Jan 17 - Jan 23......

Just a weekly report instead of daily for this week...should work better since I've ridden this week, but nothing spectacular.

Sunday - no riding because, IIRC, it was raining.  Or for whatever reason, no ride.

Monday - I was off this day (MLK Holiday), beautiful weather, high 50's to low 60's (IIRC), so I headed out for a short 20-something mile ride.  Usual route out towards Auburn-Knightdale and back home.  Felt pretty good, but I'm not trying to push the pace too hard.  Yet.

Tuesday - another beautiful, warm day and I just had to leave work early and go for another ride.  Same route as Monday.  20.5miles

Wednesday - trainer ride after work.  Decided that I needed to start some sort of "training" since I seem to do better when I have a plan to work by.  So, given that, I decided I would try to do some intervals.  Because I've pretty much been off the bike for 1.5 to 2 months, I didn't think I could do 3 or 4min intervals, so I chose to do 2 minutes.  Managed to eek out 6x2min zone 4 intervals.  I was really surprised by this - as I've previously found intervals to be very hard on the trainer.  Not that these were easy, they weren't, but I'm pleased that I was able to do them.

Thursday - I didn't really want to get on the trainer, but I did because I knew it would be good for my legs and with the reduced calories I've managed for the week, it would also help with the weight loss.  Since I really didn't want to ride the trainer, I told myself that I would just do 30 minutes and if I still didn't feel like riding, I could quit then.  30 minutes came and went.  I don't think I'm getting enough warm up, with just 10 minutes, because by 45 minutes, I felt a lot better and decided to go on and finish the next 15 minutes to give myself a full hour of Active Recovery riding.

Friday - I decided to take the day off because Dallas had emailed earlier in the day about riding on Saturday.  My legs were also a bit sore or I could definitely tell I'd been riding every day this week.  Pretty much a lazy afternoon.

Saturday - Dallas said this was going to be an "easy-moderate, flatish 35mi ride".  It was pretty flat, heading out towards the Kenly area, with the only "real" hills at the beginning as we headed down Antioch and took that from Thanksgiving Rd all the way to Hwy 222.  We rolled out from Dallas's house around 10:30am, with myself, Dallas, Randall, Brent & Russell.

The return route was on a few roads that I hadn't ever ridden on or just didn't remember them - mostly flat with a few rollers.  I did ok, I suppose, for my second ride with them, but by mile 26 or 27, my legs were definitely running out of gas.  I just couldn't keep up with them when there was any incline to the road and fell off the back.   Dallas and Randall stayed back with me and we rode a bit easier than Russell & Brent, who went on off the front, but would wait on us at turns.

I eventually, just said the heck with it (trying to hang on) and just rode easier, getting dropped about 10 miles from home.  Dallas came back for me, set an easy pace and pulled me back to the rest of the guys who were waiting for us at the next intersection (Thanksgiving & Hwy 42).  They decided to take Jordan-Narron Rd to Buffalo to get home instead of the usual Thanksgiving to Covered Bridge (which Dallas lives on)...dunno why other than they wanted to get that climb up J-N included.  As usual, I am dropped on this climb, the guys waiting at the turn.  3.5 more miles home and I get in behind Dallas and try to hang on to his wheel.  Did manage to do that.

Legs are super tired all afternoon and since my son is gone for the weekend, all I planned on doing was keeping the couch warm, watching some basketball & a movie or two.   40 miles/2:25hr, pretty much a slow 16mph pace.  It was rough for me, but I'm sure it was really easy for the rest of the guys since they've continued to ride while I was out with the injuries.  I felt like I had ridden a metric today - that was pretty hard.  But, I'll just keep up with the trainer rides during the week and keep coming back on Saturdays - eventually, I'll be back in shape and able to hang with the Hammers again.

Oh yea, with the reduced calories per day (somewhere between 1000-1200/day) and all the trainer/outside time I've put in this week, I'm down 3 pounds (as of yesterday).  Finally.

Next week will be more time on the trainer and a Saturday ride with the guys hopefully.  Tomorrow will be Active Recovery on the trainer because it appears that it will be a rainy day, per the weather liars.....