Wednesday Morning

My favorite thing in life right now - Cora Jane

Good morning! I didn't have any photos to go with this post, so it provides a great opportunity to show off my sweet little granddaughter! And really, isn't this better than a picture of Bill and/or Troy? I took a couple of them last night, but, and this is a complicated thing, Strava is down, which means I can't get those photos from Instagram.

Did I mention Strava is down? Horror or Horrors! We can't get our data from last night's ride, at least I can't. Now, our Neo-Luddites are in a great shape. They use stop watches. Forget Garmin! Forget Strava! Get a stopwatch! OK, the Neo-Luddites win this time. Strava will be up soon, and all of life will be OK again. For now, I wonder what I did last night, specifically on the Double TT Trouble segment.

Nine of us, if I remember correctly, rolled out of the church parking lot. Let's see, it was Roy, Troy, Jim, Tim, Rand, Bill, Scott, John and me. Rand turned back with tire trouble but found us later. We were going to do a new thing last night. Instead of usual hard 8 or 9 mile push to the country line, we would line up 10 miles out and do all 10 miles out and back in one continuous effort.

This was a great idea by Bill. It provides 20 miles of hard effort. Last night we did it individually. Being the slowest in the group, I went first. I think others took off about every 2 minutes. I was looking for a hard sustained effort of around 18-19 miles per hour. I think I did that. I will have it confirmed when Strava is back up. I think everyone else was better than 20 mph. Bill hammered it and is now the King of the Mountain on the segment (until Strava updates, this is the old data).

As usual, it was a good workout and a lot of fun. We ended up with 39 miles, followed by our trip to Wendy's. Stock-holder Tim G. came and enjoyed a Frosty with us. I think he was making sure his investment was backed by good service. He seemed pleased. The employees seemed nervous and eager to please, recognizing a distinguished customer was there.

This morning I plan to run 7 miles. I am coming off my biggest week yet of Ironman training. I had 16 hours and 20 minutes last week. I hope to make it to 20 hours in a few weeks for a few weeks. I am finding it hard to get there and to manage fatigue. I think Bill said something like this a few years ago: "Ironman training is a demanding mistress." Sounds about right to me.