My hips hate me....

Well the last two days I've been abusing my hips. Tuesday was a 35 mile ride on the Griskus loops. Yesterday I got out of work early and hauled to the Waterbury Y to focus on technique from my Yoda on the Kettlebells Alexi. I will say this I have felt the power of the clean and Turkish Get up and I like them. My weight session yesterday looked like this.

Squats :
1set 12 @ 95lbs.
2Xof 105lbs.
Yes I know I'm weak.

TGUs
10 with a 4kgkettlebell focusing on technique...need to upgrade to a heavier kettlebell. Just got to work on getting that foot back faster.

Cleans
10 each hand w/12kg kettlebell. Got to focus on using the hips more than my arms.

Back hyper extensions:
3x10 with 25lbs. plate.

60 Medine ball pass- throughs

90 crucnches.

I followed up my Weight room exploits with 4100 yards in the pool

Main set
4x 400 swim on 5:30 /200 pull on 3:00

Not a bad few days of training. Tonight a run. Tomorrow more weights and swimming.

Saturday a long ride don't know how far yet because I have to pack go back home and crash on my parent's couch for a while and figure out where I'm moving to. Hopefully I'll hear back from one of my jobs soon. I've got at least 10 apps out so hopefully something will come through. My degree requirements are officially complete so hopefully the interviews will be starting sooner rather than later.

Well that's all from the neighborhood.
R.D.

Dancing on the pedals....

Alright it's midweek and it's a little late to be doing a recap of my Staurday ride but it was just too awesome not to mention. I met up with Josie on Saturday to get my first ride since Providence in. (My burnout is almost cured I'm just having a hard time dragging myself to the pool.) We were going to do our 100k loop of doom, but the bridge on Nettlehollow was closed for repairs so we were left with 2 options.

1. Ride 47 into Washington which isn't necessarily a bad thing except for an 11% grade descent on a narrow road.

2. Go back down 47 the way we came and head on to 132 and do a loop of the Griskus Olympic course.

We decided to tackle the Olympc route, or as I have called it in previous posts Connecticut's Alpe du Huez. Coming off my success of pushing ridiculously large gears at Providence I decided to power up the climbs in the big ring for as long as possible. Josie took notice on one hill as she rode along side me..."Are you in the big ring?" "Yep", I said as I puffed along. She droped back in behind me so as I got toward the summit of some of the hills I was expecting to look back and see her right on my shoulder. I looked behind me and she was still grinding up the thing. know she's normally a better climber than me so I continued to attack the hills expecting that she would regain her prowess and blow by me like I was standing still. For the first time in a while I was really enjoying being in the saddle and I was hammering. The Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwin in my mind giving the color commentary. "He is absolutely tearing this field to pieces, just look at the gears he's using he just oozes power." "This is the man of old we are used to seeing, taking no mercy on the hills, he's going out until he wins or cracks." Josie caught back up on Weekeepeemee Road, at one point I thought she had hit my back wheel when I heard a slight thud and rubbing sound. I pulled away on the decent and had about a 2-3 minute lead as I got to the top of the last hill. We made it back to the car and called it a day after 35 miles. Apparently the thud, rub sound I heard was "no ejecto technology" failing her for the first time as one of her water bottles got launched out of her rear cage.

I need to ride like this more often. Just attacking climbs like my life has no other meaning. So tonight I have a post work ride out on the same course. I'm hoping that I can get back some more cycling prowess as I ramp up for Park City, which will be a flat fast time trial.

"He's dancing on the pedals now and he will not be denied..."
R.D.