Pittsburgh

I haven't been back to the burgh since the Head of the Ohio in 2006, missing it last year due to the Jersey Man Half. Considering some of my best friends are here, that time seems even longer to me. Got in yesterday and was greeted by Cole and Teddy at Cole and Teresa's beautiful house in South Hills. Driving in I was taken by how beautiful the entry on 376 is in into the city. I forgot how cool this place is.

Today after a relaxing morning Cole and I took a moderate little maintenance run down along the river with Cass. Got the legs moving and the blood flowing and just got to realize how much I miss it here and miss hangin out with these guys. Tonight we're heading over to Teddy's for dinner and we'll catch up with Webster who coaching the crew team these days. Good times, good people... good stuff.

Looking forward to the race on Sunday morning; I think we're all pretty ready for it, and Cole is saying he's definitely interested in doing more races, including some Xterra races... Sweet...

Racing Division

I was just thinking and I'm not sure if I've even mentioned it here on the blog. After the 2008 season (well actually throughout the 2008 season I should say) the Racing Union racing team essentially dissolved. Unfortunately the small group of riders was too spread out and engaged in life's other callings to continue to operate as a racing team.



The core racers (those who actually spent 2008 racing some) mostly moved over to join friends with the Whole Wheel Velo club and should be well suited with the larger and more active team. A couple of other folks may have moved to other local teams as well, not positive but I vaguely remember someone moving in with the Coppi's though that might have been Jeff prior to last season.


The 95 degree heat at the 2007 Pleasant Valley Road Race

As my road racing interest has waned a bit I'll be unaffiliated for the time being, though we'll see how things play out. I have some ideas for my season that I'll get into a bit further down the road. For now I'm just going to ride.

Been a while on the postings, but right now I'm waiting hours for a few application updates to complete on my historic computer here so I figure now is a decent time to post something. Training has been going very well over the last few weeks/months. Basically since I started using a laid out "plan" with day to day workouts. I like the structure and knowing what to do, not just making something up as I feel like it. Better yet I'm seeing results; my running is improving dramatically while I can see steady improvement in my swimming as well.

Sunday I did probably my longest ride of the year at about 60 miles, an easy spin over the Brian's down through Rock Creek and back and felt great. Wasn't too sure how I was going to fare since my longest rides lately have been in the 30 mile range but I felt great throughout the ride. Pace was pretty steady though I picked it up substantially for the last 20 miles and didn't feel overly tired or anything.

Last night I did my longest run of the year as well, and earlier this week my 3000+ swim was probably my longest as well while we're on the trend. This is my heaviest week training time wise so it makes sense. The run was 14 plus miles easy in about 2 hours and felt really good up until about the last 10 or 20 minutes when I just wanted to be finished. I think it was more mental then physical since when I finished I was heading to Aimee's and I haven't seen her for over a week while she'd been out of town.

All of my long workouts though felt great and lead me to believe I'm in a pretty solid spot for my upcoming races. Next Sunday I'm running the Larry Noel 15k which starts and runs through my backyard aka the Beltsville Ag Center. After that Brian and I head up to our folks' place in the Pocono's for some R&R/concentrated training time before Jenny and Aimee meet us mid week. The Nation's Tri the weekend after we come back and 2 weeks later its on to Jerseyman 1/2 Iron, my season goal!