Up to speed

So much has happened since my last post. Here is the recap. Last Friday I bought a new house, which meant I had to sell the 2 I have currently. And with the tremendous amount of stress it put me under, my training started to go to crap. Last Saturday I got in a 50 minute training session on the bike trainer which should have been a 3 hour ride at minimum. Sunday, I was supposed to run, but instead I was painting and laying tile at my house in Alta Loma. Monday I blew off for no good reason and by Tuesday I decided that I needed to get back to working out, if for no other reason than as a stress outlet. So Tuesday and Thursday I got 1 hour spin sessions on the bike trainer. Then came the phone call. Thursday afternoon Dan Christensen called me. Dan is the guy who owns Foothill Cyclery, where I buy all of my bike stuff. He raced the California 1/2 Ironman last Saturday and had a respectable race time. In fact, he bettered his previous best time and was a bit faster than my best time. Dan loves to instigate rivalry and he and I go back and forth a lot. We are pretty darned equal on the bike. He is a better swimmer and I have a better 1/2 marathon time than him. I am pretty sure I can beat him in a head-to-head race and he feels that he can beat me. To say the least, when we do race, we will both end up in a lot of pain. We will find out July 30th in Sonoma at the Vineman 1/2 Ironman race.
Yesterday I put in an awesome ( and I think Dan would even say so) 1500 meter swim and a short 30 minute run. Tomorrow I plan a 2 hour run and today my friend Joe and I put in an epic ride.
Maybe next time I'll read the course description before I head out on the ride. Yesterday Joe Vasquez suggested we do the Rotary ride at the Tour of Redlands. Having done the Tour of the Canyons in the past, I thougth I knew what was in store for me and when he said it was only 60 miles, I thought to myself, wow, I even get 12 miles less than years past. Was I in for a surpise. The course t-shirt said "Savage" about the course ( I saw that 30 miles into the ride) and the description says 5'000 feet of climbing with grades up to 22%. In short, this ride goes down as one of the best courses I've ridden and I had a blast. Many times on many stretches of this course I found my front tire lifting off the ground while my legs begged me to get off the bike and walk.