Hors Categorie

Two things come to mind: the climbs in the Tour and the Serotta bike. The boss has one HC he bought and still rides, plus one he picked up off Craigslist. I'd really like to see if that one fits and see how it rides. They don't make them anymore, but they got lots of great reviews back in the day. The rear stays were the death of the design. It just looks strange. A titanium bike should last a lifetime, don't know about that DKS rear stay. I'm sure Serotta would fix it, should it ever break. That's one thing the Serotta's are noted for, customer service.

Yesterday was the first HC climbs in the tour. This side of the mountains are green and lush, vastly different than some of the climbs. The day before the climbs weren't as high but went up into the clouds anyway. One of the team directors was telling/coaching one of his riders to "ride his pace", "you're riding with the top 10 climbers in the world". Great stuff. These guys really suffer going up the mountains and it's cool to watch the different cadences and attacks and who gets dropped. The descents are just as exciting. One of the motorcycles crashed going down. Kirchen lost his yellow jersey and about 3 or 4 minutes to Cadel Evans. Probably pretty close to how the tour will end in a week or so. Today is a rest day for the riders.



Boss rode into work yesterday on a bright red Vespa scooter. Fun, fun, fun. He was grinning from ear to ear. That would be a blast to live close enough to work to ride that on good days. WW and I were talking last week about going car free and having a scooter for transportation. Would only work if you had only a few miles to commute to work or in his case, only for grocery store trips. Used scooters are hard to find and cost around $1,500 +.

Running has been going well lately. Did 9 miles on Saturday with Speedy on the Stones River Greenway at around marathon pace. Sunday Speedy and I ran on the gravel out at Cedars of Lebanon. We did 14 miles about 10 seconds per mile slower than marathon pace, but still a heck of a workout. The hills out there are just continually rolling, no flat areas.

This morning it was nice and cool, 67 degrees are so. Ran from the house to the track at Seigel High School. WH was already running the stairs. Never did get a chance to talk with him. I was in the middle of my first interval when he left. I'll do my heat speed workout on Thursday evening. Took Monday off completely, no weights, bike or run. Today's workout was a long one, 11.75 miles total with cooldown and warm up. Meat of the workout was the T pace work. Started with 2 x 2 miles at T pace, 2 minute recovery. Then 1 x 800 meter at I pace and another 2 minute recovery. Next 2 x 400 meters at R pace, with 400 meter recovery. Everything went well up to this point, hit my targets or got close enough. Last piece was 2 miles at T pace. Struggled from the start to even get to to T Pace. First mile came in at 6:35, 7 seconds off pace. The next one was tough. Had it been hot, I doubt I'd have even made it this far. Continued to struggle and just tried to keep my form from getting sloppy. Came in at 6:43, touch slower than adjusted T pace.