349.8 Reasons to Cheer

Today concluded one of the best weeks of riding I have ever had. It's been at times unbearably painful, and at others incredibly easy-going. Today I have proved to myself that if you can put in the effort, you can truly achieve anything.

I have 349.8 resaons to cheer today...and 349.8 miles ridden this week.

To recap the last few days:

Friday I rode with Matt, a Junior majoring in Poli Sci and Religous Studies, on a sprint ride around Paoli. It turned out to be a bit of a long ride since we got lost. This map (below)

seemed to be clear enough, but just as I thought, it was easier said than done. Considering that many of the road intersections we turned on did NOT have street names, I fugured that we did pretty well.

Saturday I managed to drag myself out of bed and jump over 4 imobile bodies on my dorm floor. That's right, we had 6 people sleep in our dorm last night. Slick--let's never do that again.

Either way, after FINALLY getting out of the dorm and cutting my bike lock with a cable cutter because the lock mechanism seized up (I hate Masterlock...), I met Freshman Steve, Nick "The Pro", and Brian of TIAA-CREFF for a morning endurance ride.

Turns out it was raining and 43 degrees outside, so our planned 4 hours route became more of a 3 hour leisurely ride. It was good to recharge the batteries a bit, and Nick "The Pro" of course had hundreds of stories to tell from racing in Europe this year. Check out his team here. Regardless, we had a great time in the mucky steets north of Madison and I even got to try a new bike for a bit (and now I may be hooked...). The Fuji Professional Carbon, sz 58.

Mmmmmm......but I still think that the Tarmac looks a lot better!

I guess that I'll just have to make a choice--but either way it'll be pretty sweet.

Looks like I will be heading home next weekend to build up the Giant XTC composite, since the frame won't be at the shop until this Tuesday. Bring on the new stuff! Along with this crash training, I should be ready to KICK SOME ICEMAN ASS!!!

After studying a bit (okay, a lot), tommorow I'll take a ride to Blue Mound and do some fast hill intervals to finish up this crash training session. I'll probably do one more crash ride Monday morning for 1 hour, but after that, its 4 days of recovery followed by maintaing that peak.

Lets get ready to ride. Make sure to do your laundry, bike cloths smell bad after you've worn them for a couple days...in a row...