Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Snow day


The picture was taken this morning. We had a foot of snow from two storms on Sunday and Tuesday. The temperature this morning reached a low of minus 6 degrees. In addition to it being a snow day, it is also a slow day. So I thought I would take the opportunity to update my cycling blog.

CAFR stands for Comprehensive Annual Financial Report. With apologies to my friends in governmental accounting, my CAFR stands for Cycling Annual Fitness Report. I needed just 30 more miles with three days to go to reach my goal of 7,500 miles in 2010. We had a nice day of 60 degrees but social obligations kept me from riding on that day. Then frigid weather set in and the thought of back to back days on the trainer to get the last 30 miles was very unappealing. Oh well, 7500 is just another round number. I enjoyed the year in cycling and that is what counts. I got two tours in during the year and joined a cycling club making many new friends.

So what about 2011? January was a tough month. The first two weeks were good and I then got sick for the first time since early 2005. Scratch any riding for the next 11 days and then a slow recovery to fitness. I will go to Fredericksburg, Texas in March for a week of hard training with fellow club members and other CrossRoads tour riders. I think that there will be about a dozen of us. Fredericksburg is a mecca for cycling. Texas Hell Week, an intense training camp for hard core cyclists, will be held the week before we arrive.

Other than one criterium in oh-so-long-ago 1974 and triathlons in the 1980s, I have never raced on a bike. I intend to participate in a seven-race time-trial series in April and May. Our club puts on the TT and nearly 500 riders participate weekly. Riders go off every 20 seconds. I put in 3 TT efforts in November and December and it was nice to see the improvement.

I plan to do one tour this year. I have never done a tour in Colorado so will undertake my first one in August. It will be in Western Colorado and entail lots of climbing over the week of riding. The tour is sponsored by Colorado HeartCycle and should have about 30 participants. Looking further ahead, I am tentatively planning a New Zealand tour in January 2012.

That is it for now. I will write about the 2011 events as they occur.