Great day for a race, quickly starting to think September may be the best weather month of the year here in unpredictable Michigan.  It tends to the low side of temperatures, but clear and sunny days seem far more frequent.

First time I’ve ever ridden Addison, and its a great trail.  Kinda like Maybury but a little less twisty and with longer climbs and descents.  Seems like a perfect trail for XC, lots of open areas for passing.

Results were so-so, 8th out of 15 with a time of 1:16:20 for two laps.  Winning time was 1:05:02  It was almost strange to do a second lap, after riding 3 time trials this year, we’ve only done one other multi-lap race (Boyne).

This week I switched to riding my mountain bike on the dirt roads nearby instead of riding the road bike.  I have felt that the lower resistance of the road bike is not improving my power as well as the fat tires.  A short distance from my doorstep is Warner Rd which is a nice hilly dirt road that runs due south for a nice 15 mile round trip.  From there I can cut down any of the dirt side roads to add as much distance as daylight allows.  Weekly riding total for the week (including race): 5 hrs

As predicted it was a lousy week for training, though on the positive side I did get lots of rest!  Mon – Thurs did zip, finally Friday we had time for a short fun ride around the neighborhood.  Then Saturday we spent the day in Midland and I met up with John for a ride.  Although since we were running a bit late only really got to ride a little over an hour on the awesome rail trail there.

Sunday went downtown A2 to watch Emily and Sue compete in the PH Criterium which was pretty sweet.  The main leg of the course went right down Main which was very cool.  What wasn’t so cool was the heavy rain all the night before and literally right up until the start of their race.  Although it quickly cleared up and dried for the rest of the riders, they got to race on nice wet pavement.  Still, I suppose it could have been worse and Emily turned in a good race, I believe she took 2nd in her category although the posted results leave a lot to be desired in the way of detail.

Afterward we ended up gorging on delicious Chipotle burritos (my first) and doing some work at the Beaners located conveniently next door.   I managed to get out for another hour or so ride.  (After spending way too much time changing my tires and cleaning my disgusting cassette) Total hours for the week a paltry 2.6 and 41 miles.

Today was supposed to be my chance for a nice long ride, however scheduling and weather conspired against me.  A completely pointless 4pm conference call kept me well past my scheduled departure time and a massive storm front threatened to completely end my riding hopes.  Still after consulting the radar and assessing the conditions, decided to risk it.  Put on my lights and nuclear green riding jacket to see how long conditions would hold.

Derailer starts acting up (I think I bashed it changing my wheel) and on-the-road adjustments don’t help.  The good thing about having ancient crappy downtube shifters is that when things go wrong you can just switch from index to friction shifting and nudge it into the right gear no matter how out of whack it is.  Decided I had tempted fate enough for the day and proceeded to turn around and just do loops as close to home as possible so that if weather got really bad I could sprint home.  Well things started looking really ugly so I turned into the insane headwind blowing in with the storm and struggled back home.  Literally as I pulled in the drive big drops start hitting, impeccable timing once again!

Capped off the week with a nice long ride out to Britton and back this morning.  Gonna cheat a bit and include last Sunday which is when I started keeping track.  Totals for the week:

Hours: 6.8

Miles: 133.2

Not bad.  Also did some weight checks to see what my sweat rate is.  Today I lost 3.6 lbs on a 2.75 hour ride with a temp that ranged from 70-80.  Hmmm, that’s after I drank 2 full 24 oz bottles, which equates to another 3lbs of fluid. So if that’s right, I needed to drink another 2 bottles to properly replenish???  That seems like a lot!  Where am I supposed to store all this water?

This week will be a challenge, month-end close is going to kill my evenings, guess should plan for a long ride on the weekend and sneak in a few short ones wherever time allows.  I need to get my trainer back from D-Rob!