Pheww!

Definitely a busy weekend but a great weekend with family and friends. Friday morning after the Thursday evening Leroy time trial, Doug met me at my house and we saddled up and rode our tt bikes to his summer cottage in Franklin P.A. It was a 91 miler and the idea was to ride a decent tempo and work together to keep each other somewhat fresh and strong to the finish. The route we took was fairly bumpy in terms of rolling hills, but it was nothing compared to the last 25 or so miles. Doug wanted to take an alternate route which added some hills and I welcomed this route even though it was hard. We did a couple of 1 mile climbs at 7 to 8% and many smaller rollers and some that we had to get out of the saddle and stomp up, but the beautiful roads out in the middle of the country and the scenery made them seem not so bad. We pulled into Doug's place with 91 miles in 4:30 and an average speed of 20.3 mph., that wasn't too bad for us considering the hills and rollers along with the headwind that we were riding. The plan was to run 4 miles off the bike but it wasn't to be that afternoon. After a nice shower and a Recoverite we we're set for the evening till Lynn showed up and we all went out to Dinner with Doug's family.

On Saturday we did an above tempo ride up a 4 mile climb called Deep Hollow. The average grade is about 4 1/2 to 5% for 4 miles. This is a climb that actually looks like you would see in one of the Tour stages. It's a beautiful road and climb that takes you into Oil City and once into Oil City we took the very popular bike path along the Allegheny River back into Franklin. We averaged about 22 mph. for the ride and when finished we pulled on the running shoes and another friend met us and we ran a quick 3.3 miles. Legs felt good and after the run we got back on the bikes and took off looking for Lisa (Don Sedivys wife) and Lynn because they had been on their bikes for about an hour an a half and we were wondering if something happened to one of them. They were fine but just decided to put some extra mileage in, all good.
Later on that afternoon everyone started rolling in for the cookout that lasted until near midnight, it was Awesome and a great time with great friends.

Sunday morning Lynn and I left for home and the plan was a mountain bike ride with a trail run afterward to get some XTERRA training in for this weekends tri @ Westbranch. I went to Hogback and did 4 laps on the bike and then ran a loop of the course and then down to the river and back and it was smokin' hot and I was ready for some R&R for the rest of the day.

This morning we had an East Side group ride planned that consisted of hills, heat and wind riding out into Geauga County.We did 52 miles on the road bikes on a challenging route and I must say that everyone on this side of town is very fit right now and riding and racing strong, nice ride this morning guys and thanks for the invite.

This week is going to be a couple swims, a few easy mountain bike rides and a few runs before the XTERRA triathlon on Sunday, so basically a wind down / taper week which I'm sure is true for most of you guys that are racing the Tour of the Valley this weekend. Good Luck to you guys and gals too and race safe!

The pic is downtown Franklin.
Later all.