Long time

It's been over two months since I posted here. So much for keeping up with things. Not too much has been going on. I haven't ridden as much as I'd like, or need to for training for the Dual on the 23rd. Let's see, since June 4th I've ridden the MS150, where I rode the century (100 mile) ride on Saturday followed by the 75 mile option on Sunday, making it my biggest mile weekend ever. More exciting for me on that ride was that Robyn rode 75 miles on Saturday, her longest ride ever! Did some training rides in July, but nothing big.

Just yesterday (August 9), I rode the ULCER, 111 mile epic century. To challenge myself further, and to see if I think I can actually do the 200 miles in two weeks, I decided to ride to the event and home again as well. This added 27 miles on either end of the trip, and included crossing over Point of the Mountain for a grand total for the day of 163.1 miles, averaging about 16.8 mph (on the bike time, I didn't include the rest stops) Total time was about 11 1/2 hours, I think. I crashed pretty hard last night. We decided to meet some friends out at the Bayou since Gary (Robyn's brother) is here visiting. I was starving, so I was all on board. About halfway through the meal, though (and halfway through my second beer), I hit the wall, as would be expected. I slept very well last night and actually feel not really that bad today, which gives me great hope that I will not die on the Desperado! The weather there should be slightly cooler than here because of the elevation, so that's good. The climbing, though will probably be my (and everyone else, I'd think) biggest challenge. I've gotten pretty ok at climbing, much, much better than this time last year but the climbs on the way home yesterday were painful...and slow. I think I was averaging about 17.2 mph before having to climb home over the Point again...
And most of the big climbs, from what I can tell, on the Dual are in the second half. Fun times. They limit you to no more than 17 hours. Jason did it in 13 hours 40 minutes in 2006. I'd like to come in sometime around that time. There are fewer rest stops (about six plush lunch), which is a good and bad thing. Good because it'll make me stay in the saddle longer, bad because I know I'm going to have to work extra hard to keep myself fed and hydrated. And the longer space between stops means longer periods without kicking my shoe off for a minute, which with a foot like mine, may be a problem. I'm honestly more worried about that than any other part of the ride. The burning pain that starts up when it does is amazing, and not in a good way. This ride may be the determining factor on when I go for surgery, since the doctor said he would do it at my convenience. Convenient was going to be in October of November, so I can keep cycling for the summer and be healed in time to try more skiing in the winter. This may make me want to push that up a few weeks.

Anyway, enough of that. Other big~ish news, we're planning a trip to Guatemala for September, looks like we'll be there for my birthday, which is also their Independence Day, I think, so that'll be fun.