The rain is nice, but...

I guess given the choice of riding or having rain ... I'd choose the rain. I didn't ride today (Monday) in part due to choosing to sleep, but had I gotten up, the rain would have stopped me. I do have my trainer, so I can ride in doors, but I just haven't gotten to the place where I'm ready to do that again. So, for now I will just miss a couple rides. Today was supposed to be intervals.

Tomorrow is the group ride. If it gets rained out, then I'll likely ride on the trainer instead as that will be two days in a row and my harder days.

Last week I got 4 rides in. The Sat ride was my regular with the addition of the Valley View Lane loop - which I think I'm going to keep as it has some hard parts and some fun faster parts too.

Health wise eating is going OK. I'm just starting to get a little tired of my normal meals. So, after about 5 weeks of very similar eating - it's starting to not sound so appealing. I guess it's time to expand my menu. Not sure what yet, but I'm thinking about it...

We went by Sun & Ski Sports this evening with the family after dinner - kids eat free at Spaghetti Warehouse on Monday nights. It's a fun store to shop in as they have a pretty good selection of higher end sporting goods and knowledgeable staff:

- I was able to buy some bearing for my wife's skates.

- I was also able to ask the guy in the bike section what he does for nutrition and hydration on long or hard rides over a couple hours. 

They sell many different brands of 'gu' and related products. I bought a few different ones to try: a GU, a CLIF Shot and a CLIF Shot Bloks. I already have some Clif bars. His routine included the caffeinated stuff for half of them and I'm going to try the ones with out caffeine as my starting point. He also only drinks water as the Gatorade type drinks up set his stomach, as they do mine too. So, it was nice to get some info from someone else in addition to what's available on line.

- My two youngest enjoyed some 'hide-n-seek' time ... 

- I also bought a single bike tire to have on hand as they had them on sale (I've been riding Continental Grand Prix 4000 s tires and have been very pleased with them).

My third Garmin Forerunner 305 came last week (2nd replacement as my units have come unglued) and I was able to use it on my Saturday ride. Nothing to significant to report. The one notable was the part of the return trip where I will often give maximum effort: there was a wind from the south, so my max was just under 36 and the avg was 32. But the neat thing for me was seeing my HR at 185 at the end. I've not seen 186 or higher since before my heart problems, so I in a split second decided to keep riding and see if I couldn't get my HR up just one more beat. I rode for about 10 seconds longer and finally had to back off - never saw that next rate, but it was neat to push for an extended time 10+ seconds at my max HR. I'm thinking I'll probably see it sometime in the next few weeks of training and preparation for the Waco ride.  :-) (That's kind of fun for me to think about.)

Life continues to be full and just making time for blogging these days is challenging. Which is why I've not been as regular in my postings. I will try to be responsive to comments though - so please leave your thoughts, comments, questions or statements .. :-)