelon to get a better draft in the side wind. They got the hang of it really quickly. You can really feel the difference on the bridge because you can get pretty strong winds. We practiced a regular pace line after that and had a nice smooth rotating line by the end of the ride.

No ride for me today, I have to go to the calendar meeting. We will decide dates for all of the road races for next year.