Shopping!! I dropped in at Bicyclinghub.com's brick store today. I got some short-short periwinkle blue Castelli shorts and an awesome top. LOVE the top. Makes me look like I have boobs! And what's not to like about that? I think I'll break in the shorts today. One thing I noticed on the TNR is that as I looked at butts up the line (that's RIGHT I do...), it looks like half of us ride for 'team Castelli' with little scorpion logos all lined up on the left hip. So me too. :) And not so expensive. Nice!

Ride and swim today.

Ride: "Effin' A!!!! I am taking that bike back!!!" Umm... Sorry I dropped you sweetie. :) He wasn't actually mad. He's proud of me for making huge progress. 50 pounds ago 17 was really really fast and he'd have to wait for me. Today, battling a hella crosswind, I did 21-22. Yay me! I did drop him though. And worse, I made it look easy. I may have to do dishes for a while.

Swim: Practicing what my swim coach says is way harder that it seems like it would be. I can only mentally "watch" two or three things at once. He gave me more than that. Shoulder shrug, elbow up, drag fingers, hold breath, blow out and breathe early, full catch-up, feet together... I sorta got most of the upper body stuff. Who knows wth my feet were doing down there. Maybe nothing. LOL!

Friday and Rest Day!

I started listening to Three Cups of Tea (audio book) while knitting this evening. Fascinating story. It starts out with a guy who was on a team who attempted K2,  one guy on the team got pulmonary edema, in rescueing him the main character and one other guy gave up their own bids for the summit.  The main character ends up recuperating in a little village in Pakistan, and promises to build them a school. I'm only as far as him raising some money and going back to the village. He apparently has continued his mission and has built something like 50 schools in Pakistan. So far it's really interesting. He is a person who is completely NOT about stuff. That alone is fascinating to a packrat like me. He sold everything he owned to afford plane fare and living expenses while he built the school. Amazing.

In between knitting rows and changing 'book' CDs, Kona and I played tennis ball. I throw it, she occasionally brings it back, or comes back to pester me about getting it out from under whatever piece of furniture she's lost it under. Good times. :)

Thursday Night Ride - can't wait!

Man, I LOVE looking like this. :) I just learned everything I could possibly want to know about concrete quality, strength ratings, water:cement ratios, and gravel quality from the quality control guy at the tower construction site a block away from my office. As a bonus, I haven't had to touch a door all day. I rawk. :) Heh!

Thursday Night Ride

I.Have. Never. Worked. This. Hard. Before.Ever. Holy carp. I am so tired. It is 9:30. I'm going to bed. More tomorrow. Fun ride.

We got to the park and our regular ride leader wasn't there. Fill in was the guy who I'm pretty sure intentionally dropped me last week. (I grabbed his wheel, he increased speed, so did I, repeat, repeat, then he swerved out and sprinted hard. This appeared intentional. Perhaps not.) Other than me, hubby, Kit, Yellow-shirt new? guy and Jim, the 9 other riders were all FAST. On a really nice day. I'm glad I didn't think on this coincidence too long.

There were at least two newbies there. I felt bad for them. The chick was probably 40 pounds overweight, and the guy with her went to ask the ride leader what our pace was as they "hadn't been on the bikes for a few months". I really wanted to tell him that it wasn't going to work out and that they should try Monday, Tuesday or Sunday for a while first. But he didn't ask me and our ride leader sorta just said "Uh, we regroup." We did, but we didn't wait for them. Seemed kinda mean. Shoulda just laid it out.

Of course, the "cruise" over to Rocky Butte was unusually fast. The trip up wasn't so bad, I PRd by 1 second, and was about 30 seconds behind hubby. For once I was someone's pace booty up the hill. Kit was happy to have kept me 50yds ahead of her the whole way. Good for her! She's about 10 years older than me I think, and like me good on the flats, and slow on the hills (comparatively speaking).

Hubby got a flat at the bottom of Rocky Butte (on the way down) and had ride leader tell me to go ahead, he'd try to be at the post office to meet us. Of course, today I don't have my phone.

