Crazy June

Busy is the word of the month. I mentioned in my previous entry at the end of May (June, bring it on!) that June was going to be rough. I was prepared and bulled my way through the first couple weeks. The finish line is in sight at this point, but it’s an optical illusion and seems to keep moving off into the distance. The two 15+ hour days per week are definitely wearing me down, but only 2 remain so I just have to keep on pushing. However, the amount of assignments remaining for my 2 grad classes that I need to finish in the next 2 weeks is astounding. They include:
2 final exams, one objective and one essay (online)
2 group presentations
2 research papers (1 involving collecting new data and not just lit review)
1 interview and interview report
The bulk of this work is due by a week from today, but some of it spills into early July because our professors are so nice to give us some extra time (hint of sarcasm).

Obviously, the grad school work along with some B and C races have limited my ability to get some key longer workouts in, but such is life. I feel pretty confident in my preparation thus far despite the inconsistent training of late. I can’t say my training has been lacking, just a bit of a roller coaster. Two weeks ago I only logged about 6 hours (2.25 of which was a race), then last week I was able to get 13 hours including 10 on the bike. This week looks like I’ll be lucky to log over 5hrs, and next week I think I have the opportunity to go big again. It’s not exactly my style to adapt as I go this much since I like routines, but it does make things interesting.

Since my last race report, I got 2 significant rides in this past weekend. One was a relatively easy paced “tour” of SE Cincinnati I took my dad on that involved a decent amount of hills and some start and stop riding with traffic. We also stopped in Mt. Lookout for some coffee. It was fun being tour guide for our 3 hour journey. Then, on Sunday, I participated in a charity ride where I was hoping to work on my tri-bike pacing/nutrition. This was not to be, since I couldn’t get away from the competitive peleton and was unable to ride behind them without riding into the fold. So instead, I worked with the front of the pack pace-line (about 7-8 of us) and we flew for the first half of the ride. On the way back, I was able to go it alone a bit since people left the turnaround area at different times. I rode back until I found the wife who was on one of the shorter offerings and cooled down, riding the last 10 miles with her. I was very pleased with the ride Sunday since I was able to average 20.1mph for 63miles w/ 31miles pace-lining @22-23mph, 22miles solo at 20-21mph, and 10miles cooldown at 14-16mph and still felt pretty fresh at the end.

This Sunday, I have a C race sprint distance race that is a good excuse to visit my sister in St. Louis. I have a race-plan in mind, but don’t know if I’ll have time to publish it before I leave for the weekend. If not, look out for a report early next week, when I’ll be a couple steps closer to defeating the month of June.