My training update

I finally convinced my surgeon to let me start road biking outside!  I couldn’t be happier to be able to ride outside rather than ride my trainer every night!  I did get quite a few stipulations on the riding, including no racing for the time being.  It’s a strange situation to train for races I may or may not be able to do in late July, but that’s about the only goal for the time being.  Today I was out doing a ride that included a big chunk of race simulation.  It worked well to do my practice race on the quiet country roads north of East Lansing.  The only problem was coming back south I kept running into roads that had water over them (or at least the signs indicating that they did earlier this week).  As there are not very many north/south roads that lead into East Lansing getting home was a little more challenging than expected.  This added a few more miles to my ride than expected to avoid the flood waters, but was eventually able to make it home.  It was amazing how many places there were roads up near Bath and Dewitt that had water right up to the level of the road, farm fields with new “lakes” and smelly flood waters in the ditches.  Certainly a very different sight/smell than the last time I rode these roads in the chill of March.  In two weeks I’m hoping to try one of the fast locals rides and see how my training has been going.  Riding with the cat 2-3 guys is a certainly one way to test race fitness, plus a great way to gain more.  This week my parents will be here visiting, so it will be more of a rest week.  This will include biking over on the west coast [of MI] with them and going to some of the beaches on Lake Michigan to even out my goofy tanlines.  Now I am off to the team meeting in Ann Arbor.