The Long-Awaited Update: Okee, dokee . . . I know it's been a while (5 days -- perish the thought!) since my last update, so here goes:

Training is still a bit sporadic. I had to travel to Lubbock for two days for work, so my hiatus from the bike reached epic proportions. I haven't ridden since the wreck on Sunday and before that, I'd been off the bike for 7 days. So . . . until yesterday, I'd ridden all of ONCE in 10 days. The streak is OVER!

I got the Guru back from Jack & Adam's yesterday morning. Seems the crash broke the front derailleur cable. No biggie. They just replaced it. Got 'em to clean up the bike, especially the drive train, too. I rode 12 miles yesterday at a very easy pace with my friend Shelley. I just wanted to start easy. Plus, I had a hard run workout, so I didn't want to ruin my legs.

Monday was a no training day. I intended to ride and run, but work interfered.

Tuesday, I left early for Lubbock. I got a nice run in (about 5 miles at a moderate pace) in the late afternoon. My legs were a bit stiff the next day, but not too bad. I felt good, even though my running has been sporadic.

Wednesday was another no train day. I didn't make it back from Lubbock until after 7:30 PM and I was exhausted from the trip. I got home from the airport after 8:00 PM and just didn't have the energy to do anything. I did manage to do some push ups and sit ups Wednesday morning, but no running or swimming or biking.

Thursday: I've already mentioned the biking. I also had a run workout with Texas Iron. It was NOT an endurance workout, but more of an intensity workout. We did an easy 10 minute warm up, then some drills to work on form. The actual workout was a bear! We partnered up with someone of roughly equal speed. Then, we had to run a triangle relay. Basically, one team member would run two legs of the triangle and then tag their team member's hand. Then, the first member would backtrack one length of the triangle while the second team member would run his two legs and tag the first member's hand, and so on. We did this until everyone had run 6 sets of two-foward-one-back. There was a STEEP hill on one leg of the triangle that just about killed me. My legs are VERY tight today, but I'll be riding about 20 miles to loosen them up. The good news is that my back doesn't hurt much anymore. It's GOOD to be out exercising!

Iron Star, here I come!

Edit: Did my regular 22-mile bike ride at lunch today! Averaged 19.0 mph. I wish my heartrate monitor was working because I'd like to know how hard I was going. It felt a bit harder than usual, but that's to be expected with my recent unwilling hiatus. A guess on my perceived effort is that I probably averaged about 160-165 beats per minute across the ride. That's too high, but not as bad as it could be. I know my heart rate must've spiked up over 180 on a few climbs. I need to avoid that kind of spike at Iron Star to avoid blowing up. I still think, if the ride is generally flat and easy rollers, that I can average 21.0 mph without blowing up so much that the run becomes impossible. If I can do a 2 hour half marathon after a ride like that, I'll be pleased as punch.

Second edit: Forgot to mention . . . today I had my first ugly bike incident. Some jerk teenager threw a half full water bottle at me out the window of his car. Luckily, he had bad aim and it missed me. Could have been very serious if I had been hit. It was easily full enough to cause me to lose control of my bike. The good thing is that I wasn't going that fast and a crash probably wouldn't have been awful.