Thoughts on Training and Competing through June

The problem with the individual time trial being held on familiar courses is that you're always comparing yourself to your personal best. At our weekly Tuesday night event in Cleves, OH, I'm pretty consistently a minute to maybe 30 seconds off my best. Thats a lot of time to make up over ten miles. I guess you go every week hoping to hit the right conditions with the right peak in fitness. The other factor affecting my ride is managing the event. Riding alone 90 minutes before everyone else removes the motivation of having others on the course. It shouldn't matter, but I know it does. Riding the Blue Streak in Dayton is much more fun when all I have to do for that event is show up and ride, and hopefully pass a lot of other riders.

The silver at the state tt extends my streak of 15 years winning a medal. Gold is always more fun, especialy when they hand out a jersey for the first time, but given my motivation (pretty low) and training prior to the event (had a full week off due to travel), and being at the top of the age bracket, I'll take it. I do find the 40k to be too long. Much prefer something around ten miles. The Senior Olympic tt's of 1-6 miles are looking pretty inviting.

I have a new coach at Carmichael as my previous coach moved on to a new career in the financial world. I could have used this as a chance to get out of the contract but I still like having someone to report to and to set my calendar. The ten hill repeats last week were also a lot of fun.

Overall, training power is in the upper end of all of my wattage zones and I've ridden ten centuries with a couple above 120 miles. The 217 Tour de Kentucky on September 10 will be here before we know it.