Bike Commute Day 2

Riding to work in the morning has been nice: The temperature is pleasant and there always seems to be a light wind blowing out of the south to push me along. Coming home, however, is a completely different story. Last week I was skirting the edge of a thunderstorm with gusty winds and intermittent rain. Today on the way home I was suffering in 100 degree heat and a steady head/sidewind. I drank two large bottles of water and could have used a third! I weighed myself before showering and saw 161 on the scale. Normally I'm at 162-163 first thing in the morning so I lost 1-2 pounds of water over the course of the ride. I don't know how everybody managed to race on Saturday without a neutral feed. Riding in the heat is tough, racing in the heat must be pure suffering.

Speaking of Saturday, in an effort to get Cami ready for the upcoming ULCER century we drove to Payson and did a nice ride out to Goshen and then back via Mona, Santaquin and Benjamin. We ended up with 56 miles and Cami rode at a nice, steady pace to finish strong. Towards the end of the ride I did a 3 mile TT on 5600 W which runs along the east side of West Mountain. It's a nice flat section of road with no stop signs and very little traffic. My time was 7:18 which happened to be a new personal best (of course, I haven't done a TT along this stretch of road since '05). Ideally I would have recovered and done a second effort on the same stretch of road but given that I was riding with others I didn't have a chance. Unfortunately I wasn't wearing my HRM strap so I don't know my average HR.

In other news, I was notified today that I had won the Hornet's Tour de France competition! That was a nice surprise and I can now look forward to a 6-pack of my preferred beverage.