Midyear numbers 2015

We are half way through 2015 and I recently passed 4,000 kilometers ridden and I have climbed just over 50,000 meters. I don’t track it, but my guess is I also have about 50,000 meters of downhills as well. Whoo hoo.

All that I have learned about training says that at this stage of my life (old) and racing career (off the back) I should avoid focusing on distance. However, my “In for a penny in for a pound” mentality dictates that I track my training and through the miracle of Microsoft Excel it is all too easy to collect, tabulate and graph my progress. It is by sheer coincidence that I find myself hitting such round numbers here at the end of Q2.

I ran stairs earlier this week at sunrise wearing shorts and a T-shirt. If there hadn’t been anyone around I would have taken off my shirt; it was that hot. It doesn’t seem that long ago that I was running those same stairs at the same time of day wearing a jacket in the rain in the dark. Among the biggest differences between then and now is that in March I was alone at 5:45 and this week there were six people on the stairs at 5:45. Welcome to summer.

Although it has been hot, lucky for us it has been a moist heat.

In conversation with El Chefe’ he theorized that impact from these Fondos is both significant and cumulative. This concept fits well with the reality of my dead legs over the past ten days. I felt rested, ready, strong and lean at the start of both Ellensburg and Leavenworth but I now feel soft and slow. The temptation is to fight through this phase. Wisdom says to take advantage of the break from Fondos and keep the intensity low for a week or two.

The emergency remodel of the southern half of our downstairs has mushroomed beyond my control. I did what I could but in the end I called the insurance company and they sent in the troops. I'll keep you posted on how this goes. It is a whole new world for Evo. In the meantime I will say that with a claw hammer, a wonderbar, a carpet knife and a drywall saw you could dismantle an entire house. If you throw a sawsall into the mix, you can be one destructive badass.