THAT'S what i'm talking about!

Shawnee Mission Trails finally opened and it was game on. After riding the hour to work in the morning, then the hour home in the afternoon, I swapped bikes and heading out to meet up with Matt Dutcher, Damian Almanza, and eventually Brian Prosser. Got in 3 full figure-8's. First descent off-road ride since April 10th. I did get in a quick 30-minutes out there Tuesday night, but that was more of a recon to see how the trails looked. Those 3 laps probably did more for my fitness than the last month of road riding has. My body is just hard-wired for that sort of power transfer, and it never really responds or improves doing much else. Ended up with about 4hr's to total riding yesterday, so I obviously couldn't ride to work and back today. Crawled back home after the ride, crawling up the Woodland climb in the smallest gear I had, couldn't feel my legs anymore and had a big smile on my face about it. Got home to find my lovely Kristine had just picked up Chipotle! Ahhhhhhhhhhhh. My BikeWeek total mileage ended up at just 65miles. Only 10 commutes so far this year, down from about 20 this time last year. Weather partly to blame but not completely. LOT's of just going on - all good of course.

Wednesday Night Hill Ride

Boy did we dodge a huge bullet with the weather. That could have been very ugly, but fortunately everything just missed us to the south. Small group, most probably thought it would be a raging downpour but we didn't see a drop. Only about 25-30 in the group. The usually contingent of 20 Team 360 guys were absent, I found myself going over Lawrence Hill in the lead. I guess finally getting some good power work on the mtb last night opened up the legs a bit. Renner went about the same way. As long as I can role on the power at my own pace and build up the pace all the way up, I go OK. I'm not one of those guys that can go super-hard right at the bottom. I got up Renner in the lead with a couple guys tailing me and the rest of the group got popped, but they latched back on on the rollers before 87th. Head wind on 87th so not much there. Once on Woodland, I just did my normal deal, roll-on the power gradually till hit my my limit then just maintained it as long as I could. Legs were screaming at the top for sure,but it would have been worse if it had went slower at the bottom and middle than a hard acceleration towards the top. That crap kills me.

Nothing to see here......Move along.........

Not a whole lot to report. It seems like it's rained everyday since we got back from sunny Socal. I have 2 yards that need to both be mowed about every other day. The bugs and ticks are terrible right now (ask Kristine :-). A week or so ago, they had the official Grand Opening Ceremony at Black Hoof Park (Lake Lenexa). Very cool. They had a big fish tank there and the Lenexa FD and PD were out there. Kristine and I met up with Damian, Anita, and Aiden and walked down to the spill way. I decided to get some cross-training in and walked back with Aiden on my back. Very awkward and much harder than I was expecting. It was only about a mile, but it felt like 10. This past weekend I finally got out for a ride longer than 2 hours, ended up doing 3.5 on the paved trails with the pit bike. Been a while since I rode the Tamahawk Creek stuff and I found a bunch of stuff that wasn't connected together last time I rode it, very nice now. Only averaging 1 commute-by-bike per week still. This weeks Bike to Work week started off great, but then I chickened out with the weather forecast. The bad weather has yet to really materialize. Maybe i'm only a "fair weather commuter" anyway? Hey, I saw it ALL last year so i'm not missing anything. Next week at this time, I'll be in Italy, relaxing, riding, watching the Giro, enjoying nice wine with Kristine and entertaining Bella Vita's first customers. How is the Giro going? Ale Jet is back on top of the sprinting world, right where he left off. The "Killer" is looking extremely good. This is a big tour for him with several key stages in his home region of Abruzzo, and he's racing for the earthquake victims as well. Lance is looking great, considering he's been out of it for a while. He's doing a lot of work for Levi, so it was no surprise to see him get tailed off at the end of yesterday's stage. He's also doing some new pink wrist bands to support those effected by the earthquake. This is his first Giro and he's finding it much different that a TdF. Traditional, the Giro roads are narrower, twistier, bumpier, wetter, climbs are steeper, and there are about 50 fast-as-hell Italians ALL tying to be the #1 fast-as-hell Italian. At any TdF, you can count the number of fast French guys on one hand :-)
Last night, I headed out on the MTB for some paved-trail "fun". Rained off and on but nothing bad. I decided to look at the SMP trails and they were in great shape, so I Rambo'd and did about 45 minutes in there. Only a couple wet spots but I applied the "80/20" rule.