Sunday, November 27, 2011

Thanksgiving week

Weekends w/out racing feel weird to me at this point. Gorging on obscene amounts of "holiday food" feels weird too; but so right.
I had this week scheduled as an "off" week of training (meaning no intervals) so I did a couple of fun rides and took an extra day off. Then we made the trip up to my parent's house for Thanksgiving. The Thanksgiving weekend is historically a weekend off of OVCX racing, which is fine due to the midweek travel and the multi-day feasting (leftovers, right?). It was nice to see the fam as my brother, his wife, my niece and their 2nd child (due in Feb) were all there. Highlight of the day was jumping on my parents neighbor's trampoline while Ramona lay in the middle of it and flopped around like a fish out of water. She had a blast. (I'm aware that not everyone is going to get the link referenced here w/out watching it all the way through)(also, I'm told there are pics of the aforementioned fun-ness, but I don't have them. My mom said she could print and mail them to me. If only information could be shared in an easy more efficient manner, you know, like fax).
Anywho, with no weekend racing, I wanted to get a long ride in Sunday. The weather was great Saturday, but it was "small business Saturday" for shoppers, so I needed to work (even though we were actually busier on "black Friday" than SBS and in reality had our best day of the week on Wednesday). Sunday was a 100% chance of all day rain. And the forecasters were dead-nuts on that one. In fact, I made a run to the nearest IDS box on Saturday to get a bunch of newspaper to put in my shoes on Sunday to dry them out. and it turned out to be a good things; it rained all day. I wanted to put in 3hrs, but I settled for ~2.5. I met up w/ local superstar Ryan Knapp on the way out of town and we rolled together for 45min or so then he turned off. As much as Id like to say he couldn't handle my blistering pace, he had done the Gravel Grovel race the day before and won by minutes over a quality field and was out for a recovery spin. It would have been a great day to turn in, but I really wanted a long ride so I kept on. The ride was fine, but 45deg and rain is hard on you. It eats away at your soul. But in endurance sport I truly believe there is value in forcing yourself to do things you don't want to do. That value is what refills the voids left in your soul from less-than-favorable conditions.
So this weekend is the finale of the OVCX for 2011 in Cinci-nasty. I'm looking forward to a good race, even though the conditions could be just about anything. I have to get through this week first though. I have my training planned, but I may need to shift days around if the forecast is accurate. Whatever, I guess I'll see.
As always, thanks for reading!

Oop! This just in: I received the pics mentioned above via (e)mail. Whodathunk?

We had fun. It's good that she enjoys being repeatedly knocked over than bounced around like popcorn. Because I wouldn't have enjoyed it otherwise!

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