Busy!

I've unfortunately been so busy lately that updating the blog slipped off the priority lists. I thought I'd post some quick snippets of what's been happening recently.

I felt like superman on a club ride a couple weeks ago. The weekend of racing in Rochester and Auburn brought a surge in fitness. I've been riding it and spending time on the time trial bike and doing a killer hill loop near my house. Each time up the climb takes 13-14 minutes, with about 20 minutes of tempo riding to get back down around to the base of the climb again. My climbing legs are beginning to come back.

I did some recon on the new road course for the Owasco Stage Race coming in nine days. The road course is a beast. It's going to be great. It's the best I've ridden on since the old course in the defunct Killington Stage Race. Seriously, this race is going to rock. In the 59 mile cat 4/5 race alone, there are six major climbs with a total of about 7 miles of climbing, some of it very, very steep. It's going to be a suffer fest!

Sprockids, a mountain biking program for kids 10-14 that my wife runs, along with help from other adult volunteers and me, started up last week, and will occupy two nights a week through August.

My almost 94-year-old grandma is not doing well, so I've made a couple trips to Binghamton for visits this week. She's in the hospital with pneomonia and comfortable, but the outlook is not good.

I had an esophageal endoscopy on Monday to check for gastric reflux that often accompanies asthma. The "amnesia medicine" they mix in with the IV drip sedative worked a little too well for me. I remember about two minutes worth of the three hours or so that followed the five-minute procedure. The conversation with the doctor afterwards is totally gone, and I'm still piecing together images from the late breakfast at the diner. At 9:00 in the evening, I realized I had no memory of leaving the doctor's office, the ride home, and there was some medicine on the table and I had no idea what I was supposed to do with it. Very strange sensation. In any case, everything worked out fine with no real problems. My asthma itself is doing quite well with the new inhaled steroids I'm taking (don't tell WADA) and I'm breathing well on the bike and I can turn a bigger gear longer before the burn starts to come in.

Watching the tour has been great, although I've been able to catch about 15 minutes of each stage so far.

We've also spent quite a bit of time in the flower garden making the final weeding push. I've torn up some burdock that had roots the length of the Mississippi, sat on an ant hill without knowing it, and waged war on pervasive ground cover.

With all that going on, plus trying to cram in a couple training sessions now and again, the blog has been slipping. Hopefully there'll be more soon!

See you on the road.