The ride out Fremont was tough. I didn't get the jump, so tailed Mike and someone else out at about 29. We truned the corner to come back, and I made it my life to be on Mike's wheel. Successfully. However, as we got to the little roller hill where I usually die, I figured out that I don't necessarily die there, they sprint there. All of a sudden Mike and I are a rock in a river of bikes going by. Sheesh.

No hubby at the Post Office. Called him on Mike's phone. His spare popped, he had to walk home in his cleats, and now needs new ones. Crap. So I'm on my own. You know, there is a lot of emotional security knowing that there is someone that will wait for you and make sure you're okay.

We headed out Airport Way FAST - Instead of 20-24, today it was 26-29. I learned that I cannot hold 29 for a long stretch even in a peloton. Fortunately by the time I was giving out, it was the sprint, so off they went, and I could watch them go and catch up at the turnaround. I think I need to drop some weight. Sigh.

Usually, on the way back, we cruise a bit slower. Nope! Not today. Fortunately we had to stop at a couple lights - sometimes that's GOOD!!! Sped by IKEA, and turned onto cornfoot. No 20-22 here. Why do that when you can go 25 and wear the chick out???? At least I can hang onto 25. I got dangerously close to the front though. I can't lead out at that pace. Not a chance. So when the wheel ahead pulled out, I did too, and caught the back. Worked out okay.

I finished the ride and headed home. Wow.  Just a little increase in speed is seriously a LOT of work.

I'm really going to be glad to see July. I'm tired of OT, software testing and getting home late. Blech.  I did get my hair cut though - now I'm hot again. Heh!

My books on bike racing came in. Can't wait to read them. Not tonight though. Time for bed.

Got off work later even than I'd planned. Instead of racing today, hubby and I took a little spin up Rocky Butte. Now that I have this new cyclometer with cadence, I'm endlessly fascinated by how fast my feet are going around. It's a sickness. Anyway, I read somewhere (Bicycling Magazine probably) that I'm supposed to be spinning at around 90-100 (is it rpm?). An interesting concept, but until now, not one I could actually test.

It turns out that quite often I was doing about 92-94 anyway. Other times, not so much. I'll go along grinding it out at 65 or so if I'm not paying attention.   Anyway, I tried to spin at 90-ish up Rocky Butte - which for the record is about 1/2 mile up, 1/4 mile flat, then 1/4 mile up to the top. About 400 feet of vertical rise I think. (We didnt' take the Garmin this time.)

Spinning went well. I mentally thanked my awesome trainer that I could use the third gear of my new compact crankset to spin YAY ME! and also worked on relaxing my shoulders, not clenching up my feet, and doing my circles with flat feet, not pointy toes.

Went down the other side of Rocky Butte and went to go to more hills. We live on kindof a ridge so most roads are downhill from our house. There is a particularly quiet section that runs right up the hill. Prescott (of Thursday Night Ride fame) is at the bottom. Sandy Blvd is at the top. Since Sandy runs diagonally, one end of the route has the shortest hill section (but the steepest) and the other end is the longest. Tonight we went down and came back up 79th, 78th, 77th, 76th, and 75th.

Not the hugest workout in the world, but a nice burn  for the last section of each hill. We'll have to do that again. That is also a good route for running hill repeats.

Tomorrow I become HAWT again as I get a much needed haircut. My hair guy is awesome. His apron says, "Your hair sucks. I can fix it." Makes me laugh every time I see it. He rocks.

My swim lesson went really well. As I suspected, I was doing a fair number of things wrong, but since I haven't been swimming all that long (actual lifetime swimming time I think is about 3 months of 2-3 times/week). So my suckage is just more ignorance and lack of practice. He gave me 3 things to work on, one at a time, and it sortof 'took'.

Ironically, I spend my trainer sessions working VERY hard to NOT shrug my shoulders up on my various upperbody sets, and apparently the key to making my stroke work is a sortof shoulder shrug. That's funny. I'm never going to know what the bleep I'm doing. :) It was fun though and now I can't wait to go try it again and practice. I need to get a kickboard.