Weekly Workout Totals 06/09/2008-06/15/2008 and Storm Tracker Ride

Cindy arrived Saturday evening around 7:00PM. I was just finishing up grilling a bunch 'o meat for dinner, and we were both ready to eat. As you can see from the pics (click on the post title to get to them), we had a good meal and a ton of laughs. We finished off our meat, rice pilaf and salad (accompanied by a nice Barolo) with some lemon gelato doused in Grand Marnier. Carb loading!!!!

Then, Cindy said she needed to clean her bike, and I helped her do it and showed her some of what I do. Once it was as clean as we could get it, I decided I should go ride it in my flip flops in the dark, of course, slightly drunk. Nice work if you can get it!

Sunday morning we woke up around 4:00AM because we wanted to get riding our 200K by no later than 7:00AM. Driving up north to Burlington, IL, we could see storm clouds building, but they didn't look too bad, and besides, what else were we going to do?

When we arrived at Central High School, we took one look to the west and decided we'd leave the bikes in the car to go down to registration for the Swedish Days Ride sponsored by the Fox Valley Bicycle and Ski Club. I continued snapping pictures of the awesome cloud formation we were seeing as we walked about a block down a hill towards registration.

When we got into the school, there were all these laptops set up with this awesome real-time Doppler radar on the screen, and things looked bad. We began asking about the incoming storm and realized we'd need to wait it out. And we could see exactly when it was going to hit right where we were! The clouds were just magnificent, even though the pictures don't do them justice. Unfortunately, there were some riders who had left and who we knew would be caught in it. They guys manning the Doppler practically counted down "3-2-1" and we were at ground zero. It was pretty exciting--all this awesome weather plus the technology to go along with it. Turns out these guys are ham radio operators/storm trackers. They even had storm tracker cars. We never figured out whether they were there to help us riders or perhaps they just knew about the incoming storm and camped out where we were.

How ironic that the school we were at has as its mascot a tornado! We were actually hoping we'd see a tornado form in the distance, and the storm trackers did detect rotation, and there's one picture that looked like a tornado wanted to form, but we heard the temperature conditions weren't right. Nonetheless, when the thing rolled over, there were 40mph sustained winds and 70mph gusts! We watched some hapless riders literally get blown back into the school parking lot.

Cindy and I were fine to wait it out, as we had the live Doppler to tell us what was going to happen. Good thing I had made us 500-calorie Ultrafuel that we drank around 5AM, so we had plenty of calories to go on. We ended up not starting to ride until about 9:20AM, and it wasn't until we were about 60 miles in that we knew we'd go ahead and finish 100 miles. Many riders bagged the day altogether, but it actually got quite nice out for riding. Although the winds picked up pretty early on, and it felt like we were always riding into them.

As it turns out, the winds started out from the south and then changed to westerly, so we had the pleasure of riding straight into them for quite awhile. There was a short stretch where we were heading north that we just stopped pedaling, yet we were going well over 20mph! It was so cool that the wind was pushing us like that. But mostly we were into the headwinds due to the route that was mapped out. Below is the wind plot. We pretty much HTFU'ed!







At about 70 something miles, we could see more bad clouds right to our left, and it looked like we were riding right into them and we got worried. Luckily, a SAG car showed up and we asked about our route and the weather, and he said we were riding away from it. We did get rained on briefly, but nothing to get us too wet or anything.

There was one rest stop in a church that I'd been in many times on many different rides. I commented to Cindy about an hour later (after I remembered what I wanted to tell her since I forgot while we were doing storm sprints) that I never said "Fuck" once in the church. I try and curb my enthusiasm when I'm talking with volunteers at events. But while we are out riding, we just let loose.

I got pretty tired the last 10 miles of the ride, but Cindy got way ahead of me, and I didn't care. I guess I'm such a loser! When I got back to our cars (we drove 2 because Cindy thought she'd be going to her sister's who is not far from where the ride started, but her sister wasn't around), wiped down our bikes, and headed back to my house. I had lead foot driving home because I just wanted to be home. There was a good deal of traffic on the way back, and I thought to myself that the driving was harder than the riding. How fucked up is that?

And then we thought we'd go eat sushi, but on the way to the restaurant I wanted to go to, we went by Connie's Pizza, and opted for pizza instead. We were pretty delirious from the hard riding and needing food, and I think we were talking and laughing pretty loud. Good thing they had seated us in the farthest corner of the place!

Beer, pizza, bruschetta, yum...and then home for stretching, one more beer and bedtime. We both slept pretty well (no you pervs we didn't sleep together although I've always said if I turn gay, it would be with Cindy) and woke up to an absolutely gorgeous day. Cindy left to drive home and I went to the eye doctor for my yearly exam. My eye doctor is a triathlete, which is awesome, and he laughed at all my stories from the weekend and just catching up with me for the last year. He dilated my pupils, so I got to ride Clipless Fuck home barely able to see, and I was just laughing.

Now it's more work and I'll swim at lunchtime--that should be interesting--I'm pretty wiped out! It was another good week of training:

Weekly Workout Totals	06/09/2008-06/15/2008 This week's totals are sponsored by the Tornadoes. And I hope I don't see any this year.
Swim:	10400 yards (5.9 miles) in 3.72 hours; 18% of weekly workout time; approx. 1301 calories burned Canadian: 9509.76 meters
Bike:	Approx. 186.77 miles in 10.65 hours; 52% of weekly workout time; approx. 4794 calories burned; Total TSS=525 Canadian: 300.58 kilometers
Run:	Approx. 31.58 miles in 4.89 hours; 24% of weekly workout time; approx. 2215 calories burned Canadian: 50.82 kilometers
Strength:	1.11 hours; 5% of weekly workout time; approx. 278 calories burned Canadian: I lifted many grams
All Sports:	Approx. 224.25 miles in 20.37 hours; approx. 8588 calories burned Canadian: 360.9 kilometers
Sleep:	7.18 hours avg./night Canadian: Do tornadoes have dreams?
Stretching:	2.08 hours. Massage: 2.25 hours