Update from NH

Doing a terrible job posting lately. Too many events too quickly I suppose, not much down time.

Genine and I went to the Y Sunday and we both were swimming very well. We both left hoping that type of swim will happen for us up at Mooseman.

Monday was spent at the Tour of Somerville Bike race and then just getting stuff ready for our trip to NH. I had decided that I wanted to swap the roof racks on the cars. Our old Saris roof rack has a great locking system that the new Thule system doesn’t. It has cables that you can run through your frames and tires then lock them at the bar ends of the roof rack. It also gives me peace of mind that if something were to break free, it wouldn’t make it off of the roof. So I spent quite a bit of time changing our rack equipment around. The Saris was not compatible with the forks on our Cervelos. I had to take the Thule Domestique bike mounts and install them onto the Saris bars. I also bought LocTite to put on the bolts. It doesn’t seem to hold together without it. When I finished I had it set up to carry 5 bikes fork mounted and 2 wheels AND I’d be able to lock it all down with 2 cables. Only I couldn’t find the cables. We hadn’t used them since August of last year but we both remember seeing them recently. I looked everywhere. I had to give it up for the night and move on.

Tuesday: One day work week. My brain is on Mooseman. I get home and start packing. It all came together easily enough, except for those cables for the roof rack. I look everywhere again as does Genine.

Wednesday: Packing up the car, there is a small compartment on each side of the car in the back. I know I looked in the right one probably 3x now, but did I look in the left one? I open it up and there they both are! Sheesh, I’m guessing I wasted 2-3 hours looking for these things.

Our trip to NH was at least an hour longer than usual due to construction zones along the way. We’ve dealt with worse, I guess we were hoping for an easy mid-week trip is all. Then when we are in Massachusetts we start hearing about tornado watches. Fortunately all we drove through was some light rain once we crossed into Vermont.

When we arrived, we quickly unloaded some stuff from the car and headed down to the lake for a swim.

This was parked in the lot.

It was a hot day, which is odd for NH this early in the year. It made for a really nice swim. The lake was amazing. The surface temp of the water was rippled. Comfortable and then Freezing constantly changing your entire swim. I love it! Incredibly refreshing. Saw many 12-14" fish out there during the swim as well. I worked hard to get my balance and stroke together with the wetsuit on. I would love to have a PR swim on Saturday.

We also wanted to get a bit of a bike ride in. Just to move our legs after such a long trip. I pull Genine’s bike off the top of the car, she looks at it and asks, “Where did you put my aerobar pads?” Uh oh. Yep, they were blown off the bars somewhere between NH an NJ. We’ve never had that happen before so we never thought of removing them for the trip. Now we know.

We biked for all of 30 minutes. Then as it was nearing dusk the bugs came out. In a BIG BIG way! I felt like I needed a face shield on my helmet. Bugs were stuck all over, arms, legs, hair… Fortunately we weren’t far from the car.

Then we had to go buy groceries and get water from the spring. Got back to the house around 10. Long day.

Thursday: It’s no longer hot, in fact it’s cold and windy. It was a pretty relaxing day for us. Ran some errands, got a 30 minute easy run in and did some bike tech stuff. When I went to put my rear wheel on yesterday, I noticed it didn’t want to sit square. I ended up having to lock it into position, holding it just so. Well upon closer inspection today, the set screws were completely uneven. So I got those set back correctly. Those set screws seem too loose tho’. I’ll have to take a close look at this once we are back home.

Genine on the other hand has a more entertaining project. Building home made aerobar pads. Sponges may be the most comfortable option until they get wet or sweaty. So we bought a couple mouse pads and she is building them out of those. They aren’t as thick as we were hoping, so she’s doubling up. It will be interesting to see the final product.

I feel like I’m going into Saturday’s race, overly tapered. That’s fine, I usually do well when that happens. It’s just that I feel like I haven’t worked out since Sunday. My biggest frustration tho’ is my right hamstring. I still feel a pull or something along one of the muscles up near my glute. I’ve been dealing with this for awhile. I’m a little concerned as to what’s going to happen there as I do more speedwork.

Speaking of speedwork. I did my first bit last Saturday morning. Wow I am not built for speed right now. I realize I haven’t done much/any speedwork but I guess I wasn’t expecting those muscles to feel THAT out of shape. I guess the good news there is that things should continue to get better (somewhat easily) over the next couple of months.