When'd it get so god damn hot in the South.

Shoulda seen it coming, but Summer is here. We hid from it up here in the mountains for a little while....but now its fucking hot; and what perfect timing. Why are waterholes so far away? And why do I keep riding my bike?

I took the weekend to be decidedly non bike oriented, slept a lot, watched movies, had a weekend guest, visited the WNC Arboretum, ate barbecue, and generally recover from the mountain bike mini camp that engulfed the last two weeks of my life.

Back on it Monday for a little three hour road ride to see if the legs would open up. They did. I'm feeling surprisingly spry and able to whip myself back into what feels like race shape. It's been a while, but I think this is what race shape feels like. After the three week float through the Grand Canyon in January, I've worked every week made available to me. No riding, sparing a weekend warrior stab at it occasionally. That means, as far as "training blocks" go, my base period was June 5th through 9th, Recovery period June 10, Building phase June 11 and 12, Recovery Period June 13 and 14, and another Building Period June 15 and 16.

Lets see Carmichael coach around that shit. I've somewhat successfully crammed 3 months of work into about 12 days.

The culmination of this extended joke will be me racing this weekend at the Kenda Cup East series Cowbell Marathon Challenge (or something like that..names are getting out of control). I haven't raced in flat circles since the Ohio days. Five laps of anything other than melted Maple Bacon Ice Cream is rarely enough to get me in the car, but there'll be a lot of friends at the race that I haven't seen since last season. So..off i go. Around and Around for 45 miles plus 6 of something else...hopefully non-circular.

So if you wanna see something really funny, come out and race on Saturday. You can stuff pebbles in my jersey pockets or whatever you fast people do to oppress the slow. Sunday is all fun and games, with a full day of drinking in the Piedmont sun and heckling the REALLY fast guys during the less dizzying XC race.