Morning group ride 2 times per week?

I met up with some of the group on Tuesday morning. Last summer we met up on Tuesday and Thursday and I hope that this can continue. It was a small group just Lance, Robin, Keith and me. Keith wanted to do an individual time trial. The rest of us just wanted a ride. We went east to warm up with Keith and rode to the university. On the way back to towards the time trial starting point Keith dropped back to gather his thoughts and prepare for the challenge that lay ahead. He previous best, late last summer, was 30:05 – and by my calculations is 23.63 MPH for the 11.85 mile out and back. Remember, my best at the same TT was 32:10 – Keith was 2 minutes faster and on a road bike and with a normal helmet. My new best time from a few weeks ago – with race wheels, ROCKET helmet and the works I was 30:26 (23.36 MPH) – I’m still proud of that number but Keith is on fire.

At the TT start point I decided to do a tempo ride for the remainder of the session. I wanted to keep my heart rate in the 150 – 155 range for the 30 + minutes – I should have hit lap on my heart rate monitor – it would be a nice bench mark. It was a good ride. I crossed Keith’s path while I was going back towards the starting point – I was sure that he would have already passed me. He looked relaxed and not particularly fast.

Back at Jackson Station, Robin and Lance were each going to run a couple of miles. I wanted to join them but I was running late on time. They ran towards the university and I followed on the bike. I spoke briefly with Keith and he said that he beat his previous best by 11 seconds – 29:54 (23.78). We have another TT scheduled for the group on July 7th – 4 days prior to the Sunfish – also my birthday. It will be a good shake down for the race – or as Lance would say – ‘Establish the peaking order’.

At lunch I had a challenging swim session with lots of 100 yard repeats 16 of them) with diminishing rest intervals. Jim was in the pool and did the sets with me. Total swim was 2600 yards – I was actually scheduled for 3150 but cut it short.

WU: 400
MS: 6x50 builds (each one gets faster) on 30" rest.
Then 4x (4x100):
#1 RI = 20"
#2 RI = 15"
#3 RI = 10"
#4 RI = 5"
Swim 300 easy swim

The commute home was HOT !